KAFKA ON THE SHORE
Haruki Murakami
Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
Vintage Books (Random House), 467 pp
One of my nieces, herself a best-selling novelist, recommended this extraordinary book to me, calling Murakami one of the freshest writers she had read in a decade. "Kafka on the Shore" is so far from the formulaic fiction produced by most of today's American writers that it's as if it occupies its own genre. Dreamscape or reality? Horrific or entertaining? I never could quite tell which.
The story starts with what seems to be an ordinary fifteen-year-old boy (he calls himself Kafka) who wants to run away from home and does so early on. Then we begin to read the investigative records of an unusual event in rural Japan, toward the end of World War II, when a group of school children collapsed in the woods while collecting mushrooms. We soon know it wasn't the mushrooms that got them, but what exactly did? Moving on, Murakami introduces Nakata, who describes himself as so dumb that he lives on a sub city.
But Nakata isn't dumb in all ways. "Instead of being smart," says Otsuka, a black tomcat, "you found yourself able to talk with cats." Yes, Nakata talks with cats. It's useful to do so because he supplements his sub city, paid by the government because of his mental state, by hiring out to find family cats who've disappeared. At one point Mimi, a Siamese who talks about opera and knows the brands of cars, tells him about a stranger in a tall hat, a human being, who's been capturing cats; for what purpose, Mimi doesn't know. As you read this you may think that's a light touch, but in fact the Siamese is turning the plot toward a darkness that we begin to see only a little while later.
Kafka spends his runaway days reading in a private library, working out at a gym, and eating udon. Then, late one evening, he wakes up in a remote place with his shirt soaked in blood. He has "lost" some four hours and doesn't know where he's been, what he's been doing, or, most troubling of all, where the blood has come from. One shoulder aches. What's that all about? He doesn't remember being injured, either. A friend takes him in and they ascertain that the blood was not Kafka's; except for the painful shoulder, he's basically OK. But he's frightened and shaky. Here's a boy who is usually in control of himself, disciplined, and he's lost a bit of his memory.
Murakami's plot is relentless as he weaves together the stories of Kafka, the school children, Nakata and his cats, and unknown players. "Kafka on the Shore" is a fascinating, absorbing read, with language that is almost poetic in spots and overwhelmingly plain and practical in others. I don't know if this is a result of the translation, if Murakami's mind leaps from one view of the world to another, or if my own point of view shifts in the kaleidoscope of writing Murakami fills with brilliant, shape-shifting bits.
I loved the book. Save it for an occasion when you have time for it, though. It's long and engrossing, and you won't want to abandon it to get back to chores.
