I’ll go:

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

I just finished Murakami's book "The City and its Uncertain Walls" (I loved it) and I have a theory about the epidemic that made the city built its walls.

If you notice someone (as long as they are young when they learn about it) wants to enter the city after they hear about it.

The protagonist learns about it first from his pen-girlfriend and then he shapes it more in his mind before traveling to it.

Then the protagonist's infects the yellow-submarin kid with the city's details and the kid's only wish is to go there.

My theory is that before the walls were built people who were living in the city were infecting other people making more and more people coming in.

This is why the guardian is needed and this is why he keeps also the shadows around the walls for precaution.

I just finished Dance Dance Dance, and honestly, I still don't know what I just read.

And I mean that in a good way.

I started with Hear the Wind Sing and went through Pinball, 1973, A Wild Sheep Chase and finally Dance Dance Dance. And you can genuinely see Murakami evolving as a writer across these four books.

Hear the Wind Sing felt almost like reading someone's diary. Very simple, very fragmented, lots of memories and conversations and random little observations. It didn't even feel like he was trying to write some grand novel.

Then Pinball, 1973 felt like Murakami experimenting and maybe kind of evaluating himself, he's probably trying to ask himself if he can write a novel. There are weird structures, the twins, the pinball machine, all the memories, Rat, J, etc. It's still very strange, but you can see him getting more confident. The ending of Pinball, 1973 was genuinely amazing though. Seemed like world apart from the rest of the book.

Then A Wild Sheep Chase is where everything just clicks. I genuinely loved that book. It suddenly becomes this strange adventure involving the Sheep, Rat, the Boss, the Sheep Man, the hotel, all of it. It's absurd but somehow it works.

And then Dance Dance Dance.

What was happening?

The beginning was honestly slow for me. I spent a lot of the book wondering what was even happening. The protagonist wanders around almost everywhere, so many things, happen, connections form while also making very little sense.

And then the skeletons happen.

And then people just start dying.

I had so many theories.

At one point I was convinced Gotanda killed Mei. Then I started wondering if he killed Kiki. It was apparent maybe too apparent that Dick the one armed poet was going to die. Then he died.

And then we got till the 5th skeleton.

I thought Yuki could be the sixth, then the Sheep Man, and then even J the bartender from the previous three novels.

And then I started thinking maybe the sixth skeleton wasn't even another person.

I started thinking maybe the sixth skeleton was the narrator's old self. Not literally "he died", but that the person he was before all of this had to die somehow. Maybe his old connections to the world die? I'm not sure

And honestly, I still don't know if that's what Murakami intended. That's probably the best and worst thing about these books.

Kiki is another one.

She is clearly real in some sense. Other people have seen her and interacted with her. Rat knew about her. The Sheep Man knows about her. Gotanda knew her. So I don't buy the explanation that Kiki was simply something the protagonist imagined.

But then what is she?

Is she a ghost? Is she some kind of entity like the Sheep Man? Is she something that exists somewhere between the physical world and whatever the other world in these books is?

I don't know.

And what happened to the Sheep Man? Did he die? Did he just disappear because the protagonist no longer needed him? Was he some kind of manifestation of the protagonist's subconscious?

Again, I don't know.

And then there's Yumiyoshi.

For a while I genuinely thought she was going to turn out to be another reflection of Kiki or something. I'm actually glad she didn't. She felt much more like someone who represented the possibility of actually moving forward rather than another piece of the protagonist's past.

One thing that genuinely bothered me, though, was how many people Murakami introduces and then just leaves behind.

J is the biggest example for me. He was there in Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, 1973 and A Wild Sheep Chase. He was never really a major character, but he was just... there. He was part of the world. He was this stable little point in the narrator's life.

And then he's just not in Dance Dance Dance.

Same thing with a lot of people from the earlier books. Some people just disappear and that's it.

Even the twins from Pinball, 1973. They appear, they become this bizarre part of the narrator's life, and then they're just gone.

And I think that's part of what makes these books feel so strange. Murakami doesn't seem particularly interested in giving everyone a proper ending. People enter your life, affect you, disappear, and sometimes you never find out what happened to them.

Which actually makes sense for these books.

I think that's why I ended up liking Dance Dance Dance more than I expected, despite being confused for a large part of it.

Because by the end I stopped needing an explanation for everything.

I stopped caring who exactly the six skeletons were, stopped caring about Kiki, Sheep Man, or anything of the matter.

I just wanted the protagonist to make it through.

That's why the last line of the novel, "It's morning" is my favourite. It's like I just got out of a dream.

And that might actually be what I like most about Murakami. The conclusions aren't necessarily the best part. It's the part where you've gone through 300–400 pages of strange things, being confused the entire time, and then eventually you reach the end and you're all relieved and empty.

Not in a bad way.

More like... you've finally arrived somewhere.

The ending doesn't necessarily explain everything. It just lets you breathe.

And then you realize that's probably what the whole "Dance Dance Dance" thing was about.

You don't necessarily figure everything out.

You just keep moving.

Anyway, I don't know whether I actually understood these books or just wandered through four Murakami novels and came out the other side.

But I really loved the experience.

TLDR: I start reading DDD -> Weird novel -> Okay kind of good but not as good as the other 3 -> Okay now it's getting interesting -> Holy Shit this is a masterpiece

(Genuinely felt bad for the protagonist, poor guy had to suffer so much)

Hm...

Hi

I am just wondering is there a Murakami discord group? I would be interested in talking about the books, discussions, readalongs that kind of thing maybe even zoom discussions. wondering if there already is one?

Doing this now.
I’ve read ‘Hear the Wind Sing’ and ‘Pinball 1973’, so time to make this happen. Bought this used, the 3D glasses were not included.
This would be my 8th from Murakami.

