{"id":7009,"date":"2025-11-10T09:26:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T14:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.laserfarm.com\/?p=7009"},"modified":"2025-11-11T09:36:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T14:36:12","slug":"book-review-kafka-on-the-shore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laserfarm.com\/?p=7009","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Kafka on the Shore"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Kafka on the Shore<\/em>, by Haruki Murakami<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was my first Murakami book and I honestly didn\u2019t know what I was getting into. It follows two protagonists who never meet: One is a teenager who runs away from home and finds a dream-like library. The second is an old man who can talk to cats. I like both libraries and talking cats!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously I liked this book a lot. I need to re-read it because, while nothing in the story is meant to be logical and real, there is a lot of subtext and sub-subtext going on here that I missed. But, even if you don\u2019t really understand the point of the story, the book still works because it\u2019s beautifully written (and translated), and the complex story is told in the simplest terms, making it a joy to read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you\u2019re at a party and talking about the book and a smarty-smart person asks you what the book is about, you can just say, \u201cIt\u2019s about\u2026\u201d and then make a vague hand gesture towards any inanimate object. And you won\u2019t be wrong. And everyone will think you\u2019re a genius!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love David Lynch, and Murakmi often feels like a gentler David Lynch. They\u2019re both tapping into some other cognitive cosmos and trying to explain what they see to us dumb, normal people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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