Rating: 
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.
Rating:
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!
Rating:
Summary: Simply Surreal
Review: Ever since I first read Murakami starting with
"Sputnik Sweetheart" I am hooked on to everything he
writes. I do not know what he does to me but everytime
I read what he writes - its like a tidal wave lashing
over me and I cannot help it. I love the feeling. I
cherish it for a long long time. South o the Border
begins with a 37-year old narrator Hajimme - the owner
of an upswanky jaz bar in Japan talking about his life
- from where it began to where it is. A Japanese love story; indeed, a Japanese Casablanca:
it doesn't sound too promising, does it? But ignore
the blurb - they've got to get people to pick it up
after all - and dip a toe into the world of Haruki
Murakami. This is, perhaps, the perfect place to start
for newcomers - no wells; no sheep; no slightly
off-kilter worlds, just a simple, if morally complex
story exquisitely told. It's the prose stye (insert
here a discourse on the art of translation, but the
voice is Murakami) which will seduce you, not the
narrator - he is morally ambivalent, and not in a good
way. In the hands of such an accomplished writer,
however, one is easily drawn in to Hajime's world. Hajime would like to be a good man, but he has
impulses; impulses which cause him to damage those he
loves. The simple tale revolves around his childhood
sweetheart finding him and endangering everything he's
worked for. So far, so predictable; but the way in
which Murakami teases out Hajime's character, and
faces up to the moral dilemmas without judging his
motives - they are simply laid out for us to observe -
produces a true feeling of uncertainty in the reader,
and compels you through the story wishing that both
outcomes were possible. A cunningly crafted tale,
carried off with thoughtful aplomb, and the ideal
jumping-off point for further exploration of this most
intriguing of authors.
Rating: 
Summary: Unforgettable adolescent love.
Review: The theme of this book is universal: a man who cannot forget a youth love (Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Fournier ...). When the main character of this book sees his ex-girlfriend back after two decades, the smouldering emotion becomes a real obsession. He wants to leave everything else behind him to begin a new life with her. The story is told in a very simple poetical captivating language, now and then abruptly cut by physical ... outbursts.
But some aspects are flawed: the link love-death (he 'saw' the death in her eyes), the mystery surrounding the real life of his ex-girlfriend and the rather easy end. I found that this book had not the intensity of 'The Idiot' by Dostoyevsky or the truly surprising plot of 'First Love' by Turgenev.
Rating:
Summary: Every word is a tear in the fabric of happiness...
Review: At first read, this would appear to be among the weaker of Murakami's recent works - perhaps a self-indulgent tour of sentimental moods from the past as an antidote to the gravitas of books such as "Wind-Up Bird." The translation, as well, seems hastily done, with the protagonist speaking in a loose, casual tone we're not quite used to. And character-wise, we really have only Hajime and Shimamoto to guide us, rather than the usual cast of unusual everybodies. That being said, "South of the Border..." indeed packs a punch as substantial as Murakami-san's other work, when read with the same intimacy and closeness with which it was written. Sure, there are the usual basic motifs: sex-mad women, drinking alone, vintage American jazz, and heartbreak. Something is a little off-key, but buried beneath candy-like prose. So what? What distinguishes this book is what churns beneath the surface. It happens when Murakami, with his readers mesmerized, brings in his prosodic "heavy artillery" to lift the tale skyward. Physical and metaphysical transformation, deep body/soul trauma, and on-the-dot symbolism round the story out as a deep-structural tragedy that unravels itself with a devastatingly effective certitude. Frighteningly well done. It's as much about destruction and selfishness as it is about togetherness and harmony. Two only children are in love - then come apart - then unite with shaken souls and memories of things completely irretreivable, much later in life. Hajime and Shimamoto, in another space-time, stayed in touch, married, and conceived an only child as a mirror of themselves. In this world, perhaps, they were happy - perhaps Hajime's idealism was intact and Shimamoto's intelligence given more room to breathe. Instead, at the sound of the crow, we infer this child's birth and death and realize that its presence in this world is limited to that of ashes in a remote stream. Murakami's device of bodily transformation, which also shows up in "Sputnik Sweetheart" for example, is most poignantly realized in "South of the Border" when Shimamoto becomes the beautiful woman and mother in a lopsided universe. Ultimately, with the death of the child who never really lived, readers unwary enough to have liked Hajime and Shimamoto (and held hope for their future) are mercilessly slammed to the ground. It's often said that tragedy is distinguished by the fact that it leaves more questions open than are resolved in the narrative; this tragic tale, though, answers every question with a profound finality. Even the final breath is anticipated and confronted, until there is really nothing more that can be said. So read it carefully and watch for the crow. Ashes floating downstream were never so sweetly devastating.
