challenging emotional reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

oh well. what a trip this book has been. oh dear.
 took me like 10 days to process it and finally leave a review. i’m not even really a review person, but i felt like i had to take my time with this one. 

long story short: derealization fever dream. (that’s what i’ve been calling it ever since i picked it up!)

the novel’s split into 3 parts, and for the first two, i wasn’t reading for the plot. not at all.
i was reading for the feeling it gave me — this hazy, tranquil state. not walking between the lines with ur eyes, just floating through the fog, trying to catch whatever words drifted close enough.
 that mood was constantly interrupted by sexual scenes. nothing irks me more than descriptions of intercourse through that pervy male gaze. it was too much. i almost quit the book because of it, ngl.

but then part 3 hit me. somewhere around chapter 45, i had a real eureka moment. suddenly it all clicked — the characters, their stories, the meaning woven into the layers. it struck me hard.
 and just as quickly, i realized why i stuck around: maybe because i was feeling it too.

gut-wrenching, terrifying grief. the freezing-over that happens after. all of it, represented in these details.
kumiko is the meaningful thing u lose. noboru wataya is the person (or circumstances) u blame it all on. may kasahara is the logical part of ur brain that talks back. the other characters? they're the stages of grief.
 the well is where u go when u'r thinking about your trauma. the isolation, the suffocating feeling, the sense of almost dying. u don’t even know why you dive so deep — but u do. every time. voluntarily. funny, isn’t it?
 the cat is fleeting happiness. comes and goes whenever it wants. never stays.



my favorite symbol is
the blue mark on toru’s cheek.
i loved how all the characters and storylines touched it — whether it felt important or not.
when you go into the well, u isolate yourself through ur own choices. but trauma goes even deeper than that: u carry it with u like a flaw on ur face. and that isolates u, even when u didn’t choose it. makes u feel out of place.
 people notice. they point it out. they get weird about it. they don’t know what to say. it’s tragic — u were normal just yesterday. maybe it’s the lack of words that makes them pull away. and yeah, i get it. not everyone wants to look directly at someone in that kind of strange, altered state.


and when i started seeing grief through the book’s symbolism, the war storyline made sudden sense.
 what better metaphor is there for loss, for the unbearable weight of grief? even if you survive, war kills off your spiritual self.
 toru didn’t live through war, but he saw himself in the veteran. that’s the point — they were connected by the same kind of suffering. 

it’s really not the greatest book i’ve ever read. and yet i stared into the void for at least an hour after finishing it. 
 i kept returning to this review section, bumping my rating up. 3.25, then 3.5. 3.75. i’m giving it a 4.25 now.
 a lot of thoughts.

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challenging dark slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

When you dream, everything feels very real yet surreal; your surroundings seamlessly change from one place to the next, people’s faces appear in unfamiliar places, and all sorts of bizarre things can occur, but to your brain it feels so “real” that you just process it as normal.
Murakami (and this is not a negative trait!) is very good at capturing the feeling of a dream. This book is surrealist, illogical, and somewhat nonsensical to some and I can see how one might lose patience with this writing style, but I largely found it fascinating and greatly enjoyable.

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dark mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix

This is probably the best of Murakami that I read. Having said that, it contains the same issues that I found with Kafka on the Shore. Murakami paints a vivid picture and he writes an intense plotline but there are so many secondary characters and so many subplots that ultimately don't seem to tie together in the end, that it is hard to fully appreciate what he serves up. A lot of the graphic sex and violence scenes appear to be gratuitous - at least, I don't understand the significance to the story.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark mysterious reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings