The book began in a really slow pace, The author Haruki Murakami took time to carefully reveal our main character Toru Okada. Right in the beginning we are put amid mass confusion, Toru who had quit his job and is now working as the housewife receives a phone call from a strange woman while hes cooking lunch. The woman asks only for 10 minutes to talk and to get to know him(later on in the book she again asks for only 10 minutes) . This mysterious begins talking and asking him questions and later on reveals that she was naked, basically she was having phone sex. It was quite an interesting start we meet a strange/mysterious character who knows Toru, but Toru himself doesnt know her. Toru Okada is in search for his lost cat and this is where the mysterious adventure begins. A series of events leads to him receiving a phone call from his wife Kumiko who apparently knows a random woman who can tell where the cat was, which I found completely weird. His wife asks him to go to a dark alley to find the cat(who would usually be there), but Toru is confused to why Kumiko had been to the alley as it takes a lot of effort to get there. This is when we are introduced to a 16 year old girl named May Kasahara, shes one of the strange characters in this book, I found her a bit too talkative and mature for her age, but anyways she becomes really friendly with Toru and gives a helping hand in search for Torus' cat. For some reason I find May uncanny in some sense because shes been faking an "injury" so that she doesnt have to go to school and It was really strange of her to become so close to a man a lot older than her. Anyways the book is not short on strange characters, ever since the disappearance of the cat everything has suddenly been throw in a disarray. As from the previous comments his wife is so attached to this cat she hires a woman, Malta Kano who claims can help them find their cat. In return for Malta Kanos help, Toru needs to help in convicting Kumikos brother who raped Maltas sister. So far I noticed there were a lot of coincidences and they were bound to meet each other.
From here on wards the story just spirals into becoming more weird and more supernatural. Toru meets several other strange characters during his search for the cat, one of them is Creta Kano, who is Malta Kanos' sister. She is not what she seems, as she used to be a real life prostitute. She comes over to Torus' house to collect a sample of water, which I am still confused to why she did so and how does that relate to helping him with the cat. Anyway our main character starts having wet dreams about Creta Kano, but he has no emotion towards Creta at all. Later on we meet a veteran of war who tells a horrific story of his time in World War II which was somewhat a random character to me, never the less the story was chilling and it showed the readers why the veteran had turned into what he is now. I noticed how Murakami loves giving us an in depth detail on a characters background, it really makes the book more mysterious and it felt like the book was made up of individual stories told by the different characters at different times. It also felt like the book was a pile of feelings and emotions. And, yet these characters are people who seemingly have no emotions whatsoever to speak of.
I found it quite frustrating when Murakami suddenly cuts Toru off whenever he was the one asking questions, it made him force himself to think and find the answer, but he does keep me on my edge of the seat with his twists and turns that shock the protagonist himself. But, I was confused as to why the book had to take a supernatural turn, it was really interesting to see a "dream prostitute" as in a prostitute who pleasures you in your dreams. But till now my question is as Toru is trying to decide what to do with his life after quitting his job, and is being constantly challenged as he encounters new people on his journey. What effect does this have on the main character?
Even though I dont like May as much one of her quotes is stuck in my head :
“I’m only sixteen,” she said, “and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.”
From here on wards the story just spirals into becoming more weird and more supernatural. Toru meets several other strange characters during his search for the cat, one of them is Creta Kano, who is Malta Kanos' sister. She is not what she seems, as she used to be a real life prostitute. She comes over to Torus' house to collect a sample of water, which I am still confused to why she did so and how does that relate to helping him with the cat. Anyway our main character starts having wet dreams about Creta Kano, but he has no emotion towards Creta at all. Later on we meet a veteran of war who tells a horrific story of his time in World War II which was somewhat a random character to me, never the less the story was chilling and it showed the readers why the veteran had turned into what he is now. I noticed how Murakami loves giving us an in depth detail on a characters background, it really makes the book more mysterious and it felt like the book was made up of individual stories told by the different characters at different times. It also felt like the book was a pile of feelings and emotions. And, yet these characters are people who seemingly have no emotions whatsoever to speak of.
I found it quite frustrating when Murakami suddenly cuts Toru off whenever he was the one asking questions, it made him force himself to think and find the answer, but he does keep me on my edge of the seat with his twists and turns that shock the protagonist himself. But, I was confused as to why the book had to take a supernatural turn, it was really interesting to see a "dream prostitute" as in a prostitute who pleasures you in your dreams. But till now my question is as Toru is trying to decide what to do with his life after quitting his job, and is being constantly challenged as he encounters new people on his journey. What effect does this have on the main character?
“I’m only sixteen,” she said, “and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.”
Good to see you on here, Akshay... and I totally understand your comments about the 'weirdness' of the book... I guess Murakami is blurring the lines between reality and dreams, between our conscious and unconscious minds. Have you ever had dreams that felt real? I used to have dreams about reading. There were letters or pages from books I could actually read - and all the while I KNEW it was a dream. However hard I tried to remember what I'd read when I woke up I never could! Still that idea of a crazy alternative reality in the corridors of the brain is very alluring. Did you see the film, Inception? Some people claim to have 'lucid dreams' which are indistinguishable from reality. Freud too put great emphasis on dreams as a way of understanding our repressed desires and fears. Toru appears to be on a quest (beginning with the cat, following with his wife, and then himself). To really know and understand the self may mean plummeting the depths of the mind and memory.
ReplyDeleteMoving on to May. Here's a passage (quote) of hers that I really liked. She's a pretty profound thinker for her age (probably because she's a drop out and spends so much time alone):
"If people lived forever - if they never got any older - if they could just go on living in this world, never dying, always healthy - do you think they'd bother to think hard about things the way we're doing now? I mean, we think about just about everything, more or less - philosophy, psychology, logic. Religion. Literature. I kinda think, if there were no such thing as death, that complicated thoughts and ideas like that would never come into the world..."
"...people have to think seriously about what it means for them to be alive here and now because they know they're going to die sometime. Right? Who would think about what it means to be alive if they were just going to go on living forever? Why would they have to bother? Or even if they should bother, they'd probably just figure, 'oh, well, I've got plenty of time for that. I'll think about it later.' But we can't wait till later. We've got to think about it right this second... Nobody knows what's going to happen. So we need death to make us evolve...Death is this huge, bright thing, and the bigger and brighter it is, the more we have to drive ourselves crazy thinking about things.” (258-259)