Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Kafka on the Shore












Sometimes a book comes along that completely blows your mind, Kafka on the Shore changed me and it went about it an utterly enchanting, and charming way. It initially got brought to my attention by winning the World Fantasy Award last year, the book is a great deal of things, it is at once openly simple, yet the more submerged you become the more dark and complex it becomes. This is a magic realist novel, apparently … or whatever you want to call it, yet it’s got so many fantastical and mythical elements to it, to widely appeal to any reader of speculative fiction.


The book is a veritable cauldron of themes, tricks, riddles and emotions, one thing sticks out though, and that is that it’s very weird. Wacky happenings abound, possible UFO’s, talking cats, falling fish from the sky, a Bermuda Triangle Forest, plus what seems to be strictly a modern retelling of a Greek Tragedy, in the story of Oedipus. The book also contains many popular and classical culture references, too music especially, as a song plays a pivotal role in one of the characters Kafka associates with.


But the plot itself simply and essentially consists of two quests, one involving Kafka Tamura, a protagonist who seems to get erections all the time, and runs away from home to become the ‘toughest 15 year old in the world’. The second strand follows that of an old man that can talk to cats, and how he seeks resolution from an event that happened to him when he was younger, he then wanders off and the two threads merge, metaphysically of course.


The protagonists dalliances got very emotional and personnel in parts, and I could safely identify with lots of the tribulations Haruki Murakami was writing about, not really the sexual deviancy of 15 yr old Kafka, but lots of the other facets in his character. The people Murakami writes about are really of the quiet kind, very contemplative and relaxed, something which I really warmed too, Kafka the young boy, takes his time saying things, he thinks about what he wants to say, and means them also. And so it is with Murakami, his work demands and deserves that special attention, of thinking and carefully reading what is before you.


Kafka on the Shore – 9 / 10

2 comments:

ajay said...

Hi!

Awesome site! Just found it, and now I plan to visit regularly, since you seem to have a similar taste to mine in books! I noticed that you were trying to pick up graphic novels like Sandman. I'm new to it too, but may I humbly recommend Alan Moore's works, in particular Watchmen and V for Vendetta. You won't regret it.

Cheers,
Ajay

The Enigma said...

Wow, thank you, tis my own humble abode, you are most certainly welcome to stop by any time.

Yes, I will have to get round to reading some of Alan Moore's works .. tho sadly i've been lacking a bit in the comic department recently, most depressing.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library

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