A review by paulawind
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I wish we were all a bit more like Mr Nakata. Kind to others and content with our lives. However improbable it sounds in the context of all the other things that happened in this book, the one thing I learned was that it is okay to wait and enjoy being in the moment. I feel like in the current society we rush everywhere and have a strong sense that we need to be productive all the time so waiting in line, waiting for anything in general, is seen as “waste of time” putting us on edge more than anything. I took my time reading this book and with every Nakata chapter, refreshingly peaceful after Kafka’s turmoil and drama, I saw myself absorbing more and more of his philosophy. Today I stood in line, doing nothing at all, for over an hour, and yet in the place where I would be usually fuming and mumbling curses under my breath, I was completely calm.

Moving from my personal post-read attitude change, I both loved and loathed this novel. In a very similar way to Nabokov’s Lolita, I fell in love with the language, with the way the story was told, how deep into the psyche of the characters the author was getting, while at the same time hating all the extremely dubious sexual content which was getting only more distressing as we went on. It’s important to highlight that I know what to expect from Murakami so this is an opinion after the generous leeway I’ve given the author for his usual “Murakami weird sexual shit”. I know it was all the curse, fatum, drawing on the myth of Oedipus but it sometimes did get a bit too much. 

Speaking of the Greek tragedy - another aspect I haven’t expected, and I’ll probably will need to read more critical texts on before I make my judgement, is how deeply rooted the novel is in Western culture. In a full spectrum of it too - we got extensive references to classical texts, French New Wave cinema, German composers but also American pop-culture and lifestyle. Might be a reference to American occupation of Japan post-WW2 but maybe my political sciences brain is reading too much into that. Regardless, it is interesting to read an East Asian author who hybridises West and East to such a great extent. The resulting work is almost uneasy to read through.

Final call - will definitely have to read again because the story is so dense and convoluted that I’m sure a lot of things went straight over my head during the first read. At many instances I wanted to look away, drop reading this novel but every time I was inexplicably immediately pulled back to it. I’m both fascinated and deeply disturbed by it.

PS Thank you Murakami for effortlessly incorporating trans character into the book without fetishising them 
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