A new novel by Murakami is always something to look forward too, and I must say the last few ones were a slight deception. His style and tone remain the same: simple, everyday questions that normal people have towards life get tangled up in a space between reality and the supernatural, a kind of magical realism.
In this novel it is a kind of shadow-world - actually a place where all people have shed their shadow - that is enclosed and timeless. It reminds me of Jim Crace's "Eden", a paradise that is equally enclosed by a high wall and where it is hard to get in or out. Only, the paradise does not really seem to be what it is.
Murakami still is the master of the subtle changes, the slight transformation of perspectives that try to give us a glimpse of another reality, one that is less corporeal yet equally real, but hard to pin down. The question is whether the change is a real one or a psychological one.
"The scene also reminded me of a page from a picture book I'd read as a child. In it was a premonition-that something was about to change. Turn a corner and find something awaiting me there. A feeling I often had as a boy. And that something there would tell me a critical fact, which would force a suitable transformation in me." (p.196)
"I had the vague sense that something around me was gradually changing. It was as if, unaware, I was slowly being led somewhere by some sort of power. But was this a recent development, or something that had been going on from quite some time ago? I had no clue. (p. 287)
It is also symbolic that the main character becomes a librarian, with his alter ego working as a dream reader in the library of dreams in the enclosed space in the other world. There is no real evil in the novel, just different realities with unclear and abstract passages between them, leading to mystery and existential surprise, a detective story of the possible.
Yet the mystery remains. The story develops and things become increasingly clear - as one would expect, and despite the many strange things happening, it becomes plausible under Murakami's pen, and never deteriorates into blunt fantasy story-telling. Not suprisingly, the stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez come to mind, and literally mentioned here.
""In his stories the real and the unreal, the living and the dead, are all mixed together in one," she said. "Like that's an entirely ordinary, everyday thing.""People often call that magical realism," I said."True. But I think that although that way of telling stories might fit the critical criteria of magical realism, for Garcia Marquez himself it's just ordinary realism. In the world he inhabits the real and the unreal coexist and he just describes those scenes the way he sees them."I sat down on the stool beside her and said, "So you' re saying that in the world he inhabits, the real and the unreal are equivalent and that Garcia Marquez is simply recording that."'Yes, I think that might be the case. And that's what I like about his novels." (p. 392)
In the epilogue the author explains how the story for this book had been germinating for decades, until finally the time was ripe to actually write it. Even if it is a nice book, it does not really add anything new to Murakami's output, apart from being an entertaining read. And the older he gets, the more words he seem to need to come to the essence of his story. At times I think that he writes too naturally and too fluently which creates a lot of sentences that go to the detriment of the tension and forward drive that you expect from a mystery novel. Or maybe I am getting to old, which is also a possible perspective of course.
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