Sounds interesting? You won't be disappointed. However, while "Kafka on the Shore" entertains the reader with crisp storytelling that indulges in self-conscious observations of the world and unexpected humor and fantasies, long-time readers may feel that Murakami's extravagant imagination has gone too far this time. He leaves the loose ends by themselves. It is also hard to discard the feeling that "Kafka on the Shore" is simply a montage of many different themes and images from his past stories.
That said, "Kafka on the Shore" is still a brilliant work of fiction that will make its readers gulp down the whole story excitedly. The genre is hard to define-it is a mystery, a thriller and a fantasy all at once, as well as coming-of-age tale and yet another story hinging on the Oedipus complex.
The plot unravels with alternating chapters that each feature the journey of two separate characters who never meet and seemingly can't be more different. Kafka Tamura, "the toughest 15-year-old," is a runaway from his Tokyo home who is unusually precocious, taciturn and introspective. While these characteristics make Kafka's pathos and dilemma more urgent, the character lacks realism and is hard to identify with. Kafka-whose real name remains secret until the end-is health conscious like a retired middle-aged man, but also highly sexual. He quotes Yeats, watches Truffaut and is a master at extracting metaphors from the world around him-not quite your typical teenager. Murakami's depiction of Kafka Tamura as a 15 year-old-the youngest main character from all of the author's to date-helps to build the sense of crisis for the pure inner self, the true identity that we all lose at some point as we succumb to the world and become adults. The teenage years are the time when that tragedy happens to most of us. But Kafka remains more of a metaphysical concept (maybe more so than even Colonel Sanders, the comic "metaphysical CON-CEPT" who is some sort of a meddling spirit) that we are invited to consider rather than a character with whom to identify.
On the other hand, Nakata-the other protagonist-is one of Murakami's most endearing creations. As a child he and 15 of his classmates mysteriously lost consciousness. When he woke up three months later, he had lost his ability to read, write and learn things quickly. As the story opens, he is an apologetic and often bemused old man who leads a quiet life finding cats for people to make extra money to supplement his subsidy from the government. All of this is made possible by his ability to talk to cats. His conversations with cats and later with Hoshino, a young truck driver who becomes his follower, brim with the sense of humor unique to Murakami and a warm appreciation of human relationships.
What slowly but ultimately connects these two very different characters and their stories is their shared sense of having utterly lost something that is part of them. Kafka has lost his mother and sister, while Nakata has lost the 9-year-old self who probably would have grown up to be another "depart mint chief of indus tree." Other characters in the novel-Saeko, who has stopped living in the present after her true love was beaten to death by mistake, and Hoshino, who has never thought about his life or identity before-share the same sense of hollowness about their very being. The utter loneliness in the midst of society is the resounding image beneath Murakami's hip, casual narrative style. Both Kafka and Nakata feel an incompleteness within themselves, and that is how they will eventually present themselves as one in the reader's mind-Nakata as a vacant shell feeling utterly empty, a "hollow man" if you will, and Kafka as an embodiment of mind and spirit who travels between the physical world and the spiritual world.
Feeling confused? Not to worry, it's not because you're "not too bright," as Nakata might apologize. "Kafka on the Shore" is one big metaphor comprising numerous other metaphors that do not necessarily need be interpreted. The novel is grotesque-what do you expect when the word "Kafka" dominates a novel's title?-and surprisingly anticlimactic, lacking any conclusive ending where the reader experiences a moment of epiphany and answers. There are many mysteries and random eccentricities that Murakami only touches upon and never clarifies for the reader. But that betrayed feeling, somewhat like the confusion after waking up from a dream about negotiating the labyrinth of a dark forest, will tempt the reader back, hoping to understand the riddles better this time. And before you know it, you can't get enough of those mesmerizing imaginations, odd characters and astonishing, ridiculous events. Welcome to the world of Haruki Murakami.