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After having read the bulk of his work, I've come to the conclusion that one has to have a general picture of Murakami's novels in order to understand each of his stories seperately. There are some recurring themes in all of them that at first I couldn't quite get. Now, it's become easier to interpret those symbolisms. As much as I love his surrealistic tricks, I can't help but be equally dazzled by his more sensitive, romantic themes. This one belongs to the latter category, while it has been s...
Whatever Murakami book I am reading, I find myself stepping back into the same world as before, with all of the same characters and themes of wells and transience and strangely poignant details like gold lighters and classical music records and the myriad spaghetti dinners--the mundane details of everyday life spun into a dreamy tapestry. The fact that every Murakami book I read seems to feel the same is a good thing in this author's case. His tone is something quite distinct. Every time I read
The other night a friend mentioned she is reading '1Q84' at the moment and it got me all nostalgic for a Murakami experience. So choosing one at random of the ever diminishing list of Murakami's I haven't read yet I chose 'South of the Border, West of the Sun'.What do you get? Unsurprisingly a story that is Murakami. There is an every-man protagonist, mysterious lady from the past, jazz, university protests, people with deformities... I could go on or just use the Murakami Bingo: Desipite being
This is the novel Norwegian Wood wishes it were.
A thoroughly engrossing tale of love, desire and the male human condition, with the immense added bonus of Haruki Murakami's unsurpassably eloquent prose. Tells the story of only child Hajime and his experiences and relationships with the three most significant women in his life and how they are all involved in his eventual mid-life crisis in his mid 30's, when he is supposedly happily married with two children and a successful business. This work is not only one for lovers of Murakami, this has...
Kokkyō no Minami, Taiyō no Nishi = South of the border, west of the sun, Haruki Murakami South of the Border, West of the Sun is a short novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Publication date: 1992. The novel tells the story of Hajime, starting from his childhood in a small town in Japan. Here he meets a girl, Shimamoto, who is also an only child and suffers from polio, which causes her to drag her leg as she walks. They spend most of their time together talking about their interests in life...
Lost loves and existential romance haunt in what was for Murakami a tender and mellowed out novel, which oddly still had a gripping edge to it, but I can't pinpoint exactly why. Maybe it's simply down to the fact this is Murakami, and here, even though the story is a simple one, I never truly felt in the comfort zone, like there was an underlying menace, and that something unexpected was going to happen at any moment.He loves a good sex scene does Murakami, and they can be found here also, but a...
This book is the literary equivalent of cloud paintings. I’m not talking John Constable’s clouds, which are dense with specificity from a keen and earthy eye; but rather New Agey cloud paintings, which are designed to be innocuous and calming, to not stimulate the eye, to induce a meditative state and readjust the spirit and turn one away from the tangible. So South of the Border, West of the Sun is not all bad – it does satisfy all the above criteria for New Agey cloud paintings – and I have no...
They say that Murakami is one of those authors you either love or hate. I can actually understand how his style of writing might not be for everyone’s taste, but I happen to love him. His unique writing style always had a sort of hypnotic power over me. I feel enchanted when I read his novels, almost like I’m entering some magical world. Moreover, at times it is almost like I’m in the book myself, a silent observer, but nevertheless, a person very much present. Do you know that feeling you feel
I really didn't enjoy this book, but it did make me think about why, so at least it had that going for it.I found Hajime an infinitely unlikeable character, but I couldn't put my finger on the details of why. He had no problem doing things that would hurt the women he claimed to "love", even as he said that there must be something wrong with him for doing so. I think of "that's just the way I am, nothing to be done" as the worst, laziest possible excuse for bad behavior toward others. But it was...