Rating:
Summary: Minimalist Masterpiece
Review: This book (my first exposure) to Murakami starts off slow and mundane to the point of boredom, but before long you realize you are in the hands of a master. Like a marathon versus a sprint, the mundane realism allows Murakami to unveil with perfect pitch and timing the story of an only child and his long-lost childhood girlfriend (also an only child) who now, still beautiful in her late thirties, lives under mysterious circumstances and comes to see him in his upscale bar. Murakami reportedly translated into Japanese Raymond Carver, who never wrote a novel. It shows. Less is more here, and each revelation at the level of plot conceals something deeper about life. I loved the subtlety of the ending that brings to a naturalistic crescendo the novel-long tropes of walking, rainfall, and the curious eponymous "place" of the title. Inspiring-a minimalist masterpiece that inspired me with a desire to write, and to read more Murakami.
Rating:
Summary: Not the most important, yet not to be marginalised.
Review: The last two Murakami novels I read were Norwegian Wood and Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. These two novels, in my mind at least, stick out as the most down to earth. Not necessiarily because they are realistic (though Norwegian Wood is infact his most realistic, Hard-boiled Wonderland is amongst his most fanciful) but because they give, or at least attempt to, order to their world. South of the Border, West of the Sun thus is to me a return to the Murakami that is best linkened to base myth. Together with Norwegian Wood, this novel ranks as one of his few attempts at a creation of a pure romantic-literary novel. As stated before, Norwegian Wood is far and away Murakami's most realistic work, so it succeeds far better at being romantic. But this novel does add something to Murakami's cannon that, I believe is lacking in the other novels; that is to say, eroticism. Love in Murakami's works is treated as a transcendental force that no man or woman can control. It grabs hold of you and will not let go. South of the Border, West of the Sun takes that idea and analysis it heavily. But in the other novels, that love is treated as something higher then the mundane. In this novel, it is brought to the mundane, which is where the eroticism comes into play. I'm noticing that my comments on this book are coming out a little rambling. I could attribute that to the caffine at 2 in the morning, but I think it is more a testament to the effect that Murakami has on the dedicated reader. His works crave to be read and pondered. Well, to give my basic, simple opinion on this book...It is not his best. It is excellent, yes, but really nothing more then a minor footnote in the career of Murakami. Wind up Bird it is not. So I can not suggest this book to the person who has never read any Murakami. To them, I would suggest reading the "I" duo, A Whid Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance. After that, you should tackle The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. And by that point your'll be so enamoured with him that you'll want to read every minor foot note he has.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful book...
Review: This is my second Murakami book (the first was "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles") and although the two books are very different in some ways, both are brilliant and satisfying. Murakami manages to tell a story with the same warmth, depth, and uncanny blend of realism and romantic idealism as Milan Kundera. Just amazing...
Rating: 
Summary: Murakami's Most Introspective, Realistic Novel
Review: Haruki Murakami's "South of the Border, West of the Sun", is certainly his most introspective, realistic novel since "Norweigan Wood". It is also the one novel which seems more rooted in contemporary Japan than anything else he's written. At the heart of this slender novel is a traditional romance between the protagonist and his childhood sweetheart, and how their unexpected meeting decades later leads to some unexpected twists and turns in the late thirtysomething protagonist's life. Fans of Murakami's more fanatastic fiction may be disappointed with this novel, but it still remains an excellent work from Japan's greatest living novelist.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic Murakami
Review: This is a wonderful book. By my opinion, however, not his absolutely best. I still vote for Norwegian Wood as the best book to start with, but you will soon want to move on to this work
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