Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985)

”Still, it’s not like you’re goin’ t’die. It’s just your conscious mind what’s going’ t’disappear forever.” (p.287)

This is my first experience reading Murakami, and I read it because of my brother’s recommendation. It’s not an easy read - dense, complex and demands your full attention. However, once you get into the story, things do become clear and the overall experience is very impressive - thought-provoking, raising questions of “self” and consciousness, the mind, memories and what makes up a person’s “core” identity.

The main character is a “Calcutec” - he’s had brain enhancements which allow him to make advanced mathematical calculations in his head and manipulate data like a computer. Part of this process involved sealing off a part of his subconscious mind, this was given the codename “End of the World.” He can’t access this, because you don’t want people to mess around in their own mental framework. However, the experiment’s gone wrong and he learns that he is doomed to be trapped in this part of his mind - in a world constructed by his subconscious, for eternity (as his mind will perceive it as lasting forever).

The world his mind has created involves a strange town surrounded by an impassable wall, where all who enter are separated from their shadows and lose their sense of self, their memories, their identity, their mind. There are unicorns in the town who are herded out to an enclosure each night and let in each morning. In winter, many of them grow weak and die, their heads are cut off, and their skulls end up in the town’s library, where the “Dreamreader” must diffuse the last of their light.

”Even if I had my life to live over again, I couldn’t imagine not doing things the same. After all, everything - this life I was losing - was me. And I couldn’t be any other self but my self. Could I?

“Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I’d move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I’d meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically - whether actually more realistic or not - I’d tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. … But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.” (p.341)

There’s more in this novel - tons of references to old Hollywood movies and Western music, which really surprised me. Skulls. An old scientist who’s obsessed with ridding the world of sound - for evolution, he says. Kappa living in a network of underground tunnels beneath Tokyo, where they sometimes grab an unfortunate subway worker to eat! One of my favourite parts was a digression into a side-story about a Russian soldier finding a unicorn skull in 1917.

Anyway, there’s a ton to unpack in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It can also generate some very interesting discussions. However, readers do need to be patient - not that it is entirely “slow” either - there are some exciting sequences where the main characters are being chased underground by the monstrous kappa (creatures from Japanese folklore) that almost seemed like something out of a videogame. And your mileage may vary, but I found the sequences in the “Town” mesmerizing and fascinating.

This book has a dreamlike quality, but the ideas are very complex. I will definitely be picking up another Murakami book in the future - but I am definitely craving something a bit lighter in the meantime. ( )

If I hadn't recently read South of the Border, West of the Sun, I probably would be more enthusiastic about Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

It was a great story, inspiring even. Murakami challenged me to explore the fantastical in my own writing, and for that, I am very grateful. He is a master at making the infinitely complex elegantly simple and the apparently simple wonderfully complex.

My rating of this book was only discounted relative to the most beautiful book I've ever read--South of the Border, West of the Sun. I don't know why. It just haunts me. ( )

I rarely read fiction, much less "non-realistic" fiction, but I was taken with this book. His descriptions are compelling, and the book was mesmerizing, even if I had to get over the fact that nothing exactly made sense. ( )

This is tied, with "Kafka on the Shore," for my favorite Murakami novel so far. ( )

A few months ago if I anyone has said to me that I would get huge enjoyment and a whole lot of things to mull over in my mind from a book where I did not really understand what was going on for at least 300 of its 400 pages, I would have told them that they didn't understand me at all. But then IQ84 popped. Onto my reading pile and within hours I was incurable hooked on Murakami. Oddly enough my daughter told me 20 years ago that Norwegian Wood was one of her favourite books, but I never bothered to follow it up. Now I will be steadily working my way through his books, one every few months. On Pinterest the other day someone posted that this book reduced him to a trance like state. I know exactly what he means. In this book you are always thinking about what connection can possibly exist between two distinct narrative streams until you finally find out. Murakami seems to have a vast knowledge of western literature and music crossing all genres and he weaves this knowledge into this book, which only served to increase my involvement with the characters. There is no sense trying to provide a synopsis of the plot, this is a really good read and I am very glad that there are a lot more waiting for me to read them. ( )