Bingo Chart Review: Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

I decided to read this because everyone seems to love Murakami, and I vaguely remembered having read something of his years and years ago and not really liked it. So I wanted to give it another go and see what the fuss was about. 

I should have stuck to my memories, because the fuss was about nothing! Murakami writes magical realism, and I HATE magical realism! I’m just like “Pick a genre! Is it realism or is it magical??!” I just can’t deal with talking cats and supernatural beings in a supposedly “real world” setting. But anyway, on with the review!

“Kafka on the Shore" is about a 15-year-old boy from Tokyo who runs away from home. He lives with his father and apparently doesn’t feel like he can stay there. It is not really explained all that well, I feel. He runs away and meets a young woman, whom he randomly believes to be his long-lost sister, who left the family with his mother when he was a kid. That doesn’t stop him from having sexual fantasies about her, though. During his running away, he one day wakes up covered in blood in a wooded area. He has no idea where the blood came from and proceeds to hide out. 

Meanwhile back in Tokyo we hear of an old man who can talk to cats, but otherwise isn’t very bright, due to an incident in his childhood. This old man eventually ends up meeting an otherworldly person and events unfold that mean this old man, Nakata, has to leave Tokyo. 

I’m trying really hard to explain the plot without spoiling too much of the book, but it is virtually impossible. So just beware of spoilers from now on!

I thought the book was interesting at first. There was mystery and plot advancement, but that quickly petered out. The military reports we are introduced to in a couple of chapters don’t really serve a purpose in my opinion. That part of the plot could easily have been told in another way, and when nothing really comes of the military involvement, it just seems weird to do it like that. Kafka runs away, but then he quickly settles down and gets a job and just goes on with life. Nakata clearly has some sort of connection with whatever is happening, but it is never explained properly. He just does things, because “he feels the need to do it”. Convenient…

The Entrance Stone also bugged me. What is it an entrance to? Why does it need to be opened and shut again? Did Miss Saeki open it back in the day? What happened then? We hear about something being wrong, and the stone is opened to set it right, but we never really find out what happened and what needs to happen to set it right. And did Johnnie Walker make it through the entrance in the end? Was he the white slime thing? Why did he want to go through in the first place? What is this other plane of existence that Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders come from? What actually happened to Nakata, and what was taken from him that day in the woods when he was a kid? 

I just have so many unanswered questions about everything in this book, because despite it being 500+ pages long, nothing much is explained. Likewise nothing much happens in the book, despite there being a murder, a run-away and police hunting for the main characters. 

I gave this book 1 star out of 5 on Goodreads and I think this will be my last magical realism book. I will accept that this genre is just not for me, even though everyone else seems to love it so.