Kafka on the Shore

If any book written by Murakami has stood out as below average to me it was 1Q84, a sprawling mess of ideas with the narrative gimmick of alternating chapters about two characters who never meet up yet directly influence each others' lives. Years before he wrote that one though, Murakami pulled off the gimmick much better in Kafka on the Shore, a book that roughly follows the plot of Oedipus, but with so many of the weird plot points Murakami loves- ghosts, parallel dimensions, reincarnation, talking cats and more. Like most of his books, you could easily make it sound like a pile of crap- I mean, there's a villainous character named and modeled after Jack Daniels who murders cats to create a magic flute (what?), and another character named and modeled after Colonel Sanders who tells our characters what to do when he's not busy with his day job- pimping out prostitutes! Little of this is given any explanation. Still though, this is pretty great Murakami. One of the things Stan mentioned in his Wind-Up Bird Chronicle post was all of the connections between seemingly unconnected events- they hint at themes but its up to you to decide what they really mean. After all, one brand-mascot character is a weird addition, but two is a deliberate pattern. Many reviews point out that understanding Kafka on the Shore is a bit easier if you've read one of his earliest works, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, so that will be my next one from Murakami.