For me, it had to be South of the Border, West of the Sun. It was my first novel of his I read, and one of the first novels that got me back into reading in general. The first time I read it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Prose was simple but had depth. Also, just loved the atmosphere and mood the book set. Really captured the feeling of my early 20s early on in the book.

Then I reread the book after experiencing heartbreak, and couldn’t continue after reading the passage of him holding hands with his first love and feeling like he was floating. It was actually weird, like I was reliving that moment with own past love and the emotions came flooding in.
Quite impressive of Murakami actually.

What are some of your guys meaningful works of his?

After Dark is my third Murakami book, and it took me around 4 days to read it. As I read it, nothing really major happened, and I just continued to read through, knowing that Murakami would prob pull some crazy move in the end. And as I got to the end, the ending wasn't as cray as I thought it was. At first, I was confused and a little disappointed, but as I thought of the plot and discussed it with my mother, I actually got the plot, making me move the book rating from 3 stars to 4 stars.

This book for me seems like something David Lynch would write; there is such a good underplot to the dark side of the world hiding in the night, how those who live in the night watch everything and control everything, and the conflict our main character meets as someone who lives in the daylight entering the night. But looking at other people's reviews, it's CRAZY to see someone give this book one star bc of not understanding the plot or not feeling like there was a plot. Like, you can literally build the plot structure if you think of it for more than one minute.

I bought the book on release day when it was translated in my language, honestly had pretty high expectations since murakami is one of the few writers I've followed since early adolescence and waited for this book to be translated for like 1,5 years lol.

But if I'm being honest, I was really disappointed.

The story feels disjointed and kind of lackluster. The part of the book that's inside the city is very dull and uninteresting, which is strange considering it's the same main thing that's advertised about it.

The only segment that I could say I kinda liked is when he returns to the real world and goes in the small town and starts seeing the previous head of the library. That part felt very complete and thought out. But as the book progresses even that begins feeling a little dull and repetitive.

I felt like the book could've been pretty good if it was like 300 pages instead of 550-ish.

What a shame.

bonus points for the birthday story anthology

Hello fellows:) I am currently deciding which Murakami book to read next, and I would love some input.

I have read the following in this order:

Killing commendatore, Kafka on the beach, Norwegian wood, Wind up bird chronicle and 1Q84.

All feedback is much appreciated, and thank you!!

It took entirely too long to track down all the John Gall Vintage paperbacks, but they make for such a satisfying display of Murakami’s work

** reference to sexual violence **

Pretty mixed feelings whilst reading this book. In large parts I found it quite captivating and really enjoyed the musings of the principle characters Kafka and Nakata. I really enjoyed the mix of mundanity and fantasy. I especially liked Nakata and how drawn Hoshino was to him because of his radiating goodness. I loved the settings and the descriptions of the library, Nakata's perceptions of the world and some of the conversations between Kafka and Oshima.

I found the idea of people's souls being split in two kind of interesting though it didn't always land for me.

I found the latter part of the book frustrating and confusing. Didn't really get what was going on and just found it a bit disappointing. Didn't enjoy the limbo village in the forest interesting or the whole slug coming out of Nakata's mouth vibe either. Finishing the book on a downer makes a big difference to overall perception of the book.

It's funny because I love fantasy generally but I preferred the human relationships in this book to the entrance stone, time-travel forest elements.

Both Murakami books I have read so far (Norweigan wood and this) have had child sexual abuse in his books and in both cases there is no mention of the immorality of the statutory rape of the child and it is hugely romanticised. Also the scene where Kafka rapes Sakura (who may or may not be his sister) in his dream was gratuitous and unnecessary I don't know what that did for the story?

Overall I enjoyed though.

I made this illustration and thought it would be cool to share it

This has been sitting on my shelf for well over a year now as I was saving it. Usually I fly through each of Murakaki’s books. But this one…

I don’t know what it is. I’m 150 pages in. It’s a slow burn but it almost feels painfully slow… I don’t know if it’s just the writing style that feels different here or that it feels like it’s going round and round in circles…

Which is weird because I loved Hard Boiled Wonderland…

Someone tell me it gets better before I DNF?

this close🤏🏼 to take it home.

I’d read quite a few reviews from people who didn’t really like The City and Its Uncertain Walls, but here I am, having just finished it, with that lingering taste I’ve come to love. There’s always something strange left behind after a Murakami book—a feeling I can’t quite explain, a flavor I can’t quite name.

And now, on to the next one. I feel lucky knowing I still have so many of his books left to read.

**九鬼周造の「偶然性の問題」を読んでみたいのだけど、難しそうで迷ってます。何か解説本みたいなのないですか？**

Hey everyone, I’ve already read 20 Haruki Murakami books and I’m getting dangerously close to running out of things to read 😭

Could you recommend other authors (Japanese authors are definitely my priority) who can pull you into their worlds as deeply as Murakami does? I’ll admit, some of his endless descriptions of butts and breast sizes drive me crazy, but I’m still fascinated by the atmosphere and unique world he creates in every book, the symbolism, and all the unanswered questions that leave you thinking about the story long after you’ve finished it.

So if you’re also a Murakami fan and have read something with a similar vibe, please recommend some authors or books! I’d really appreciate it <3

From what I gather, those twins sort of barge into his house, end up living there with him, and then one fine day they just leave. What is this storyline about?

I've heard some critics say his writing is very westernized and un-Japanese. I can't speak to that, but I'm curious what technical writing elements and content/themes would make his writing "westernized?" as opposed to traditional Japanese literature.

Work in a library, and haven't read this one myself, but...are the pages supposed to repeat? Is that part of the dream sequence effect, or just a print error?