8/10.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (henceforth Tsukuru) is the fourth Murakami I’ve read. I read Kafka a while ago, and have polished off 1Q84, A Wild Sheep Chase, and now Tsukuru within the past week or so. I’m proper on a Murakami kick, and already have a few more novels waiting on my bookshelf, and more books/short stories requested from the library. I’m now unabashedly a fan–especially after 1Q84. See that review for some broad details on Murakami and what I think of fiction in general.

Tsukuru is interesting. It is not as short or tight as A Wild Sheep Chase (which I’ll write about once I finish all 4 Rat books, including Dance Dance Dance), but I think Tsukuru is, in some sense, a pared down novel compared to the other tomes I’ve traversed. The writing is a bit tighter, with less of the Clancy fastidiousness as fancied in Kafka and 1Q84. The story was a touch predictable at times, in that some (semi-major) plot beats I expected entirely–but “its the journey, not the destination” and so the novel holds its own still. I enjoyed Tsukuru as a character, and his progression through the novel was nice almost adult-bildungsroman-esque (I’m aware of the oxymoron.)

As a young lad recently graduated from high school and keeping pace in uni, the feeling of high school community fading (or snatched) away is one that hits close to the heart; I feel closer to the youthful Tsukuru painted in some short strokes than the elder; I expect my enjoyment of the novel will change as time shapes me and I grow closer to that Tsukuru. Lost childhood is not something I can truly understand due to my currently partaking in said childhood. However, even then, I can recognize the pain and understand the shock of flux through many moves and especially the transition from high school to uni. While this transition drives the plot, it does so by proxy and so the novel certainly isn’t an encapsulation of the sad, accepted loss that I think comes with growing up and watching people you once held oh-so-near-and-dear disappear. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but it is something to note; again, my focus being coloured by temporal proximity.

I’m noting, wryly, that I’m gleefully handing out eights and nines out of tens easily. Note that there is strong selection bias at play; I am far less likely to take the time to write about something in a (slightly) cogent manner if I haven’t strong feelings. Additionally, I try to steadfastly avoid poor media, and books are one area where I am extra snobbish most of the time; as a natural result, I rarely read exceptionally poor novels. Middling books come at times, but laughably bad or DNF (did not finish) works are rare in my experience. All that to say, a 8/10 is an extraordinarily high score as I’m treating five as average; I just happen to often read extraordinarily good books. There is no grade inflation here.

In short, read Murakami; watch this space for further airy “reviews” on Murakami and other works. Maybe I’ll polish off Bel Canto and write about it and Commonwealth (~7/10). Also, I went back and found I thought Kafka a 6/10 and read it last Jan. I think my opinion has softened a bit in retrospect, but I’d hazard the main issues I had were the slightly haphazard plot and extraneous details, as well as Murakami’s typical obsession with sex (a point which holds for all his novels so far.)