In Kafka on the Shore, Murakami, Japan's leading literary novelist continues his remarkable combination of profound insight into humankind with a totally credible touch of the fantastical - "...like an Indiana Jones movie or something." The teenager Kafka Tamura runs away from home to the island of Shikoku, where he spends his time at a private library. Concurrently, Satoru Nakata, a finder of lost cats, goes on an odyssey across Japan in search of an "entrance stone." Gradually, these parallel stories interweave in an engaging and moving novel.
I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I just couldn't. It was slow and self-indulgent in its characters' constant introspection. It was unnecessarily graphic in some scenes, which added nothing to the story. The language was ridiculously clinical in many places...whether the author meant the characters to appear detached by the word choice, I do not know. Do not waste your time on this book.
