Book Review: Kafka On The Shore: Haruki Murakami
Introduction
A while ago, I stumbled upon a collection of Murakami’s short stories in a quaint New York bookstore (that was going out of business, no less). That was my first real encounter with Murakami. For the uninitiated (as I was then), his style is a blend of magical realism, surrealism, and a heavy dose of everyday banality—the stuff that quietly makes up much of human existence.
That experience was good enough to push me towards picking up a Murakami novel from my aunt’s bookshelf, which I ended up reading over the 4th of July holiday. What follows are some of my thoughts on Kafka on the Shore.
Plot
The book follows two interwoven stories: that of Kafka Tamura, the titular main character, and Satoru Nakata.
Kafka, who has renamed himself (we never learn his given name), runs away from home, carrying the scars of a troubled past in which his mother abandoned him and his sister. His chapters are interleaved with those of Nakata, an elderly man who lost much of his mental faculties after a strange celestial incident in childhood but gained the uncanny ability to speak with cats.
These parallel stories unfold with the sense that they are on a collision course. We’re given hints of how the two might connect, but the real narrative pull comes from watching Kafka try to run from his fate, while Nakata, inexorably, is drawn toward him.
Analysis
I must confess: I had several issues with Murakami’s style here. The blend of magical realism and surrealism certainly makes for compelling reading, but I often felt that the page-turning quality of the book came more from its pacing and unanswered questions than from the writing itself.
Murakami hands the reader multiple blank checks, for example:
- The mysterious event in Yamanashi Prefecture that gives Nakata his ability to talk to cats.
- The entrance stone and the creature that crawls out of it.
- A parade of outlandish characters—Colonel Sanders (yes, that Colonel Sanders) and Johnnie Walker (who I’m told is another well-known figure, though I wouldn’t know).
- The nature of the connection between Kafka and Nakata.
For items 1–3 in particular, no explanations are offered. Sadly, these checks could not be cashed. While magical realism and surrealism are Murakami’s métier, it sometimes felt as if the story wasn’t believable even on its own terms. For me, this is an inviolate rule of storytelling: a narrative must be real to itself, if not to the reader.
Instead, the novel felt like a surrealist play staged before an audience, only to end abruptly. The hurried conclusion didn’t help. Had it not been for the sudden appearance of that worm-like creature from the entrance stone, I might have forgiven the book its faults. But the introduction of that element, piled on top of so many other loose threads, nearly had me fling the book down in frustration.
Magical realism is supposed to use the fantastical as a way to probe deeper themes. Murakami, however, often uses the fantastical simply as a plot device, without stitching the pieces together. Without that reconciliation, I found it difficult to accept the “magical” as truly real, even within the novel’s own world.
That said, for the first three-quarters of the book, the magic did feel real—and that counts for something.
Conclusion
All in all, a good book, if lacking in real substance. Perhaps that’s the very point of magical realism—I don’t know.
While I do enjoy philosophizing about books, there comes a point where one risks overdoing it. This one, for me, sat uncomfortably on that line.
