A review by jentang
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

3.5

as a normal human being, i hated everything about this book. murakami floors me with each and every work of his (in a bad way). nevertheless, i must give it to him; there is something enchanting about his writing that causes me to finish each book, not just out of pure spite, and move on to the next of his novels on my to-read list without fail. again, as a normal human being, i hate his characters and their "flaws" (these pretty much never vary from book to book, aside from perhaps somehow worsening). however, as a reader, i am hopelessly enticed. it's like one of those train wrecks you can't look away from. there's something horribly incredible about how murakami has conditioned me to find any bizarre male main character with somewhat of a tangible personality/goals/backbone (no matter how twisted) a decent narrator so that although i was legitimately recoiling thanks to hijame, i still did not DNF this book and give it a scathing 1 star review. murakami's writing itself, disregarding content, is always beautiful and readable. however, i must say, from a removed perspective this book is just pretty much a story of

the childhood love who got away and affairs

with murakami flair, making it a well-written story, just with nothing special about it.