Murakami, Haruki. Kafka on the Shore. New York: Knopf, 2005.

Haruki Murakami’s language never shines or stuns. He drives his scenes, and thus his plot, too much with dialogue. The villain, in this novel at least, never comes across as a real danger after the first act. He thinks, and thus writes, too much about sex.

Okay well that last part isn’t exactly true, but despite all of the above this is an incredible book. I picked it up with the intention of reading the first chapter to see if I wanted to continue with the rest. I read 200 pages before I put it down to find something to eat.

I think why I like Murakami is that he tells me stories no one else can. Actually, the only American writer (or writer of any nationality, really) that comes to mind as comparible is Stephen King. I’m surprised too, but much of Kafka on the Shore—perhaps its 15-year-old hero and its seductive creation of another world parallel to or like contained within this one—reminded me of The Talisman, which is my favorite King novel of the half-dozen I’ve read.

The end falters, but don’t we all when we’ve reached our inevitable conclusions? I think everyone’s let off too easily. It’s strange but essential, I think, that we demand that our fictional characters be pushed to the limits of their capabilities, to the points where we very well might lose them. This doesn’t mean they all have to be dropped into lions’ dens with only a strip of gauze to save them. They don’t all need to be frantically chased. But in staying with them and watching them “overcome adversity” we feel like we’ve accomplished some kind of heroism ourselves. It’s the great naivete that novels give us.

This is maybe neither here nor there but I hate people who tell me I’m deluding myself when I think of characters as people and not as words on a page. F you John Barth. We may share the same birthday but we’ll never share a repast.