Monday, March 28, 2005

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

Again, wonderful - maybe one of Murakami's best. I can never encapsulate Murakami's books, or my responses to them, but as to things that I was particularly struck by:
* The fact that Kafka felt like a novel - as opposed to a more free-flowing narrative or sequence of events/images/ideas - in its structure and progression, however unusual the events it describes and the relationships of the two main plot strands.
* The recurrence of a number of images, both specific and general, from other Murakami books (no doubt there were many others which I missed): compromised shadows, cats, leeches, hotels, car hires, a discourse on the correct use of a bayonet, a wind-powered station in the woods, towns/selves with walls all around them...
* The humour, which seemed more clearly expressed, and caused me to laugh out loud more, than in other of his books.