Saturday, April 30, 2011

Dance, Dance, Dance ~ Haruki Murakami

I was disappointed with this novel after reading Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  It felt like Murakami was regurgitating the same theme of abandonment with what felt like recycled characters, however Dance, Dance, Dance was written before these novels.

Basically the protagonist is in search of a girl he used to live with who seems to be sending him psychic messages which draw him to the old Dolphin Hotel.  The old hotel is no longer there, but a new hotel has been built in it’s place and bears the same name.  It is however the gateway to an alternate reality where there are six skeletons and as the novel progresses we find out who each skeleton belongs to, as death seems to follow the protagonist very closely.

This is as surreal as Murakami's other novels, and whilst he apparently enjoyed writing this one the most, it isn’t as beautiful or poetic as Kafka on the Shore, and mostly I felt bored with it.

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