I spent over four months reading 1Q84 and while the journey was magical and intriguing, the conclusion was undramatic and predictable. I was broken, for this was the first time in over a year of continuously reading him that I’d been disappointed with Murakami. There were scathing reviews of 1Q84 that bashed him and his motifs and in particular his treatment of women.

I had absolutely fallen in love with his writing in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Men without Women in 2019, and none other has come close to the pure magic in exhibited in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

But I still picked Kafka on the Shore having heard so much about it, and it was a better experience, although the conclusion can be accused of being highly abstract. However Murakami employed quite cleverly the usage of metaphors, and declared so beforehand via philosophical discussions between characters (a signature of Murakami), thereby equipping us with the right tool to analyse the chapters which took place in the most random of settings with no particular link to the story. These Metaphors are symbolic of the trial of man (and woman), resulting in definite actions taken to resolve conflicts, depicted in the book as stationary places affording time to the character to make a definite choice. The apparent abstraction of those chapters concentrated at the end of the novel are perhaps one of the most elaborate and long metaphors to be employed in works of literary fiction.

In an interview in The Paris Review, Murakami quotes John Irving and says that a writer must make addicts our of his/her readers. I for one am said addict.

–Tanmay