I can really count on Ryu Murakami to cook up a tale that I can barely take, but still cannot put it down. I think I will trying to figure out this story for a while as well.

When reading there were a couple of impressions I had:

This is a really busy novel in that sense that almost every character, from the important ones down to the really episodic ones have a background we came to know. This makes the story flow slower but also more intimate.

From the descriptions of people's experience, what did they feel, what did they go through, what did they do, it feels the writer also has all this experience. He depicts so many little nuances that i think he cannot possibly know if he hasn't been through the same things. But of course this is impossible, or is it?

The ending is kinda weird, like in some of his other similar novels. Some might say even failed ending. As I except, probably with time the whole thing will make more sense, just as it happened after I read his other books. With time I come to see that I have learned something from that ending that I wouldn't have from more "normal" ones.