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ihlonial 's review for:

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
4.0

I genuinely was surprised by this one. I've read two other Murakami books and both have left me a bit traumatized, but his writing is so good that I keep coming back to his works. This book felt vastly different in tone and content than the last two books. At first I was hesitant about where this would go, but it ended with me just feeling a lot of tender emotions for the journey the main character went on and where it ultimately led him to.

Murakami has a way of telling stories in unconventional ways. Almost nobody in this story has names. The most familiar name you hear is The Rat - a distant friend to our main character - and the quest that our main character goes on is so unexpectedly bizarre, I think as a reader we are charmed right into wanting to understand why the main character is so invested in chasing down a sheep. Why his girlfriend's ears give her such unique powers. How does it all fit together? But then as you read and you realize that the sheep means something different - and you read these sprawling passages about the mediocrity of life and the fear that our lives are passing without being lived, and it leaves me in such a state of thought. Murakami finds just the right arrangement of words to make it linger in your brain and make you think and wonder about what it could all mean.