Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Haruki Murakami Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International)
Book Review: Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Summary: 3 Stars
"A narrative of particle-accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim..."This is part of the synopsis on the back cover, sounds all very intriguing. Indeed the first part of the book is spilling over with wonderful ideas and an amazing imagination is at play here. The story is philosophical, also metaphysical and fantastical. It's a science fictional novel and thriller rolled into one.
Murakami's writing technique is very stylish and he writes in a beautiful prose but the story lost my interest about half way through, this may be due to Murakami trying to validate how such a situation may have arisen, but I feel he didn't quite pull it off.
The story (or should I say two stories) revolves around one man, whose name we never get to know, likewise with all the characters. He is at the centre of an information war between two companies. He's hired by an old professor who works in an underground laboratory which is surrounded by creatures named 'INKlings'. This leads into a highly unlikely but very imaginative adventure.
Hard- boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is a narrative about the mind and its different processes. It poses the question of what consciousness is and how it can deceive us. The book is thought provoking and highly inventive but I felt it lagged during the half way point. It may have been better suited to a short story but it is still well worth the read.
Book Review: Even Murakami nods
Summary: 3 Stars
I wasn't as enthralled by this as the other works of Murakami that I have read so far. I found the story (really two stories entwined together) to be somewhat insubstantial, despite the strong philosophical subtext. However, the episodic nature kept things moving fast, as did the zig-zagging between the parallel narratives.Book Review: Highly Recommended
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" a while ago and it had been sitting in my bookcase ever since then until I finally picked it up a week or so ago, prompted I suspect by the reviews of "Kafka on the Shore" and various interviews with Murakami that have been published recently. I finished it last night and loved it. Although with translations you always have to wonder how much of an author's style is truly the author's and not the work of the translator, I can't help but think with "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" that Murakami's prose in Japanese must be so good, so engaging and so exciting that the translator really can't go wrong (apologies to the translator, this is in no way meant to be a criticism of your work). Suffice to say I'll be reading more Murakami this year.
Book Review: Two alternative universes for the price of one
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the fourth or fifth Murakami book I've read, and quite easily the best after Norwegian Wood. The book switches between two stories: a wonderfully curious and imaginative adventure through an alternative future-now Japan (Hard-Boiled Wonderland); and a mysterious exploration of a walled old city (the End of the World). The two stories eventually connect in a way that causes a wonderful collision of thoughts and questions in the reader's mind, but I won't give anything away by saying anything more.
Like all good dystopias, this is thoroughly well thought-through and researched; Kafkaesque comes to mind, as does Alice in Wonderland. But this is married with Murakami's postmodernist bent and a feeling that he's having as much fun as you are. Very enjoyable, totally escapist, and you'll want to dive back into this world once you've left it.
Book Review: is it the translation
Summary: 5 Stars
Well is it? Marukami is the strange little man you see watching from the sidelines. We get on and live our lives whilst he observes, records and adds a little twist of lemon to our reality. Two plots that the reader can only appreciate on the second reading create a syncopated story that plays likes his odd musical emblems, similar to John Irving's bears,armadillos and wrestlers. His story telling also has the same fine style but with a slightly diplaced morality. He has created in this novel like all his others to date the sense that journalism, meets surreallism, is translated via Kafka and then put into a parallel universe and culture that normal Western readers cannot even comprehend. Are his sexual references the norm in Japan or is he teasing our stereotypical views of his country?
I am a fan, that you may have guessed. But only for a couple of months now.