Kafka on the Shore

Rating:
Summary: Cat Lovers Beware
Review: As a cat lover, I found this book disturbing. After all, who is this Johnnie Walker fella who's hobby is to kill cats? Is he really Kafka's father? Anyone who loves Murakami knows that his tales are full of twists and turns, enigma and loose-ends. Kafka on the Shore is no exception. If you've not become a fan already, then you might be annoyed that there is no clear cut ending but if you're happy to go with the flow, to be swept along by a series of inventive characters then you will find this a compelling work.
But interestingly there is a way to unravel a little bit of the mystery.
It's worth knowing that the cat-killing sculptor is based on a real Johnnie Walke who lives in Tokyo. If you know the man, you can begin to understand the connections within the novel. And to do that, you could read (insiders tip here) pages 186-89 of Extremes: Contradictions in Contemporary Japan by G M Thomas. Walker is described here in some detail.
(And isn't this a literary first? For a real person to appear in a novel and a non-fiction book in the same year?)
But back to the book. There are the usual Murakami favourites like teenage sex but whilst this may not be one of his best it should none the less be read.

Rating:
Summary: Take a deep breath, forget about the Wind-Up Bird, proceed
Review: Disclaimer: I love Murakami and have read every novel he's written outside of "Pinball."

That said, I found "Kafka" his least impressive work by a wide margin. Some of this, I am convinced, is due to the translation, which is not only uninspired but in many places downright sloppy. There's far too much "says-ing", "was-ing" and general verbal passivitiy in the book. (At this point I think it's only fair to give some credit for the sheer magic and lyric power of 'Wind-Up Bird' to Jay Rubin, who somehow seems to translate a different Murakami than either Gabriel or Birnbaum.)

As for the work itself...I don't know. I see that a lot of people really enjoyed it. I found the philosophy boring, the plot plodding, and the characters very poorly sketched. In the way that a true Gus Van Zandt fanatic can derive pleasure from watching "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," I enjoyed reading this book, but it did not have anywhere near the same kind of effect on me as his others have. I felt like I was struggling to hear the voice of the writer I know and love beneath a screeching jumble of white noise.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful story
Review: Haruki Murakami again employs his musical narratives to tell a story of a youth in search of lost innocence. The story is engaging, and the characters complex yet easy to relate. Definitely a worthwhile read!

Rating:
Summary: Read it twice
Review: If you write then you have something to say and Murakami says much in Kafka on the Shore. Kafka on the Shore is not Dance, Dance, Dance or The Wind-Up Bird Chornicle (which is, I think, Murakami's best work). Kafka on the Shore does seem to sum up or further explore many of the themes Murakami has used in his previous works. Here the translation is excellent, the prose is elegant, the characters fully alive. Love and hate, anger and peace, certainty and uncertainty, good and evil, all play out in Murakami's archetypes. This is a book of myth and meaning. A story played out as if presented on a Greek stage... It is a fine work and worth reading twice.

Rating:
Summary: Murakami Does It Again
Review: In my opinion, Murakami is one of the greatest writers of today!
His style is flawless. He is very easy to read. I have to force myself to slow down while reading Him so I can enjoy his writing like a fine piece of chocolate. In this novel he blends "reality" with dream. There are also plenty of philosophical ideas for the intellect to chew on. I also highly recommend "Wind-up Bird Chronicles".



Rating:
Summary: A Stunning Achievement.
Review: KAFKA ON THE SHORE is sheer brilliance. Following the same proven track of the great stories of two separate lives somehow oddly intertwined like the classic TOM SAWYER, the modern masterpiece MY FRACTURED LIFE, or Murakami's previous THE WIND UP BIRD CHRONICLE, Murakami paints an utterly satisfying and multi-leveled story. The characters are masterful and eccentric. A stunning achievement.

Rating:
Summary: Kafka Among Murakami's Best
Review: Murakami does it again with Kafka on the Shore. He can take the most surreal experiences and make them seem so believable. The psychology of his novels is always the most intriguing aspect and this book joins with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Hard-Boiled Wonderland as among his best.

Rating:
Summary: brilliantly bizarre but he has done better
Review: the only reason kafka on the shore is not a 5 star rating is because of what it stands against in murakami's backlist. for most other authors this would have been a career highlight, a bizarre journey into the depths of the heart, about letting go, forgiving and discovering love. while kafka on the shore can be dismissed as oedipus on drugs, it is much moer than that. it is dirty nirvana, it is beat poetry, it is the echoes of the heart.

however when compared with norwegian wood, or wind up bird, murakami disappoints us. yet, this is new direction, the reader has to admit to let go. to not question what he doesnt get, to follow murakami as he takes us through his metaphysical world, where nothing is as it seems yet all is resonant with our soul.

murakami's protagonists the 15 year old kafka and the older nakata are contrasting characters unified in their search for something elusive, but their paths criss-cross in inexplicable ways. the beauty of the novel lies in its wonderful prose, the translation is supreme and as usual murakami brings unique powers of observation in this heartbreakingly beautiful, erotic and weird novel.

