This book was… weird, but in a good way.
Normally, I’m not a fan of magical realism. I generally prefer dead people to stay dead and cats to meow instead of delivering lengthy expositions about other worldly creatures. But, I absolutely love the way Murakami writes, and I couldn’t keep delaying this book any longer.
As always, Murakami does not disappoint when it comes to prose and flow. The plot progresses pretty fluidly for 3/4 of the book, and despite the supernatural elements, I was genuinely curious to know how the various plot threads would untangle and reconcile. The last 1/4th of the book was slightly heavy on metaphors, and I felt there was a bit too much going on at the same time.
I will not sit here and pretend to have understood the multiple layers that this man has stuffed in. From talking cats to raining fish, this story has a lot of elements that made me take a pause. Some of these metaphors and symbolisms are explained away in later chapters, sometimes in an unconvincing way. If you’re someone who relishes the inherent ambiguity presented by such literary devices, then you might be put off by the author’s proclivity to spoon feed meaning to the readers, which rears its head more towards the latter part of the book. There are also a few places in the latter half of the book, where the flow of the story is visibly distorted as the author decides where he wants to take it.
If you enjoy stories where literally ANYTHING could happen in the next scene, then you would definitely enjoy this one.
Now that my pretentious literary review is done, let me go and read some in-depth analysis so that I can understand what the hell actually happened at the end.