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Title: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International)
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Manufacturer: Vintage
List Price: $14.95
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| Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Vintage A wonderful novel about the mind and the desire for immortality | | A wonderful and weird novel about the mind and what the desire for immortality entails (compare with Borges' short story 'The Immortal', you won't be disappointed). Fans of Philip K. Dick and Jonathan Lethem's 'Gun, With Occasional Music' will like this, I know I did. The first 100 pages or so can be hard going, at this point the novel seems to lack direction, but be patient and you will be rewarded. I am now eager to read Murakami's other works. | | Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Vintage Patience is a virtue | | This book requires some patience. My friend, who usually does not enjoy reading, recommended this book to me because it is one of his favorites. However, if you stick with it, I think it's quite a rewarding book. This is the only book I've read by this author, and I can't even imagine what I might have missed by reading a translation, but the author's mind is just incredible. I've recommended this book to others, and it's universally been a struggle in the beginning, but every person who stuck with it (for at least six chapters) felt this book was worth the struggle. | | Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Vintage Got my brain muscles working | | Admittedly, this isn't a book I'd have picked up for a casual read, but once I got past the first 100 pages, I couldn't set it down. The book has many layers to it and is one that I'm sure I'm going to revisit a few times. Its a great book for a book club or to read with a friend. It was a hard read, a very cortically driven story but Murakami is an incredibly gifted author and this book highlights his skills. Its a book that will capture your imagination and plays with your mind, in the most enjoyable and unexpected ways. I felt quite bewildered though the first half of the book. The second half felt more like a 'tempo run'. The climax, to my complete delighted surprise, brought peace where I'd been expecting the exhilaration of victory. | | Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Vintage Unicorns at the end of the world | Imagine if Raymond Chandler had collaborated with David Lynch, maybe with Philip K. Dick throwing in a few cents every now and then.
That gives you some idea of what Haruki Murakami's "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" is like. Split into two different, barely-intertwined narratives, Murakami's quirkily bittersweet novel is a bizarre sci-fi mystery and an exploration of the human mind's limits... right to the world's end. It's a brilliant, bittersweetly intricate novel, and one of Murakami's best.
The protagonist is just doing his job -- he's a "shuffler," with a chip in his brain -- when he visits an eccentric scientist and his precocious granddaughter. But then he gets sent an animal skull, which appears to be a unicorn's. And even weirder, corporate agents are invading his home and tearing it apart.
At the same time -- in alternating chapters -- we are told the story of a man who arrives at a walled city surrounded by unicorns, at the End of the World. He becomes the Dreamreader at the library, finding memories hidden in skulls. But he soon discovers that this city is a prison of sorts -- and that after surrendering his shadow, he faces losing his soul.
Meanwhile, the original narrator -- who may also be the second -- is called in by the granddaughter when her grandfather disappears. Turns out the whole world may be about to end. The two brave an underground cavern riddled with voracious, monstrous INKlings, only for the narrator to discover that the greatest danger is in his own mind -- and it offer a terrifying, glorious possibility to him.
Not many serious authors could write about computer chips, unicorns, sci-fi corporations, the intricacies of brain "circuitry," and sewers full of nasty Japanese hobgoblins who like rotting meat. All in the same book, and without making you shake your head and groan "Aw, come on!".
But amazingly, that is not what makes "Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World" a work of genius. Rather it's that "Hard Boiled Wonderland" and "The End of the World" are two separate books -- one is written in angular, wry prose in a grimy urban landscape, with moments of horror woven in. And one is written in flowing, soft, almost dreamlike prose in a pale, almost idyllic world that may or may not be real.
In both stories, Murakami weaves intricate, detailed webs of words, evoking subterranean chases from flesh-eating kappas and mildly comic encounters with thugs, as well as the poignant emptiness of the End of the World city. And he explores the whole concept of the mind being infinite, and that time does not exist in our dreams.
As both plots wind on, Murakami intricately twines them together. Hints, phrases, a shared lover, and the whole question of unicorns -- these tie together the two alternating plots, first in tiny ways. As the final quarter of the book unfolds, Murakami paints a complex vision of just what is going on for our unlikely heroes -- and reveals just where the End of the World is.
And it's even harder to tell at first if there is are two narrators, or if one of them is dreamed, in another time, or on another planet. The Shuffler and Dreamreader seem like very different men, but similarities start to pop up between them -- such as their dual attractions to pretty young librarians -- but Murakami successfully keeps you guessing until he reveals what the Shuffler and Dreamreader truly are.
"Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" is a masterpiece of modern fiction -- a sci-fi mystery that looks to the horizon of the human mind, written as two intertwined stories. Definitely outstanding. | | Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Vintage incredible: substance & style | | This book was just a mind-blowing read through and through. It's like packaged brain damage. In a good way. | | Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Vintage Product Description | | Japan's most widely-read and controversial writer, author of A Wild Sheep Chase, hurtles into the consciousness of the West with this narrative about a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters--not to mention Bob Dylan and Lauren Bacall. |
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