Haruki Murakami
Kafka Sulla Spiaggia

THE REVIEW

Random thoughts page 49: strange but I've read more absurd things.

Random thoughts page 330: what am I reading?

Random thoughts page 380: okay, now there are about 120 pages to explain this stuff a bit because very little makes sense.

An Edipo 2.0 escapes from a hallucinatory reality because he doesn't know what it means to live.

A completely unhinged artist spits words that sound like a mix of prophecies and curses.

The empty container of a retiree talks about himself in the third person.

Cats know everything about everything. There are people who eat their hearts for incomprehensible and disturbing purposes.

The point of no return is easier to reach than the point from which you can't go any further.

Those points produce ghosts.

Death is the most important moment in a human being's life, it unites us all and is the only instant that tells who we really are.

This novel has bewildered me like very few of my other readings have done. I can't figure out if I like it or not, and how much. Everything takes place in a parallel, uncontrollable and inexplicable world, absurd but real. "In dreams begin responsibilities." The story is a gradual crescendo, the fog is part of us, as we move forward it does nothing but rise, and rise, until it forms an insurmountable wall, solid as if made of stone. A patricidal crow cannot cross the boundary between two worlds. Scandalous confessions about very strange events arrive late and are useless. Sandstorms temper and strengthen. Half shadows correspond to empty shells. Chance explains nothing. Blood flows without anyone knowing where it comes from. Worlds are not meant to run parallel; they must clash or converge at a common point, in a mysterious place where neither good nor evil nor future exist. That which exists appears. But what exists does not necessarily appear.

What is Kafka on the Shore I believe I won't know for quite some time. A visionary story, an incredibly oneiric fresco that raises a magnetic mist? A work of enormous charm that builds monuments to the absurd, the inexplicable, and the unexplained and gradually reveals another reality? Or a novel where the author got a little too carried away and forgot to tie up some important loose ends he had created? And was this last point a spontaneous decision or simply a lack of ideas?

In any case, it was a step too far. There are no half measures. We are facing a story that is either loved or hated. But more likely, both.