Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless is my second Murakami novel following Norwegian Wood, which leads me to concur with other readers that the classic Murakami tropes are fully present. In Colorless, Murakami explores the magic and fragility of childhood friendships and the impact they have on one’s identity. His writing is keen, introspective, and pensive, as always. I enjoyed the surreal atmosphere, the plain prose, and the emotionally affecting message of perseverance. However, the book did fall short of me loving it because of Murakami’s poor character writing and unnecessary plot devices.

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jinglebellyee's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Still thinking between 2 or 3 stars… I really want to love it because of the friendship struggles that the book explores (which personally hits very close to home) but oh man.. I absolutely can’t unds the part where Tsukuru was “accused” of “r@ping” his friend Shiro like what do you mean – you either did it or you didn’t!! It’s so violent and horrifying but yet the book didn’t conclude the part well (or so I thought) and it merely just ended with Shiro being mentally ill.. and brutally murdered?! And the murderer is on the loose!

It’s also very strange (and honestly disturbing) that Tsukuru has sexual dreams about his platonic female friends, and continues to talk about Kuro’s breasts and feminine touch when he met up with her WHILE he had Sara as his girlfriend. I wished they focused just on the friendship and the coming-of-age, adulting and self-identity struggles they each had, without going into unnecessary details about Tsukuru’s inner sexual desires that really didn’t add much to the story. Like isolation and loneliness, and having all your friends walk away and ignore you out of the sudden.. HURTS and they are so real! Which the author could have focused on, and explored more when they finally reunited. And the abstract meanings and life lessons that people like Sara, Haida bring to Tsukuru’s life.. so many more meaningful things to talk about.

I’m going to walk away from this story just remembering that Tsukuru is a h@rny guy that wants to screw all his female friends. Okay yknw what, 2 stars it shall be then

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distractible's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

There is an off-screen murder, an off-screen rape and miscarriage, and the main character is falsely accused of rape.

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elijahcole's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

nothing happened in this book and it still managed to piss me off to no end.

first 100ish pages i thought the main character was just a guy with textbook definition autism that led to him feeling like an outcast then, of course in classic murakami fashion, he was just a straight up shitty dude and he absolutely deserved it. he turned out to

be a possible rapist?? and no one in this book took the rape accusations seriously? or cared that their friend was murdered because they were burdened by her being mentally unstable??

literally no resolution was reached and so many things were just thrown at the wall and never discussed again

like tsukuru having a sex dream about/raping/being raped by haida (?)

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c_hope_b's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

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tomnoor's review against another edition

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2.0

I’d say that if you took all the misogyny/objectification/gratuitous breast descriptions out of this book it’d be really good, but the reality is if you took them out there wouldn’t be enough material to call it a book. Honestly felt pretty violated just reading this and knowing so many people love it. What I learned from this book is that as a woman my worth depends firstly on my body and secondly on my ability to serve as a sounding board/problem fixer for an emotionally stunted man.

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lotteslibary7's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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backatthelibrary's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

this book left me wondering why Murakami is such a celebrated author.

It focuses on Tsukuru Tazaki who was completely cut-off from his friend group. Years later he asks them why they cut him off: a false rape accusation. One of the girls in the group accused Tsukuru of raping her and while none of them believed that Tsukuru did that, they still abandoned him. He was depressed because they cut him off and had frequent and vivid sex dreams of the two girls in the group. The false rape accusation is what ultimately killed this book for me. Not only was it not necessary for the plot, it was also established that none of the other three friends believed that Tsukuru had done this. They cut him off nonetheless in order not to hurt her feelings. What does that tell a reader? That even if no one believes a woman, men have to suffer terrible consequences? I truly cannot think of another reason for this storyline.

The characters are stereotypical (a beautiful girl not knowing she’s beautiful, a chubby but funny girl that had full breasts at 16, a jock and a nerd) and flat with no development. The plot is basically over once we learn the reason they cut him off. All that is left then is a weird fixation on breasts and graphic sex dreams.

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