A review by mx_eyebrows
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

3.5

 3.5/5 ⭐’s | PUB DATE:  1988 

 

Read if you're looking for: 

• A story of a man searching for a woman who has mysteriously disappeared
• A strange hotel that has places that both exist & don’t exist
• The uncanny
• People who are not what they seem
• Some returning characters from Murakami’s other books

This is one of Murakami’s earlier novels, and it’s the fourth book in The Rat series. To be honest, all of these books in The Rat series are kind of blending together for me. This is the last one, and in it the unnamed main character returns to The Dolphin hotel, in Hokkaido, where he previously spent time with a woman named Kiki. He’s looking for her, as she has mysteriously gone missing, and when he arrives at the Dolphin, he finds that it has been completely rebuilt into a modern and beautiful hotel, but that it has retained the name. He starts a relationship with one of the front desk clerks, and they begin to find that there are places in the hotel that are not quite in the same world as ours. Our main character also befriends a famous actor, who was one of the last people to see Kiki before she disappeared. As he spends more time with this seemingly caring man, he starts to learn about his dark past.
 
As usual in Murakami novels, the characters are not completely distinct, you don’t get a deep feel for their motivations, but the dialogue is interesting and well written, and the main character’s sense of restlessness comes through. You can tell you are reading Murakami. One usually reads Murakami for the vibes, at least in my experience. I’m looking for that very bizarre and unsettling feeling that something is not quite right. This seems to be prevalent in Murakami’s later work. While this novel does have a touch of magical realism and  some discomfiting imagery, it’s not as strange as his newer writing. I am reading all of Murakami’s books in, roughly, publication order, but I think, if you only want his hits, you can probably skip this one.
 
CW:  Death, Murder, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicide, Sexual assault, Animal death, Infidelity, Alcohol