Author: Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel
Review: December 08, 2009
Edition: 2005 printing (1-4000-4366-2)
Pages: 436
Overall Rating: 3/5 [Average-Good]
Synopsis: A fifteen year old run away who's shouldering the burden of an Oedipal curse becomes inextricably linked with a man he never meets, an older man who has only half a shadow and can talk to cats.
Further Review: This is a confusing but interesting novel easy to disappear into. Murakami touches on a huge range of big topics; sex and gender, mythology, curses, dreams, interaction between worlds, death, culturally important items, the importance of books and reading, literary devices (particularly metaphors)...It's intelligently written with a strong cast of characters, and definitely a unique experience. However, there are a lot of flat-out disturbing scenes in this novel, particularly one involving violence towards cats. I almost had to put the book down during that scene because it's so disgusting. There are also a lot of prettier, calmer scenes, but the whole novel has a sense of sadness; not so much one of melancholy, but that of loss (loss of loved ones [death, abandonment, danger] and loss of self [identity as a symbol]).
Not just beautiful, though---the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me. What I've done up till now, what I'm going to do---they know it all. Nothing gets past their watchful eyes. As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart's pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I've never given them more than a passing thought before. Not just stars---how many other things haven't I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about? I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless. And I know I'll never outrun that awful feeling.
A lot of this book is about drawing parallels between the real world and the private worlds of the characters; the characters talk a lot of metaphors, and essentially the book becomes a sort of metaphor itself, inspired by topics of mythology and literature. Beethoven (his Archduke Trio) and other classical composers also gain special parts in this novel.

However, this book is very inconclusive. It's difficult to talk about this book without spoiling it, but the ending is far from concrete and leaves a lot of events open...I myself rarely like this sort of ending, and while I think Murakami achieved what he wanted by leaving so much to interpretation, I don't like this aspect. I want to know a bit more. I feel, essentially, like I haven't really finished the book. ( )

This review was also published, in a slightly enhanced & more comfortable format, at my blog between drafts.

To begin with a major annoyance, the English translation by Prof. Philip Gabriel of Murakami Haruki’s Kafka On the Shore has been excessively “britishized” for the first Vintage paperback edition. The result is a weird mixture of American syntax and style with British spelling, typography, and vocabulary (mobile phones, lorries, and torches abound). Alas, this mixture isn’t just weird and off-putting: it’s effectively out-pulling insofar as the translation’s constant flow of linguistic inconsistencies pulls you right out of the story, time and again. It’s a great example of what I’ve come to call the “Transparency With Birds” effect]. Meanwhile, Vintage also issued Gabriel’s original translation in a “reprint” paperback edition, so both that and the original hardcover edition are an option.

The story itself can wrap you up & take you away, but Kafka on the Shore is certainly not among Haruki’s masterpieces. The story lines are excessively opaque and excessively predictable at the same time, the characters at once over- and underdeveloped, and the novel has a Stephen King-ish feeling about it (certain motifs, characters, modes of progression), but without King’s knack for weaving even the most outlandish storylines into a gripping and satisfying solution. Not that Kafka On the Shore needed a solution, but it also lacks internal coherence. In the end, too many things and events have not been accounted for, neither in terms of a solution nor in terms of coherence. And certainly not in terms of development: especially Kafka Tamura, the principal character with first-person view (mostly), seems to have ended up right where he started, up to and including his fully intact alter ego that goes by the name of “Crow.”

The story’s development, like the characters’, is designed to be labyrinthine—a recurrent motif—rather than linear. Only, it’s more circular than labyrinthine, on balance. While both the phrases “wrong turns must be righted” and “wrong turns have been righted” turn up sufficiently often in the original paperback edition’s 615 pages to suggest one must have missed some major plot point or other, it is close to impossible even after attempts at backtracking to pinpoint what wrong turns have been taken when by which characters, let alone righted. That’s postmodern, alright. Speaking of which, there’s also that typically postmodern mix of ancient archetypes and corporate conspiracy elements, complete with a more than decent load of learned detours into art & culture, but without the tightly controlled over-the-top playfulness of, like, John Barth’s or Donald Barthelme’s or Robert Coover’s fiction. Plus, Murakami’s use of feminist characters and corporate icons feels forced, heavy-handed, and artificial. At times, the heavy-handedness even affects his writing technique: the way two pseudo-feminist cardboard characters “function” to reveal important attributes of another important character’s make-up (Oshima) borders on hack work.

But still, Kafka on the Shore is a rich and gripping reading experience. It does expand one’s understanding of the world, or at least one’s repertoire of questions. But of weaknesses, alas, it has more than its fair share.

Kafka sur le rivage est une histoire sans cesse à la limite entre le réel et la métaphore. Du reste, "le monde est une métaphore" selon l'un des personnages du récit. Dans le sillage du jeune Kafka Tamura, adolescent en fugue et à la recherche de sa mère qui l'a abandonné alors qu'il était petit, les chats se mettent à parler, des poissons tombent du ciel, Johnny Walker sort de l'étiquette des bouteilles de whisky, un vieil homme fait des siestes de 3 jours... Un récit onirique mais réaliste, à la découverte des blessures que ressent chaque adolescent au moment ou il croit ne plus rien devoir à personne mais où il a, en fait, le plus besoin d'amour.

Kafka sur le Rivage a été adapté pour la scène par le Théâtre du Passage de Neuchâtel, Suisse, en novembre 2009. Un spectacle très esthétique et fidèle au roman, à voir absolument si vous en avez l'occasion... ( )

I think this novel is the perfect blend of Murakami’s career--Japanese magical realism, pop culture references and sparseness in writing. What I like most about Murakami is that he’s an incredibly cerebral writer that is also incredibly readable and he wanders into the fantastic, but never crosses over into fantasy. ( )

J'avoue avoir eu du mal à m'y mettre ; à avaler le premier tiers... Pourquoi ? Le côté systématique, je crois, de la construction formelle (alternance trop régulière des chapitres), ainsi que la lenteur du démarrage, retardé par cet amour du détail pas toujours utile. Mais une fois que l'ensemble commence à vivre et qu'on s'attache aux personnages, ce livre devient une porte ouverte sur un monde original et imaginatif, un monde comme on les aime avec des espaces parallèles défendus par des entrées, un monde où certaines choses sont prévisibles mais où rien n'est évident, un monde dur, parfois cruel, mais avec une place pour l'humain, l'humour et la culture. Portant tout cela, un style précis et détaillé, qui ne se prend pas au sérieux et atteint presque malgré lui à une sorte de poésie rude.
Si le reste de la production de Murakami vole aussi haut, je lui donne volontiers le prix Nobel. ( )