The first Murakami novel I read was Kafka on the Shore. It was unlike anything I’d read before, and to my 9th-grade mind it was bogglingly fresh. I wasn’t quite sure I liked it, I wasn’t quite sure what I felt about it. The book, like so many of Murakami’s works, falls under the genre of magical realism, juxtaposing fantastical elements with the narrative. The plot (the central plot) follows a Japanese boy Kafka through a journey and traces the people he meets along the way.
I should probably insert a disclaimer here that I’m not a diehard, religious Murakami fanatic—I enjoy his works, I keep up with his new ones, but I have yet to read every single novel he’s published so far. And to be completely honest, his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was far from my liking. But Murakami’s writing has a strange way of drawing me back in time and time again, and I have yet to tire of it.
Over the summer I picked up a copy of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage as soon as it came out, and I loved it—I agreed with many of the reviews that mentioned how this may be his best work of date. Of the ones I’ve read so far, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki isn’t the most colorful (pun absolutely intended) of Murakami’s novels, but the subtlety in the way he utilizes all the tropes he’s known for makes the book succeed. And let’s face it, Murakami is famous for having tropes—so famous that the New York Times made a ‘Murakami Bingo’ when the new book came out.
Right now I’m working on After Dark with the Bingo board in hand, crossing off these elements whenever they appear. I don’t know where the story will lead, but that makes it even better.
To be continued.
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