Buy it from Amazon
| First Written | 2014 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | Japan |
| Publisher | Knopf |
| ISBN-10 | 0385352107 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0385352109 |
| My Copy | library copy |
| First Read | October 01, 2014 |
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage
Do you like Haruki Murakami? (I do, obviously) Because here's more: his new novel is so like himself, it verges on pastiche. It's Murakami bingo: we've got the blank slate male character, the clean living, the jazz or classical music, the wistful absence of another character, the quiet evenings ironing clothes. The supernatural is all missing - or almost - but it's almost all there.
You could accuse Murakami of just phoning it in, but despite the sameness, it's great, and I was totally on board. It's a page turner from the beginning, and then about two thirds of the way through I remembered that he never really resolves his plots; and that he literally has no plan when he starts a book. At the end of each one, I think: "Yes. That was some stuff he wrote." But I'm pleased each time, and this was no different.
Noted on October 13, 2014
Also, as always the wildly inconsistent quality of the his prose makes me want to read these in the original Japanese. He's straightforward and elegant on one page, and straightforward and tonedeaf on another. Is it a translation issue? Or does nobody edit him anymore?
Noted on October 13, 2014
Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed.
Quoted on October 13, 2014
And in that moment, he was finally able to accept it all. In the deepest recesses of his soul, Tsukuru Tazaki understood. One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.
Quoted on October 13, 2014
He placed this doubt inside a drawer in his mind labeled “Pending” and postponed any further consideration.
Quoted on October 13, 2014