I found this book seriously underwhelming. It wasn’t completely devoid of enjoyment for me as Murakami has a tight, pithy writing style and there’s the odd simile or expression that’s really good. It’s readable and in this sense the prose is flowing and easy to consume. Some of the sections were Watanabe feels confused by his emotions when he is in love with both Midori and Naoko are well drawn too. I have too many problems with the characters, structure and narrative to really say I enjoyed this book.
First, Watanabe isn’t a likeable or believable character. He’s self-obsessed and posturing but at the same time strangely bland and one dimensional. At one point I thought that maybe Murakami was trying to write him as a typically self-obsessed 19 year old. For instance, he never mentions his family and seems to only think of himself. While at the same time believing that he is worthy and virtuous in a special way that makes him better than everyone else. The further I got into the book the more I thought that Murakami was trying to write a kind of sentimental, troubled and romantic character that he thought other people would think deep and dreamy. For me, he’s a total failure as a character and is a sort of superhero for pretentious young men who think themselves more intelligent and profound than everyone else. He seemingly has no interest in girls, except for his highly romantic love for Naoko, but they can’t get enough of him and his brooding self-absorption. Every girl he sleeps with orgasms even though he is only a 19 year old who hasn’t slept with many people. This is unrealistic. They all fall in love with him, Naoko can only get wet for him, Reiko gives up years of celibacy to sleep with him and it's apparently so good she never wants to have sex again (Chapter 11). Midori sums it up quite well when she says, ‘you’re all locked up in that little world of yours’ (Chapter 10) but the problem is that this world of his isn’t interesting or believable. He doesn’t talk much and what he does say isn’t engaging and so it’s a bit of stretch to think of him as this magnetic character that Murakami wants us to believe that he is. He’s always sitting around, lovesick and feeling sorry for himself, and indulges in some really overwrought, romantic sentiments like this section where his roomate gives him a firefly:
‘Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids like a lost soul.
More than once I tried stretching my hand out in theat darkness. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond their grasp.’ (Chapter 3)
This struck me as twee, sentimental, posturing and pretentious. Amusingly, later on Midori talks about how she manages to get lots of work as a writer by inserting, ‘one little episode like that and people love it, it’s so graphic and sentimental’ (Chapter 4) and I immediately thought that this was a good description of Murakami’s style in portraying Watanabe. Watanabe’s month long trip sleeping rough after Naoko’s death is another example of unlikely sentimentalisation of depression. It’s like he is throwing together fairly unconnected stories and impressions in the belief that they’ll correspond to what people want. In this regard, I have to concede he has been pretty successful!
In general, the dialogue and behaviour of the students is far too grown up and sophisticated for people of their age. I was reminded of Donna Tartt’s Secret History where all the teenage students are ascribed highly adult ideas and conversations. It’s implausible and incongruous. Equally, there are inconceivable incidents like the dinner that Watanabe, Nagasawa and Nagasawa’s girlfriend have together where the couple start discussing their relationship in highly personal terms in front of Watanabe. Watanabe seems to be very intimate with Nagasawa’s girlfriend in spite of the fact he never seems to spend any time with her. As Nagasawa gets into a taxi he gives high falutin, overly certain assessment of Watanabe’s character to Watanabe and his girlfriend:
‘Watanabe’s practically the same as me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he’s incapable of loving anybody. There’s always some part of him somewhere that’s wide awake and detached. He just has that hunger that won’t go away. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.’ (Chapter 8)
Like a lot of the dialogue, it reads like a posturing middle aged author rather than the drunk student who we’re supposed to believe delivers it. To complete farce, Watanabe tells Nagasawa’s girlfriend to dump him and Nagasawa doesn’t seem at all concerned by this and the two continue to be friends. Naoko’s character also indulges in the following sentimentalised assessment of her relationship with Kizuki. She claims that the two of them missed, ‘the pain of growing up’ and now have to, ‘pay the world back what we owed it’, using this as an explanation for his suicide. It’s all far too manicured and reads like a middle aged man writing about idealised, fictional teenage relationships rather than authentic dialogue or feeling. Naoko also talks about how her and Kizuki had, ‘no sense of the oppressiveness of sex or the anguish that comes with the sudden swelling of the ego that ordinary kids experience’ (all Chapter 6). This section is not only implausible but isn’t even internally consistent given that Naoko can’t even get wet to have sex with Kizuki so they never do it! There are lots of examples of this kind of sloppy character construction and inauthentic dialogue.
