South of the Border, West of the Sun : A Novel

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Summary: Murakami sustains such hardcore emotion
Review: Odd to say, but my first reactions to Murakami were much like those I had for Samuel Beckett--I didn't quite understand what the man was up to, but he intrigued me nonetheless. With both of them I've gone out of my way to read everything they've written and hope one day to catch up. This book, the latest I've read by Murakami, I was able to approach with confidence. I still may not know what he's up to, but I think I know how to read him. What you may think of as 'plot' is more of a device to present an uncontrollable world around the narrator, a vastness of the unknown, and Murakami's characters can only deal with it without ever solving it. This novel is brilliantly emotional and spiritual, a search for what is important and necessary over what is desired. Murakami also has an amazing writing style--he sustains an emotional tension from the first word, and it never abates until the precise moment he wants it to, when there is either epiphany or despair at never reaching the former. I doubt this is good Murakami to start with--for that, I would more easily recommend _The Elephant Vanishes_ to whet your whistle, but this is a compact and highly effective book to come to later, once you're ready to sit back and listen to Murakami unwind as he sees fit.

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Summary: Comming of middle age
Review: This is a story about regrets. Hajime has one big regret, his childhood sweetheart. When she resurfaces later in his life, he is thrown into a midlife crisis that will force him to make some tough decisions. Murakami carefully crafts each character in this novel, so that you almost forget that it is a work of fiction. He makes it instead feel like a memory. The characters in this novel live in each of us. Murakami is able to force us to look inside to find them. Read this book!