Kafka on the Shore

Title : Kafka On The Shore
Author : Haruki Murakami
Pages : 615



Synopsis
Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world's toughest fifteen-year-old." He runs away from home, both to escape his father's oedipal prophecy and to find his long-lost mother and sister. He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days--continuing his impressive self-education--and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, as Kafka flees, so too does Nakata, an elderly simpleton whose quiet life has been upset by a gruesome murder. (A wonderfully endearing character, Nakata has never recovered from the effects of a mysterious World War II incident that left him unable to read or comprehend much, but did give him the power to speak with cats.) What follows is a kind of double odyssey, as Kafka and Nakata are drawn inexorably along their separate but somehow linked paths, groping to understand the roles fate has in store for them. Murakami likes to blur the boundary between the real and the surreal—we are treated to such oddities as fish raining from the sky; a forest-dwelling pair of Imperial Army soldiers who haven't aged since WWII; and a hilarious cameo by fried chicken king Colonel Sanders—but he also writes touchingly about love, loneliness and friendship. Occasionally, the writing drifts too far into metaphysical musings—mind-bending talk of parallel worlds, events occurring outside of time—and things swirl a bit at the end as the author tries, perhaps too hard, to make sense of things. But by this point, his readers, like his characters, will go just about anywhere Murakami wants them to, whether they "get" it or not.

My Thoughts
I took so long to read this book...mainly cause of the things that were happening around me during the last 3 months..moving house etc.. Anyway, the book turned out quite different than what I've ever read before. I'm not sure if I'm right in saying that it's a fantasy novel, but I thought it was the best description due to all the weird and unnatural things that happened in the book, like leeches falling from the sky, a world beyond the living, talking to cats, and stuff like that..I thought it was pretty freaky at times too..but quite original, just like a lot of the Japanese :-) I would definitely recommend it to those who like to try different story lines.