Kafka on the Shore

I don't judge anyone by their reading preferences. But I will give a captious look whenever someone will say this was a 5 star read.

When it’s murakami, i can’t say it in words, it’s weird, not everyone will enjoy this but i loved this, this fucked up my brain

Le Monde sublime de Haruki Murakami nous laisse dans un état de contemplation. Celui de ne pas trop savoir ce qu’il voulait dire. Je pense que le Murakami essaye de dessiner un monde similaire au notre à travers cet oeuvre. On monde ou le sens nous échappe. Le personnage de Nakata est une métonymie de ce concept. Ne comprenant le monde qui l’entoure il l’accepte pleinement sans se psoer de question. Il vit sa vit au temps présent comme ele vient n’ayant la capacité de faire autrement. Ce personnage fait contraste aux autres personnages qui dénie parfois le présent et la réalité tel que Kafka et Mlle Saeki. Au final l’oeuvre nous montre que la tempête interieur n’est rien d’autre que nous même et que ´accepter reviens a vivre pleinement et être entièrement soi-même.

I feel like the allegorical lobster in the lobster pot. I love the way Murakami writes; it lulls me. That's probably why as this book got worse and worse I just kept right on cooking until I was almost at the end and realized what a big mistake I'd made. I'm puzzled over the good reviews.

Yes, there are some great sentences, mostly provided by Oshima who manages the library, but for me, they're insufficiently deep or life-changing to make up for the trainwreck of a plot. Yes, partly the plot is a retelling Oedipus, but the original story of Oedipus makes perfect sense even if it's outlandish. This is nonsensical, outlandish, and over-explained as a myth or analogy.

I also feel like it fails as a good fantasy book. First of all, I never appreciate it when the fantasy element of the story sneaks up on me, as this book starts out as magical realism and then all the sudden goes full low-fantasy ala American Gods with lots of characters over-explaining things that make no sense. More importantly, there are countless rules to the world that don't have any overarching concept. Perhaps it's a blend of Japanese mythology I'm unaware of, and even though I am familiar with the hungry ghost concept in Buddhism, and the magical powers of all objects of Shintoism, there's still a lot of randomnesses that isn't coming across to me.

I don't know if I'd say I enjoyed this book overall?? There were times I was having a good time but there was just SO MUCH weird random stuff going on (and some downright disturbing stuff) that I found myself wondering how it would all come together in the end. And unfortunately for me, it didn't. The ending left me with a lot of things unanswered and I felt quite unsatisfied. I also didn't love how often the 15yr old protagonist talked about his p***s 🙃