"Variety is the spice of life"- how often have we heard this saying, I am sure it's more often than can we count or remember. Though I totally agree with this saying but being a typical Taurean, I hate experimentation and am slow in adapting to any new change. This trait of mine comes to the forefront, especially when it comes to books I enjoy to read. My comfort zone is fiction, but, even in fiction,I stick to my known genres, namely, romance, drama etc with a factual book thrown in between. But I am forced to change and this is happening all due to my blog - my passion. I am now trying to read different types of books, albeit at my own comfortable pace.
Let us first talk about the storyline and the main characters of this book : the story is in first person and the narrator/main character is a middle aged ordinary man, who lives a very spartan life and is trying to make ends meet. He is in a constant search for something that will make him feel reconnected to this world/society and while on this search,he comes across many people, especially women of various age groups and has conflicting feelings for all of them. The story moves seamlessly from the present to the past and to the surreal world lying between reality and the dream world. There are many subplots to the main story which add to the feeling of surrealism and also take the reader away from the main story but Murakami does try and make all the loose ends meet in the end.
When I started this book I made a promise to myself that I would read this book slowly giving the story, time to sink unto me ,so that I could understand and relate to it better. But to be honest I could not keep up the promise for long. I tried to be a patient reader for the first 150 odd pages but after that I had had it. This was way too confusing for me. I just could not understand the connection of the surreal with the real everyday world. I found the narrative to be very vague and disconnected at some places and just could not keep up with the author and his fantasy land. Though, there were some parts which I really enjoyed reading especially the part when the narrator meets the clairvoyant Yuki, a 13 year old girl who is not looked after by either of her parent and is often left to her own defences. She is not only a psychic but is also extra ordinarily beautiful which makes her stand out of the crowd and as such she is never comfortable in the company of people.
I was starting to understand the story by the time I had finished almost 200 pages but again the story confounded me in the end and I was left thinking, "is that all?"
I am sure that I am not going to be adventurous in my choice of books, not in the near future at least and would recommend this book only to those, who enjoy reading surrealistic modern metaphysical fiction (again, whatever that means!!!)
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