![]() ![]() Although Okada seems to be sleepwalking through his adventures, new acquaintances feel compelled to share their life stories with him and offer wild tales of violence and passion, tales that contrast strongly with the numbness that settles like a DeLillo-esque cloud over the novel's events (one character, witness to gruesome wartime torture, speaks of having ""burned up the very core of my life""). ![]() A mystical experience at the bottom of a dry well leaves him with a blue stain on his cheek. A mysterious woman calls Okada regularly, insisting on phone sex. Peculiar events and strange coincidences abound. As Okada searches for his wife (in an abandoned lot near his home, and in a city park), he encounters characters who are dream-like projections of his own muted fears and desires-among them, a precocious, death-obsessed, 16-year-old neighbor and Okada's brother-in-law, a sinister politician. After his wife disappears, unemployed 30-year-old paralegal Toru Okada gets embroiled in a surreal, sprawling drama-part detective story, part history lesson, part metaphysical speculation, part satire-that marks Japanese novelist Murakami's (Dance Dance Dance) most ambitious work to date. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |