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Summary: Fasten your seatbelts and hold on for dear life
Review: This is my favorite Murakami novel. As another reviewer pointed out, it's quite hard to describe as Murakami defines convention. But, its prose (and the translation) is magical, the story captivating and the events contained therein indescribeably beautiful and mysterious. This novel haunted me for months after I read it. Writing this review is making me want to pick it up again. It will blow you away.
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Summary: everything that rises must converge
Review: i read murakami's the wind-up bird chronicle and enjoyed it so much that i picked up another. i was very happy when i read this book and found that it was even greater. one story tells of a place at the end of the world populated by one-horned beasts and people devoid of their shadows. the other story is of a ordinary data processor and those that confront him. a somewhat mad scientist and his daughter, who loves pink, and opposing data processing factions all try to win him over. as the novel progresses, these alternating stories blend into each other creating a finale that is tragic and beautiful both for the narrator and reader. i highly recommend this--a work of pure brilliance--and murakami's other novels.
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Summary: The Interconnectedness of All Things
Review: This is simply the best book I have ever read! I was hooked from the first page and drawn into the world of the narrator as subtly as one is drawn into a dream. The linking of the subconscious and conscious elements of the mind are at work here, and this is what makes this book all at once so wonderful, disturbing and enlightening. It is a psychological masterpiece and lays bare the interconnectedness of all things- the people in our lives, the places, the choices we make, our dreams, desires, longings and regrets and most importantly, the often inexplicable and enigmatic relationship between our subconscious and conscious mind. The masterful way Murakami interweaves the chapters begins with a divergent simplicity and gradually progresses to a complex, synchronistic web/mandala in which all points share a beginning yet have no end.
Rating: 
Summary: Oddly lovely
Review: At first this novel had me utterly confused, because I failed to read the dustjacket, and I did not realize it was one novel, not two unrelated short stories. But besides my initial confusion (which really was not that bad, even somewhat amusing), I quite enjoyed this book. The END OF THE WORLD parts are really lovely, dizzyingly beautiful. Of all the Murakami I have read, this is definitely my favourite.
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Summary: Definitely not for everyone
Review: I bought this on a whim...I've since read everything Murakami has written and Birnbaum translated ("Wind-Up Bird" being the exception, different translator). I was blown away by the juxtaposition of stories...so different, yet with each chapter, the growing chill in the pit of my stomach as I begin to see where it's all going. Murakami is not for everyone...Thank God! How boring if every person you bumped carts with at Safeway also dug (Understood!!) this cryptic writer. There's a reason why he is Japan's most esteemed novelist at work today. I had the intense pleasure of hearing him read at my fave independent book store (His only appearance in the US...he doesn't even do readings in Japan), and the crowd was overwhelmingly Asian, young, achingly hip. The non-Asian faces were a sea of Who's Who of the American writing scene...Murakami rocks!!
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Summary: .
Review: Interesting; I had never read a negative review of anything by Murakami until I glanced over this page. The negative reviews are interesting, and in a way I see their point. Murakami's "casual" style is a bit clumsy in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, (the Hard Boiled chapters especially, it's true), and it's not as exciting or intense as one might hope. But although I'll detract a star for the Hard Boiled half of the book, the End of the World half was captivating. The way the two stories are interwoven, the wonderful, dream-like End of the World segments, and the incredible, bewildering, and understated ending, as well as the sheer imagination injected into each of these elements -- earns the book a solid 4 stars. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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Summary: yay! his novels are as good as his short stories!
Review: this book is the one you must read to understand why Murakami is so great. the ending is so great, I just love it so much. Murakami is the master of describing human's real feelings, this book is so bizzare, but so real, read it and see how real it is.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Bother.
Review: I picked this book up on a whim -- I was looking for something by a contemporary Japanese author -- and somehow made it through. This book is dull, especially the poorly written "hardboiled" sections (though those ought to be the most exciting). Perhaps the translation is at fault, but the language was flat and banal. Or perhaps Murakami was trying for the simplicity of good noir. If so he fails utterly, creating instead a juvenile tone that replaces ideas with cultural references (John Ford, Bob Dylan, and Ivan Turgenev for that highbrow feel). Murakami is especially inept at integrating exposition into the novel. The fable-like "End of the World" sections are better, but not enough to support this bloated attempt. Overall: really very bad, and nowhere near to earning the Philip K Dick and Thomas Pynchon comparisons he's garnered.
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Summary: murakami at his best- wacky, full of meaning
Review: after finishing the latest murakami translation (south of the border, west of the sun) i wanted to go back to his earlier work. maybe it's from playing too many text adventure games as a kid, but the "end of the world" segments of the book had a feeling of warm nostalgia for me- the places, people and situations all felt oddly familiar. the "hard boiled wonderland" segments were a nightmare world of dislocation and fear, where our protagonist is at the mercy of a brilliant but deranged scientist's attempt to devise the ultimate encryption scheme and tinker with reality at the same time. the chapter-by-chapter juxtaposition of the gentle but brooding other-world and the scary near-future japan is what made the novel work, and seeing elements of the two realities bleed together was fun. at the same time murakami touched on interesting questions of reality, self and the "internal narratives" we all build to survive. if wind-up-bird is too long for you, start with this one!
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Summary: One of the best books I've ever bought on a whim...
Review: I purchased this book on a whim - the descriptions sounded interesting enough to merit a look. Boy was I stunned by it. One of the best books I've read in a long time and probably one of the best novels I've read that's been written in the last 20 years. Beautifully written (and translated) it spoke to many different sides of me. The novel brilliantly fuses a number of different cultural genres (science fiction, mystery, film noir, fantasy, magical realism, "cyberpunk") into a mix that, amazingly, works very well. Try to imagine a collaborative effort by Garcia-Marquez, William Gibson, and Walker Percy and you almost might be able to envision what this book feels like to read. Who else but a Japanese author could make such an intriguing pop culture cocktail? Besides being a genre-bender, the premise of the book and the questions that it raises concerning the relationship between humanity and technology, the soul and the mind, and the individual and society are quite thought provoking. Did I mention that the book is very funny at times too? This is unlike any other book you'll ever read. Definitely worth checking out IMHO.
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