I was also extremely bored and unimpressed by the number of lengthy monologues that this book contains. Everyone seems to want to tell Watanabe their life story in highly stylised dialogue that would only ever really be found in a book. Naoko, Midori and Reiko all pour out implausibly long and well presented speeches on their lives that are only interrupted by an occasional nod or, ‘what happened next?’ from Watanabe. It’s a really lazy narrative device and doesn’t read at all well. These sections were a real slog to get through and reminded me of the writing style of cheap thrillers or romance novels where a character’s backstory is dumped out on the page in crude heaps of ugly, rambling text. It’s facile and guileless writing.
Another aspect of the book that really annoyed me is Murakami’s borrowing from other books without really acknowledging it or exploring it in any kind of detail. The most obvious example is Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. Watanabe reading this when he goes up into the mountains to visit Naoko at her own mountain sanatorium. The similarities are too numerous and obvious for anyone who’s read the book to miss. Watanabe takes a long journey to visit someone at the sanatorium, the place itself has a strange, other-worldly feel and a lifestyle and community all of its own. Just like Hans, Watanabe is physically assessed by a member of the community when he arrives. The food is delicious, just like in Magic Mountain. Many of the patients have been there for years and there is a suggestion that Watanabe may stay there for a long time if he settles into the rhythm of life there. The patients take their temperature and are involved in therapy, just like in Magic Mountain. The outside world is referred to as a distant and different place, just like the ‘flatlands’ in Mann’s book and the winters are snow filled and beautiful. Despite all of this, Watanabe doesn’t seem to notice or reflect on any of this even though he is reading the book while he is staying there. This is implausible and the only reference made to it is when Reiko says to Watanabe, ‘How could you bring a book like that to a place like this?’ and Watanabe thinks, ‘Of course, she was right’ (Chapters 5&6). I don’t see any reason why she was right to say this. On the whole, it just seems like Murakami borrows a lot of details from Magic Mountain and wants the reader to know that he has read it but doesn’t want to have his character reflect on it in any substantial way. This was irritating and unsatisfactory for me. He also seems to borrow lots of other bits and pieces during the course of the story like life being like a box of cookies, from Forrest Gump, and tigers turning to butter from Little Black Sambo. I’m sure there are others that I either didn’t notice or are borrowed from books I haven’t read. Of course, all authors borrow from other things that they have read but I felt in this book it was done in an especially unsubtle and artless way.
My last complaint about this book is the misogynistic tone that I felt permeated the whole story. All the women are more or less sexual objects for Watanabe including Reiko, which is the most implausible and confusing. The women are subservient to men and seem to define themselves only in reference to men. Naoko’s psychological problems are cast in a mainly sexual light and she only gains relief from them when she sleeps with Watanabe. She exposes herself to him in her sleep and is presented as an object for him to masturbate over. When Watanabe goes out with Nagasawa, girls are desperate to sleep with them and are even willing to swap partners if that’s what the men want. Reiko makes several jokes about rape when Watanabe is staying at the sanatorium and flirts with him. Of course, Watanabe ends up sleeping with her even though it doesn’t really fit the storyline and makes for a clunky conclusion. Midori’s conversation is sexually explicit from the outset and she gets upset when Watanabe doesn’t notice her new haircut or view her as an object for his sexual desire. Everything relating to women in the book is about sex and none of the women seem to be happy or fulfilled unless they are having sex with the wonderful, male Watanabe. Even when the women speak, Murakami has them denigrating themselves in comparison to men. Naoko writes, again highly implausibly, ‘Girls my age never use the word fair. Ordinary girls as young as I am are basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The central question for them is not whether something is fair but whether or not it is beautiful or will make them happy. Fair is a man’s word” (Chapter 5). This not only sounds like a man writing and not a young woman, it is also highly insulting to women of all ages. It’s a good example of both the bad, implausible dialogue and the misogynistic tone that occur throughout. The whole book primarily seems to portray women as weak sex objects that are desperate for the approval and validation of men. Nagasawa’s girlfriend is another perfect example of this theme.
The prose in this book is good but otherwise it’s pretty bad and annoyed me in several ways I’ve outlined above. I didn’t enjoy it much at all and at the end I thought about Nagasawa’s policy of only reading books by authors who have been dead for 30 years. He justifies this by saying, ‘It’s not that I don’t believe in contemporary literature...but I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short’ (Chapter 3). While this is an extreme statement, and not one I wholly agree with, this book was disappointing and I felt it was a bit of a waste of time reading it. Perhaps it will be considered a classic 30 years after Murakami’s death but I certainly wouldn’t bet on it!!
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