Kafka on the Shore

Just recently Haruki Murakami’s been all over my Twitter feed.  He’s got a new book out, and by all the 140 character or less accounts I’ve seen, it’s marvellous.  He’s tipped to win the Nobel Prize.  Despite this grand reputation, I haven’t actually read anything he’s written until now.  I’ve been quite reluctant to read Kafka on the Shore because I got the idea from somewhere that it would be very fantasy and I really have to be in the right mood for fantasy.  There are a couple of fantasy elements in this book, men who can talk to cats and stones, other worlds, that kind of thing, but it’s mostly just the story of two journeys.  Don’t worry, I mean literal journeys with trains and coaches.  Not the X-Factor like, “I don’t care that I’ve been eliminated; it’s just been a wonderful journey,” shit.  People actually physically relocate.

This is the story of Kafka Tamura, teenage runaway and Mr Nakata, the mentally handicapped victim of an unexplained wartime accident.  Although the pair never meet, they both leave the same district of Tokyo and head to Takamatsu.  While Kafka is escaping his father in a fit of what first seems like teenage angst, Nakata is following his own mystical impulse.  The latter’s journey is kicked off by the murder of Johnnie Walker, eater of cat hearts, in what has to be one of the most viscerally disturbing book chapters I’ve ever read.  But then, I have always been a cat person.  What comes next is a melee of metaphors, possible incest and personal growth.  Okay, I lied a tad about it only being a tale of psychically journeys.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on exactly what it is I love about Kafka on the Shore and I think it’s the library.  Vast amounts of the book take place in the Komura Memorial Library and I really quite like libraries.  The way the characters treat the library is the way I feel about them.  Kafka is, quite frankly, an impossibly well-read 15 year-old boy that leaves behind a family that doesn’t understand him to take refuge in a library.  And he’s not the only one, in a very Alice in Wonderland “we’re all mad here,” everyone who comes to the library is exactly where they’re meant to be and they’re all a little odd.  It is the only place characters are free to be just themselves.  It’s even a place illiterate characters get sentimental about the pity of not being able to read. 

I want to write so much more about the book, but I’m holding back.  It’s the kind of book I want to cajole other people into reading without whacking them with any great big spoilers before starting my campaign.  I suspect it does really have a few flaws that I’m overlooking, but that’s oaky.  It’s a fantastic book.  Read it.

I’m currently closing in on the end of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.  It’s a short one, so check back soon.