Rating:
Summary: A Bizarre but Thought-Provoking Dance on the Edge
Review: The title alone, KAFKA ON THE SHORE, signals that what's inside is out of the ordinary, and it most certainly is. Haruki Murakami has filled this 436-page novel with a mysterious object in the sky, talking cats and an alter-ego black crow, an old man who sleeps for forty hours at a stretch, a hemophiliac hermaphrodite librarian, "concepts" who appear in the form of Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders, ghosts, leeches raining from the sky, a giant slug that inhabits human bodies, and a magical stone portal to an earthly Limbo deep in the forest. Toss in some Beethoven and Haydn, Adolph Eichmann, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, Oedipus Rex, the Trojan princess Cassandra, The Tale of Genji, the Arabian Nights, and American jazz and rock music, and the result is a cultural rollercoaster ride through a sort of secular, pop mysticism.

The story line alternates between two distinct threads. The odd-numbered chapters trace the coming of age escapades of Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old high school dropout and runaway. Kafka is preternaturally mature and unusually self-disciplined for a dropout, but his childhood has been marked by the sudden departure of his mother and sister and the upbringing of a cold and distant father. He encounters a series of sexual adventures on his sojourns, complicated by a bizarre connection to his father's stabbing death and his apparent completion of the Oedipal triangle by sleeping with an older woman who might be his mother.

The second story line involves Satoru Nakata, an aging man-child who collapsed as a youth into a sudden sleep along with fifteen of his classmates while they were in the forest on a mushroom-picking excursion. Unlike the other children who woke up shortly after, Nakata remained in a coma for several weeks. When he finally awoke, he could no longer read or write and had lost his memory. However, he had a newfound ability to speak with cats. We follow Nakata on a grail quest that even he cannot understand, aided by a truck driver named Hoshino whose life is changed by his experiences with the old man he calls "Gramps."

Ultimately, Nakata's and Kafka's stories merge in Shikoku, a small Japanese island, where Kafka has been simultaneously hiding from his father and from the police. Nakata unknowingly opens a door that enables Kafka to confront the truth about himself and his feelings toward his mother, a truth that allows the boy to proceed with life on his own terms, to sit at the metaphorical shore and contemplate both his past and his future.

Fans of Murakami will likely enjoy KAFKA ON THE SHORE for its offbeat brazenness and its kinky ride through modern culture, while those new to the author may find this book uncomfortably strange. Either way, Murakami's is a unique voice in modern literature, full of humor and intriguing speculations, offering a fascinating perspectives on the meaning of life and how we each find our own way to live it.

KAFKA ON THE SHORE is a literary three-ring circus, but as everyone knows, the circus is always fun. And it's also a magical place we sometimes dream of running away to join, a place where we, like Kafka Tamura, can escape the burdens of real life.



Rating:
Summary: Surreal and Wildly Entertaining Journey...for the Most Part
Review: What a wild ride this bewildering, almost maddening novel is, and what an intensely creative talent author Haruki Murakami shows here. Make no mistake, this book is a challenge to read unless you are open to mystical characters, supernatural phenomena and a willingness to avoid basic story conventions. The basic outline of the plot will give you some idea. Two main characters drive the story. The first is fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura, who runs away from his Tokyo home. He is burdened by his father's dire prophecy that Kafka, like Oedipus, would eventually kill him and sleep with his mother and sister, both of whom fled the family home when Kafka was four. He stays alone in a cheap hotel, and after a blackout period, ends up at a shrine with no memory of the last few hours or how his clothes came to be saturated in blood. The second character is Mr. Nakata, a man in his 70s who lives near the Tamura household in Tokyo. He supplements his welfare subsidy by tracing lost cats, and his success rate is excellent because he can, literally, talk to cats. On the surface, Nakata is a simpleton, unable to read or write, since his memory has been wiped out during WWII by a paranormal incident in the local woods.

Both Kafka and Nakata find themselves in the middle of incomprehensible, sometimes shocking events. In fact, their parallel quests eventually merge, as Nakata feels his way toward realizing his destiny, which is entwined with those of not only Kafka but also Miss Saeki, a fiftyish library director whom Kafka meets on his journey, and get this, the ghost of her at age fifteen. In certain ways, the book is a primer on existentialism, but Murakami does not weigh down his story with heavy, complex arguments about the universe. Instead, he uses his surreal writing style as a means to get to the heart of a poignant question posed by Kafka, who never got over being abandoned by his mother and continues to wonder if being alone means being free. The journey that both Kafka and Nakata take is purposeful, though marred at times by Murakami's intentional excesses, such as bringing to life such advertising images as Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders to play pivotal plot devices. That's when the author's stylized world becomes rather contrived and the narrative even more convoluted as a result. Regardless, it's a powerful read overall for those willing to take this wild toad of a metaphysical ride.