|
Title: Kafka on the Shore
Purchase
Item
Manufacturer: Vintage
List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $7.00
|
|
| Customer Reviews: |
| Kafka on the Shore by Vintage Mind-blowing! | | This book took me by surprise. I didn't anticipate a book required for my english class to hold such creativity and depth.The multiple stories intertwine to make an altogether incredible read and thought-provoking novel. It's definetly worth the time and mind power to get sucked into. | | Kafka on the Shore by Vintage Not Impressed | My eagerness to enjoy Kafka on the shore on my 5 hours plane was quickly poured with cold water. the books starts out too slow, with a pace that makes me feel like after turning a few pages, all the words I've read don't mean a thing. I'm not sure if that's my mind state that changed since the last time I read The Chronicle of the Wind-up Bird (which I loved so muchhhhhhhhhh) or his pace is not the same, but I'm sure it was a bit annoying to not see anything progress after a while, so I decided to put it aside and listen to music. The book was not fascinating enough.
Yet later, whenever I'm bored and got nothing to do, I try to finish his book part by part, it took like nearly a month, but I managed to finish it.
And the book was ok. Something about a stupid song, about a librarian whose ghost of her younger years made love with the main character, and there's this guy talking to cats and stuffs. Strange things like usual. The style is pretty much the same, yet I just don't connect with this story at all. It doesn't pull me, suck me into its world like other books I read before, like Norwegian wood or Bird Chronicle.
Moral of the story is, don't waste your time on this book.
I still look out for other Murakami new publishings, though. | | Kafka on the Shore by Vintage Pretentious, self-indulgent rubbish | | Don't waste your time reading this tripe. I suggest you try Wind Up Bird Chronicle, which is quite a decent, if rather twisted, read, then give up on Murakami completely. | | Kafka on the Shore by Vintage fun with metaphysics | Five stars and then some. Sometimes, you'll read a book and wonder how the author managed to be so brilliant. This is one of those books that raises that question.
In (very) brief, the book depicts two parallel storylines: that of a teenager who has run away from home and that of agiing man who, though he seems simple, posseses some remarkable abilities. The range of supporting characters is wide, and they are all well-drawn (with the possible exemption of the young Sakura, who is not so much enigmatic as she is simply a bit thin); Murakami has tremendous skills in character development: each character is well-rounded, well-developed, and speaks in a unique voice. All of the main characters also tend to wrap up their own trajectories, which is a feat (tying up all the loose ends, which is especially a formidable task in a novel as long and involved as this one) that many novelists never seem to grasp.
The plot itself is, as mentioned above, far more complicated than can be outlined in a review. What a potential reader needs to know is that the plot never becomes entangled and that the reader never becomes lost. There are plenty of points of metaphysical speculation, and the plot is all the richer for them; they are part of the novel's lifeblood. This is not navel-gazing; Murakami weaves them into his plot in order to make us reflect not only on the magic realism world of his characters but also on our own being-in-the-world. Reading this novel is NOT a passive activity but is instead one of active engagement.
Above all, reading this novel is enjoyable. Murakami has given us a page-turning plotline, one that keeps us asking what on earth could be coming next. He has given us likeable main characters, ones we want to follow into the next chapters. He has given us a world where the impossible is possible, and we want to extend our stay there. He does this all in an engaging, frequently shifting, narrative voice that keeps the novel cohesive and steers us onward.
Translator Philip Gabriel also deserves mention for his lively translation into English. Puns, jokes, idiomatic expressions, and slang all come through loud and clear in English. They style of the novel comes through in a natural voice, one that is never contrived or bland. | | Kafka on the Shore by Vintage Col. Sanders always pimps the best girls in town ... |
Haruki Murakami's masterpiece of multiple forms is difficult to pin-down, even for the basic Amazon review. Supposedly taken from the title of a famous pop-song by a fictional one-hit wonder, Kafka on the Shore is hypnotic in its prose, gripping in its depth and as lucid in its intrigue as any platinum selling piece of music could ever be, or promise.
But maybe that's what Murakami was suggesting on a few levels ... the power of music, the power of a dream or the power of a strong metaphor. Either way, he succeeds here, and does so with such a deft and trusting hand, that you can't help but not feel confronted by your own trust that you've put forward as a reader with every turn of the page. Rarely does an author give so much to a piece of work as Murakami does with the vagabond tale of young Kafka and the dutiful speaking cats.
Kafka on the shore is the book that everyone wants to write, it is the book that everyone wishes they had the ability to write. It's the book that modern civilization has been building up for, or at least it was when it was written. Taking the suggestion of the author and re-reading it several times, I find it to be just as compelling now as it was the first time I experienced it. And experienced is probably the best word. It's made of the stuff that built the pyramids, or the statues on Easter Island or the insight (or madness - take your pick) needed to paint The Starry Night or craft Beethoven's Archduke trio.
Murakami continually shakes off his detractors like a sleeping hobo, shakes off the pesky fleas in the cold of night, only to wake the next morning and commit himself to the impossible with vigor, proving the world is not right and something really does not look well upon the face of our beloved Colonel Sanders as retort.
With such a loyal fan base these days, Murakami wins the pennant - where other writers, like Carlos Castaneda, have failed to convince you that the world that they're describing is both real and tangible, no matter how many cracks they may take at it. Haruki Murakami hits home runs every time.
| | Kafka on the Shore by Vintage Product Description | Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.
As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder. Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers. | | Kafka on the Shore by Vintage Amazon.com | | The opening pages of a Haruki Murakami novel can be like the view out an airplane window onto tarmac. But at some point between page three and fifteen--it's page thirteen in Kafka On The Shore--the deceptively placid narrative lifts off, and you find yourself breaking through clouds at a tilt, no longer certain where the plane is headed or if the laws of flight even apply. Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world¹s toughest fifteen-year-old." He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days--continuing his impressive self-education--and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu and the other characters. To say that the fantastic elements of Kafka On The Shore are complicated and never fully resolved is not to suggest that the novel fails. Although it may not live up to Murakami's masterful The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Nakata and Kafka's fates keep the reader enthralled to the final pages, and few will complain about the loose threads at the end. --Regina Marler |
No item elements found in rss feed.
|
