I received this book as a gift from my secret Santa on Library Thing quite a few years ago now. I just kept slipping past it. First of all because it was a fantasy book which is not my preferred genre, but also because of the length of it. I finally decided to read it because I was looking for something a bit different to get into. The book surprised me with how well it was written, even though I know this volume was a translation from the original. It also surprised me with how much I enjoyed it. I really had trouble putting it down. The book begins in a Tokyo suburb in June of 1984 and ends in December 1985. During all that time of 607 pages we don't go very far geographically from that Tokyo suburb, but we do make several forays into "the ether" and a completely different "other world" that seems just as real as the Tokyo suburb. Our journey is led by an intrepid pilgrim called Tori Okada who is a 20-something Japanese man with a wife and a cat. The book begins with the disappearance of that cat, and that incident alone sends Tori on his long journey. Along the way he meets a very bizarre group of unforgettable characters. The genius of Haruki Murakami's writing is that the book feels so real and elemental. It didn't strike me that I was reading and fully believing some very bizarre occurrences and some really horrific stories. Some of the stories were about World War II and
before that, the Japan-Russia war in Mongolia. I knew nothing about this page in history, but what I learned about it from this book, and from the way it was presented as in a sort of story format, it brought the full horrendous details of both wars to my mind. That's not all. There are some very funny parts, and some very heartbreaking parts, and some poignant parts that cover a lot of human emotions. The dreamlike quality of the writing made all these discoveries even more real. This is an excellent book, and one that even non-fanciers of the fantasy genre like me can enjoy. ( )

It's been some time since I read this, and I don't recall any details. ( )

I finished this book contemplating life. The way Murakami blends reality with fiction and plays with the meaning of truth and fact is powerful. It is a beautifully written book and takes care of even the mundane details.

It does come with trigger warnings for rape, sexual abuse, human torture, human killings, and animal abuse, so it is by no means an easy read. ( )

I put the book down and had no idea what had happened during the last 600 pages. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it a lot - I enjoyed it quite a bit - just don't ask me to describe or explain anything because it will sound exactly like when someone describes a dream (in other words, disjointed nonsense). Having said all that, I couldn't NOT finish the book. It was like the book was a force compelling me to keep reading it. And I'm glad I did keep reading because even though I don't understand what it was all about, it kept me entertained. ( )

Los mundos que crea Murakami son simplemente exquisitos. ( )