This book is not, I think, what most people expect in a novel of first love. Too much meaningless sex (Perhaps an unworthy thought, but--to sell the book?), for one thing, and the main character and his love, Naoko, seem to exist in a vacuum. Naoko is like a cardboard cutout. Some may find this mysterious. The behavior of the "sexually liberated" young woman that the main character is drawn to (no, let's just make that "gravitates to") borders on the bizarre. I found the book as a whole distasteful and boring and will never open another one by Murakami, but some, judging from a now long-past Readers Paradise thread, like it.
To each his own.
To each his own.
This book is not what most people expect in a novel of first love. Too much meaningless sex (Perhaps an unworthy thought, but--to sell the book?), for one thing, and the main character and his love, Naoko, seem to exist in a vacuum. Naoko is like a cardboard cutout. Some may find this mysterious. The behavior of the "sexually liberated" young woman that the main character is drawn to (no, let's just make that "gravitates to") borders on the bizarre. I found the book as a whole distasteful and boring and will never open another one by Murakami, but some, judging from a now long-past Readers Paradise thread, like it.
To each his own,
But leave me alone.
To each his own,
But leave me alone.
The description given here is fair enough, but so far as I am concerned, this book is not what most people expect in a novel of first love. Too much meaningless sex (Perhaps an unworthy thought, but--to sell the book?), for one thing, and the main character and his love, Naoko, seem to exist in a vacuum. Naoko is like a cardboard cutout. Some may find this mysterious. The behavior of the "sexually liberated" (again, see jacket blurb) young woman that the main character is drawn to (no, let's just make that "gravitates to") borders on the bizarre. I found the book as a whole distasteful and boring and will never open another one by Murakami, but some, judging from a now long-past Readers Paradise thread, like it.
To each his own.
To each his own.
