After finding his voice in A Wild Sheep Chase, it seems that Murakami decided to explore all the genres at once. The book is fantasy and sci fi, with the mood of a hard boiled mystery and a little horror as well.
The hard boiled protagonist works well for Murakami’s typically semi-apathetic first person characters, as does the side plots of a few ladies whose attention he’s captured. However, Murakami is a bit subversive, taking an outsider’s view of the tropes of these styles, jumping in and out of the contrived silliness with bemused detachment.
In reading these works in sequential order, I’m wondering if I’m falling into an end of the world fallacy, rationalizing the author’s product as predestined in light of their past works. I had that feeling when I was doing my graduate thesis. It felt that all my previous projects was culminating in this specific thesis. But even under the stress of the deadline, I was still was keenly aware it might be my mind post-rationalizing my decisions as they were being made.
However, given Murakami’s exploration of multiple genres – and the title of the novel – I feel it is fair to indulge in this fallacy while considering this book.
Ultimately, it’s a fine novel, one where the cloth holds together, but the threads are never woven too tightly, as would be expected from a Murakami novel. The romances linger deliciously in their usual fashion and he indulges occasionally in his typically delightful wordplay of metaphors upon metaphors.
As his fourth novel, this was a fine senior thesis for his budding career as an author.