Kafka on the Shore: Haruki Murakami

Sometimes you read the wrong review. I distinctly remember reading a gushing review of this book, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami somewhere, in some august column. Was it NYT or the New Yorker that made me salivate for this "unconventional gem" that was a must-read, what with its strange title and all...

So I duly signed up at my local library for a copy; quite understandably there was a great queue for this book and so after a couple of month's of waiting, I was finally notified that the book was available!

Needless to say, I fell to with great hope and curiosty. I had never read anything Japanese in translation beyond VCR manuals and such, so this was truly a unique opportunity to delve in their reportedly voluminous and also quite avant-garde literature.

I will not trace the storyline here. In brief, it involves a fifteen-year old, Kafka Tamura and a sixty-year old Nakata whose stories alternate in chapters and converge, in a way, towards the end of the book.

The selling-point of the book, I guess, is the fact that the author Mr. Murakami does not believe in treating of merely the mundane and earthbound but merrliy adventures into the realms of spirits, other-worlds, people as concepts and without forms, the thin line between reality and dreams : all tantalizing and head-spinning topics but to be handled with extreme care. Else, such forays become needlessly secretive and hollowly dramatic, failing to lead on with their haunting images and surreal visions. Without some deft handling and deep convictions, such off-the-wall ideas end up like a farce, an overwrought and confused mish-mash of lofty but poorly developed ideas, cobbled together with contrived situations and sub-plots.

I think this Guardian review has a very fair take on the book so I do not wish to repeat much of what it succinctly captures...but I quote:

The mythic motifs also remain frustratingly shady.
...
For Murakami devotees, this fantasy's loose ends will tantalise; to his admirers, they may invite flummoxed interpretation; but for the unconvinced, they will just dangle, rather ropily.
...

And this from the NYT review:

And many of this novel's reveries have a laid-back, hallucinatory quality. ''Somewhere I don't know about, something weird is happening to time,'' the title character explains. ''Reality and dreams are all mixed up, like seawater and river water flowing together. I struggle to find the meaning behind it all, but nothing makes any sense.''

Great moments in metaphysics do not hinge on such loosey-goosey locutions. But there are better things about ''Kafka on the Shore'' than its stabs at cosmic wisdom.

So, yes, great expectations from this book, but in the end a bit of a letdown by its presumptions and its "stabs at cosmic wisdom."

Though it seems to be a sweet and honest novel, nothing really stands out...and the novel meanders on for far too long...