Recently finished Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It was the first of his books I've read, despite having heard his name for years. This is my story (taken from my GoodReads review):
My first experience reading Murakami, it'd be stupid for me to say, "This isn't very good," but I'd also be lying if I said I wasn't bored silly for large stretches of time. It's obviously beautifully written – graceful and lyrical even in those passages where I didn't much care what was happening – and there were certainly moments where I was enthralled or heartbroken or intrigued. But I'm a narrative momentum guy. I want to feel like the story is going somewhere. Reading Murakami reminds me a lot of reading Pynchon: there's never any doubt that you're in the hands of someone who's a genius with the written word, but you've got a long way to travel for not much payoff. I finished the final sentence last night and literally thought, "That's it?"
And that's a shame, because there were chapters where I was absolutely all-in. But then there were other chapters where I found myself mentally composing grocery lists while I waited for Murakami to connect any dots at all. I hesitate to use the word masturbatory to describe his style, but I definitely need to read another of his books to decide if his literary journeys are worth the investment it takes to go on them. My 3-star rating splits the difference between those 5-star passages that grabbed me by the throat and the 1-star passages that had me fighting to stay awake.
