One thing I noticed was Murakami's persistence to accurately describe every single thing that is going on in the setting. This can be noticed since the first famous phone call, in which Toru's spaghetti-making is almost painted for the reader. May's house is also described perfectly, so is the alley that leads to it, and so is every shop or building any one character walks into. It is sort of like Murakami is there, yet you don't know. The descriptions are so vivid, and the small details that are omnipresent help add to the reality of the novel. I had two main reactions to this.
1) In the beginning, when I was getting used to the characters, the setting, (since Japan and Japanese culture is not something I am spectacularly familiar with), I found descriptions of even minuscule details very helpful to contextualize the story, the plot, and its charactes.
2) Yet as the story goes on, and the reader becomes more and more accustomed with the characters and how they fit it with the plot and with each other, and since most of the story happens around the same settings: Toru's or May's house, etc, the descriptions, that are always there turn from an asset into a liability for the book. They are often tedious, since the reader has seen them quite often already, and distract the reader from the main plot or important segment of the chapter.
Maybe Murakami doesn't even do this initially to help the reader, perhaps it is just accidental and is just integrated in his narrative style and the way he writes, but I found that it went from pleasing and helpful to a tad bit annoying.
What do you think?
Good observation, Nelson, and I think someone else commented on it too. While Murakami is very aware of the reader, and he uses the tantalizing mysteries in the plot to pull us along, he is most interested in the texture of ordinary lived experience, the moment by moment intertwining of consciousness and reality. Thus there are lots of tiny details that make up Toru's thoughts as he moves through the world. I think I mentioned already that I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the alley and the abandoned garden. I felt like I was there. There's something slightly voyeuristic about his glimpses of people's lives as he passes the bottom of their gardens, snapshots of ordinary lives... I think Murakami captures that mixture of ordinary and extraordinary in everyday existence. However, I do agree that sometimes you wonder where you are going as you read, and may feel you're being taken 'the long way around' but as the old saying goes, 'it's the journey that counts, not the destination.'
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