Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami

Excerpt
Kafka sits in a chair by the shore, Thinking for the pendulum that moves the world, it seems.
When your heart is closed,
The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx,
Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams.

The drowning girl's fingers
Search for the entrance stone, and more.
Lifting the hem of her azure dress,
She gazes --
At Kafka on the shore

A Brief Summary
This book follows the intertwining stories of 15-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura, as he tries to escape his Oedipal destiny, and elderly, mysteriously blank Tanaka, who is "not too bright" but has the uncanny ability to speak with cats. Already somehow connected on a metaphysical level, their destinies draw them both inexorably towards a library in the sea-side town Takamatsu and towards each other.

The Gay (SPOILERY)
One of my main reservations when beginning this book was that, well, I harbor a certain indifference towards the sexual fantasies and developments of fifteen-year-old heterosexual males. I have a younger brother, I saw enough of that at home. The story ended up winning me over quickly enough, but I was also pleasantly surprised by appearance of the transgendered character Oshima early in the book, as one of Kafka's first allies. Oshima is intriguing and androgynous and quite mysterious -- I was actually worried for awhile that he would turn out to be a vampire; this book is that weird -- and I thought the revelation of his secret was an especially lovely moment. He is never given a very large role, nor are we privy to many details of his personal life, but Oshima, with his penchant for reckless driving and philosophical musings, was one of my favorite characters in Kafka, and I was very pleased to see a positively presented, gay, FTM transperson in a book.

My Thoughts
Kafka on the Shore starts with the mysterious Boy Called Crow psyching Kafka up to run away, telling him he needs to be the "toughest 15-year-old in the world." "Oh, gag me with a spoon," thought Emma, "what sort of macho shit is this going to be?" (The answer is: not very macho shit, unless Emma was a lot more hardcore than she thought she was when she hid out in a library reading Sir Richard Francis Burton and purposefully trained her stomach to need less food when she was fifteen.) But I had been planning on reading Murakami for a long time, and I wasn't going to give up that easy.

By the second chapter, which, in government reports, documented the bizarre goings-on in the hills of Japan during WWII that left second protagonist Tanaka a blank slate, I was hooked.

No, not much "actually happens" in this book. No, it never fully ties up any of its many riddles -- though the eagerness with which I raced to the ending suggests it must be doing something to make the reader want to pluck out the heart of its mystery. Yes, frogs rain from the sky and people (maybe) (metaphorically) sleep with their mothers. If you cannot handle these things, this is probably not the book for you. What the book is, though, is a stunningly imaginative and captivating novel, inscrutable but pleasingly intellectual nonetheless. It is a Greek tragedy that skips the tragedy, that believes in fate but lets its characters control their own destinies. I thought this book was remarkable and not only would highly recommend it, but am eager to read more by Murakami.

Star Ratings
Overall: ★★★★
Queer Content: ★★★