Kafka on the Shore — Haruki Murakami
Knopf
2005
Rating:


The novels of Haruki Murakami are often literary wonders. "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" and his 1997 masterpiece "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" construct narrative knots so complex there's a great joy in seeing Murakami slowly loosening the ties if only to ensnare the reader. "Kafka on the Shore," Murakami's latest, is a lesser affair by the author's standards because of what the knot ultimately contains. A 15-year-old boy traveling under the name Kafka runs away from home to escape an Oedipal prophecy. Of course, escaping such prophecies usually means putting them into motion, though that may or may not be the case here. Kafka retreats to a library run by Miss Saeki, a former pop star whose one hit is called "Kafka on the Shore." As Kafka falls in love with Miss Saeki even as he comes to suspect that she may be his estranged mother, an old man named Nakata talks to cats and searches for a missing kitten. The story often loses its way with Nakata, first devoting too much time to his backstory and then having him encounter people and spirits who look like Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders. Still, it's hard not to be impressed by Murakami's narrative daring until the power of the book is slackened once the knot is laid bare. There's nothing here that's as resonant or wonderful as "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and the dialogue, perhaps lost in translation, is clunkier than usual. "Kafka on the Shore" still proves that Murakami is a master at work, but this time he has lost the thread.

Posted Thursday, August 25, 2005

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