my first murakami

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, is probably the most sci-fi oriented of Murakami's novels. Like all good sci-fi, Murakami begins with an idea and explores it within the well established rules of the world - i.e. things still need to make sense, there is a difference between sci-fi and a far-fetched plot... that is my belief anyway.

This novel threads two stories, one which takes place in a future world, the other in the unconscious of the protagonist. The End of the World component is rife with Jungian symbols and archetypes: the wall, the shadow, the gate-keeper - each developed according to Murakami's own ideas. In the Hard-boiled wonderland, the protagonist is getting a little confused and persued for what a code that is in his head (he is a human encryption device... lovely idea). Murakami's talent here is to describe interesting details of the worlds he creates as if he were writing a "normal" novel. The opening scene describes a simultaneous counting process where coins are counted and backwards and forwards simultaneously. In the End of the World, the dream-reader is given a riddling description of a song as "some words spoken quickly, others stretched out", which i also found quite beautiful in its own way.

As with all of Murakami's novels, he likes to give a couple of nods to his favourite authors, in this one we hear about Mersault from the Outsider (coming to mind because he apologized all the time) which adds another dimension to Murakami's work that makes him interesting beyond the telling of a good story.

This was a nice introduction to Murakami. It's an interesting and well-executed story. It is one that I would perhaps recommend to others as it is not as depressing as something like Norwegian Wood (not my interpretation of depressing anyway... i guess there is The end of the world to consider). The book ends with one of Murakami's trademork ambiguous drop-offs. One is reading, feeling that everything is coming together and then a final sentence forces a reinterpretation of everything just mentioned. All stars.