Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami - 2 stars **I love Murakami books, and this was one I bought for my sister that I was yet to read (convenient) so I stole it from her uni room when I last went to visit.
I'll be honest, I was disappointed. It took me a while to get into, and I felt almost no connection with the lead characters, who are normally so interesting and three dimensional. Though I did enjoy the comment made by one: 'I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws.' The plot confused me as there were a lot of scientific theories and explanations throughout which I really struggled to understand. (and I'm not a stupid person!). Even now having finished the book and taken a fair while to do so, I'm having trouble remembering what it was actually about...
I know it has two parallel stories that seem to focus on the same person, but in different worlds or mindsets - the 'normal' streets of Tokyo that then descend into an underground world of INKlings, and a dream world where people have their shadows removed upon arrival and lose all their sense of emotion. They are then doomed to live eternally as cardboard cut-outs of their former selves.
As always, the text is well written, Murakami has a talent for creating poetry out of prose, and making the most mundane of situations appear fantastical and beautiful:'She turns on the dim light and the shelves of countless skulls float up through the gloom. Pallid shapes, covered thick with dust, jaws sprung at the same angle, eye sockets glaring vacuously their silence hangs over the stacks like a ghostly mist. A chill creeps over my flesh again.'
Overall though, I wasn't impressed - poor show Murakami!
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