The Nature of Things

I've had Haruki Murakami's latest book in my reading queue for several months, but I was daunted by its length of over seven hundred pages and by my previous experience of reading Murakami. His tales can be complex and demanding of the reader.  But finally, I felt I had stalled as long as I could and I just needed to read the damned book. Some reviews that I had read of the book when it came out last year had mentioned Murakami's love of F. Scott Fitgerald and particularly of The Great Gatsby . This book was said to be an homage to Fitzgerald's masterpiece. Looking back on it now with the perspective of a few days' time, I can see that there are similarities in the storyline, but I admit these were not necessarily evident to me at the time of reading. Murakami's narrator is a painter of portraits who has been fairly successful in his trade. He lives in an apartment in Tokyo with his office-worker wife of six years. On the surface, the marriage appears to be a su...

Oh, my goodness! How do I even start? With a brief description, perhaps? We have a 15-year-old boy who calls himself Kafka Tamura, although that isn't his real name. He has run away from the home that he shares with his father. His mother had also run away eleven years before, taking his older sister, but not Kafka, with her. Kafka is fleeing his father, a violent and malevolent sculptor. He had freaked Kafka out by giving him a prophecy, based on the ancient story of Oedipus. He tells Kafka that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother and his sister, both of whom he barely remembers. Kafka is one of the narrators of the story. The other main narrative line is that of Satoru Nakata, a 60-year-old, mentally impaired man. When he was nine years old, Nakata was part of a group of schoolchildren who, while on a trip picking mushrooms in the woods, mysteriously lost consciousness. All of the children regained consciousness with no ill effects except for Nakata. His coma lasted...