BOOK REVIEW

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. World Fantasy Award

(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)  Kafka Tamura is a 15 year-old boy who has been planning his escape for years from his cold father, a famous sculptor. He has even been lifting weights so he'll look older.  Now he catches the bus from Tokyo to Takamatsu, a small town in southern Japan he chooses at random. (Try to ignore his dialogs with Crow his imaginary friend.)

His reason for leaving?  Well, he hates school.  Plus he doesn't want to wait around for his father's prediction to come true:  that he will commit patricide, and then have sex with his own long-lost sister and mother.

Kafka's story is interrupted by three unnecessary military reports detailed in Chapters 2, 4, and 8.  Apparently in 1944 some rural children saw something shiny in the sky and fell into a trance.  One boy Nakata completely loses his memory and his ability to read. (Since we never learn what really happened, we could just take the boy's word that his life changed after WWII. We don't need three chapters of unsolved mystery.)

Nakata does, however, gain the ability to converse in the secret language of cats. In Chapter 6, the poor devil, now in his sixties and living in Kafka's very same Tokyo neighborhood, tries to interview a stray cat.  Nakata is investigating the disappearance of Goma, a beloved pet.  This is how Nakata earns a living:  finding people's lost cats. (He also collects a government subsidy for the intellectually challenged.) The stray cat warns Nakata that an evil man has been kidnapping cats that wander into a certain vacant lot.

Meanwhile, Kafka makes friends with Sakura who is also traveling to Takamatsu by bus.  She's a hairdresser in her early twenties who plans to house-sit for a friend. He is attracted to her and petrified that she might be his long-lost sister! (We never find this out either, so there's no point in worrying.) She gives him her phone number, and they part ways.  He gets settled in a hotel, and then visits what will become his real home in Takamatsu: the Komura Memorial Library.

The Komura Memorial Library still resembles the elegant private residence it used to be.  An old and wealthy family donated it to the public along with a famous collection of medieval Japanese poetry.  It also comes complete with a manager, Miss Saeki (good golly, she's attractive – could she be Kafka's long-lost mother???); and a gender-challenged assistant, Oshima. Oshima has an unfortunate tendency to lecture Kafka (and us) on topics like esoteric philosophy that the author finds interesting.

But that's all right because Nakata's story is heating up. He interviews a few more cats, and then encounters a strange dog in the sinister vacant lot.  The dog leads him to the cat-thief, a demon who is killing the cats to harvest their souls. The demon, who calls himself Johnnie Walker, wants to put the metaphysical power from the stolen souls into a magical flute he is crafting. (This leads to a cat-killing scene that I'd advise you to skip past without reading.)  What is Johnnie Walker going to do with this flute? We're never told, so don't worry about it.

However, Nakata gets tricked into committing a murder. The poor guy goes to the cops to confess but they don't believe him. In frustration, he causes a huge bunch of fish to rain down from the sky (thereby discovering a new ability he never knew he had). Then he decides he ought to skip town.  Circumstances lead him to an open-minded trucker named Hoshino who gives him a ride to … you guessed it:  Takamatsu, new home of his spiritual counterpart Kafka Tamura.

In the parallel story, events slip into slower gear as Oshima tells Kafka the tragic story of Miss Saeki's lost love. There is even a painting to commemorate it, and a song titled "Kafka On The Shore." Soon Miss Saeki is luring our underage teenage hero into bed with her!  Sakura the "sister" shows up a few times to bail Kafka out of trouble.

I really didn't know what to make of this weird novel. (However, the translator Philip Gabriel seemed to do a first-rate job, turning the original Japanese into a natural, American-sounding narrative.)

The parts involving Nakata and Hoshino the trucker were highly enjoyable, especially when Hoshino decides he will follow Nakata through life as the various disciples once followed the Buddha. Hoshino stole every scene, which is saying something because Nakata certainly had his colorful moments.

By contrast, Kafka's story sometimes dragged the book down, mainly due to Miss Saeki who was supposed to be beautiful and tragic -- but who creeped me out. The last fifty pages are an exciting read if you suspend all disbelief. But, holy mackerels-from-the-sky, there are a huge number of trailing loose ends that are never explained! Plus this book could have easily been 100 pages shorter. Overall, I recommend the book. You can find Kafka on the Shore on Amazon.com through this link:

Kafka on the Shore

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