Rating: 
Summary: A dark and beautiful book
Review: Although this novel has fewer of the supernatural qualities of Murakami's other efforts, making it more accessible to new readers, it is every bit as dark and deeply engaging. A beautifully written book that I recommend highly.
Rating: 
Summary: a small masterpiece
Review: After the translated works of Birnbaum and Rubin, it is a revelation to see how someone else translate and interpret Murakami's work (this does not mean that the writer of this review doesn't acknowledge the fantastic translations of both translators) . No doubt, Philip Gabriel has done a fantastic job with his translation of this book.This story is about a middle-age man who in his teenage years finds and then loses the girl, only to meet her again years later. During these years he has hurted a lot of people, including himself. Now, happily married, settled and being a succesfull businessman, it's time to set things straight. Or not? When the woman he once loved (and still loves) enters his bar, things are beginning to change. Will he sacrifice everything for this woman, including his beloved wife and daugthers? Unlike Dance, Dance, Dance or The Wind Up, this story is more down to earth. Nobody is perfect. Even if you live a happy married life. Unconditionally love doesn't exist, even when you know who you're true love is. Questions always remain and people have to accept this fact. Again Murakami succeeds in letting the readers to think and reconsider again what "life", "love" or "marriage" mean. The answers on these questions remain vague. But isn't that what is all about?
Rating:
Summary: very engaging!
Review: as with all murakami novels, you get absorbed in the story instantly. the plot was not as intriguing as "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" nor was it as brilliant as "Hard-Boiled Wonderland". This book has more of a somber tone. A very good read, nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: a fine book, but...
Review: Philip Gabriel's translation seems distinctly sub-par. I don't read Japanese, but I would assume that Murakami doesn't write as clumsily as some of _South of the Border..._ comes off as. What happened to Jay Rubin and Alfred Birnbaum, two excellent translators? Despite that, a fine book. I wouldn't say it's Murakami's best, but it's excellent by any measure.
Rating:
Summary: Marakami proves he is the renaissance master of book genres
Review: Over twenty years ago in a small company town in post World War II Japan, Hajime and Shimamoto were childhood sweethearts, who eventually drifted apart. However, over the ensuing years, though he married, sired children, and manages a successful nightclub, Hajime sees obsessed with his former girlfriend, whom he has not seen in two decades. Hajimos' life abruptly changes when his dream-lover walks into his suburban Tokyo club. She carries baggage and secrets that she refuses to reveal to him. He carries his obsession that propels him to be willing to risk everything he has earned to this point in his middle age life to regain his first love. Anyone who wants to read something a bit different, ought to try any novel (that is translated novel unless they read Japanese) by the great Haruki Murakami. The fabulous author knows no genre boundaries as he enters and refreshes many of them. With SOUTH OF THE BORDER, WEST OF THE SUN, Mr. Murakami scribes what initially appears to be an old fashion love story. However, in the hands of this master, readers gain a glimpse into the potential destructiveness of love when it turns obsessive. The characters seem genuine and accompanied by the Japanese background augment the story line with incredible layers of depth. This reviewer strongly recommends this novel especially to romance readers and the author's unique other works like the WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: best of haruki murakami (may i give 6 star instead?)
Review: this is the best novel murakami ever wrote. the feeling, which is so thin, like smoke, but it will make you just want to cry. i recommend this book to my friend. and the second day he come back to me, said: i can't put down the book, and i read until the last word. it was 5 in the morning, and i can't resisted to call my girl friend. It is the magic of that book that make him just want to see his girl friend. for myself, i read it through for more than 5 times, but everytimes i read it, it wiil have something that words can't explain go through me. it's some feeling. and it makes me go to listen to Duke Ellington's "The Star-Crossed Lovers", everytime i read the book, the beautiful alto saxophone of Johnny Hodges and baritone saxophone from Harry Carney will sing for me. i'm now a totally jazz lover. i have to ask myself, it is because i listen to jazz and became murakami's fans, or i read his book only became a jazz lover. but undeniable, Murakami's masterpiece is just like a jazz piece, beautiful solo from bill evans, smokey voice from chet baker, velvety singing from billie holiday, flourishing blowing from stan getz........ very very good one, and i think this is the best book to start to learn about Haruki Murakami.
Rating:
Summary: mellow Murakami
Review: This is like all of Murakami's books in that it is devoured easily - and over too soon. I was excited to read Murakami stripped bare of fantastical elements - eager to read a purely 'humanist' novel from Murakami - an insight into the male experience of relationships and women in Japan. While I was reading it - I felt warm and comforted by the blanket of excellent Murakami writing...but in the end..I feel a sense of disappointment in the portrayal of women and relationships - where women are silent mysterious almost vaporous creatures...which men latch onto to fulfill their desire for sexual mysticism - without needing a 'person' to go along with this. In this sense - these deep silent relationships left an empty aftertaste. Yet if this is an honest portrayal of marriage and affairs in Japan then it is also honest and perhaps meant to be distressing and unflattering of the modern male.
Rating:
Summary: Dealing realistically something beyond reality
Review: If you never read Haruki Murakami, try this one. Might be a chance to be acquainted with a great novelist in modern times, to whom you feel very close. Murakami certainly touched something very deep in human being, the very core of solitude inside ourselves. Even in our real life we are quite successful, there is still something yearning and wanting, never satisfied. The narrator in this book passed from early adolescence to mid-thirties. The external situations changed a lot, but there're some internal themes played on and on. Something inside him always resist being expressed in language. Something incompatible with the reality always attract him. And, when he was captured by, was pushed by this "yearning something", he tends to neglect the people around him, and they'll get hurt, esp. those intimate and beloved ones. When I read this book, there's a sudden feeling of sadness when finally I realized it: we lack so much that we constantly pursue something, and yet we are so inclined to hurt ourselves and the people we love. We're so imperfect. In this novel Murakami is quite different from his other novels, like "A Wild Sheep Chase", "Dance Dance Dance", or "Wind-up Bird Chronicle", which, as tom lin said, are more "bizarre"; in my language I would say they are more dealing with the world of dream and fantasy. Here Murakami rather deals exclusively with the realistic situations; but, beyond that, he speaks eloquently of the irrationality inside ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: mesmorizing to say the least
Review: I will not go on about the premise and the characters. I will just say that this book greatly surprised me. Instantly after finishing I ranked it in the top three books I've ever read. I will read more Murakami. Definitely.
Rating:
Summary: absolute something
Review: I cannot help reading this book again and again. I feel great
sympathy with the hero who seeks absolute something for him
within his partner, maybe. Though you could spend life
without noticing it, if once you would know it you could not
go back to the former state. It would let you know how
lonely you were in the past and if you once miss it, you would
suffer from the hunger for it forever.
I can also feel perfect content that the hero has when he is
with "his" girl and it makes my heart really warm.
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