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A review by charm_city_sinner
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
My goodness, what an amazing book!
Fresh off of reading A Wild Sheep Chase last month, I knew I wanted to get to my second Murakami book soon. These books were miles apart when it came to structure and style, but there could be no doubt they came from the same author.
This book is comprised of two alternating locations/worlds as the title suggests, Hard-Boiled Wonderland in the present (1985), and the End of the World, which seems to operate on another plane of existence altogether. Right off the bat, this will strike some readers as dense, or quite possibly even pretentious. I can totally understand how a person could read 20 or 30 pages and give up.
Murakami starts leaving you breadcrumbs early on though, and things started to click for me, but not in a predictable way. What amazes me is that there are sci-fi and fantasy elements here, and those are two genres that don't interest me at all. The way he weaves these elements into two halves of the same book which have deeply emotional and philosophical undercurrents throughout left my jaw in the floor and made me a believer.
If this review makes no sense, I totally own that. I've never read an author like Murakami, and describing his work is hard. I firmly believe Murakami is in a genre all his own, and I'd liken him to the Willy Wonka of the literary world.
All I know is that I absolutely love what I've read from him so far, and that's all that really matters ☺️
Fresh off of reading A Wild Sheep Chase last month, I knew I wanted to get to my second Murakami book soon. These books were miles apart when it came to structure and style, but there could be no doubt they came from the same author.
This book is comprised of two alternating locations/worlds as the title suggests, Hard-Boiled Wonderland in the present (1985), and the End of the World, which seems to operate on another plane of existence altogether. Right off the bat, this will strike some readers as dense, or quite possibly even pretentious. I can totally understand how a person could read 20 or 30 pages and give up.
Murakami starts leaving you breadcrumbs early on though, and things started to click for me, but not in a predictable way. What amazes me is that there are sci-fi and fantasy elements here, and those are two genres that don't interest me at all. The way he weaves these elements into two halves of the same book which have deeply emotional and philosophical undercurrents throughout left my jaw in the floor and made me a believer.
If this review makes no sense, I totally own that. I've never read an author like Murakami, and describing his work is hard. I firmly believe Murakami is in a genre all his own, and I'd liken him to the Willy Wonka of the literary world.
All I know is that I absolutely love what I've read from him so far, and that's all that really matters ☺️