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What a fucked up book.

I really wanted to like it in the beginning, the structure of alternating chapters on two characters/storylines, suggesting they are interconnected in identify or fate was cool, but I got so uncomfortable (and bored) reading halfway into it.

I pushed myself to finish this book hoping for some mind blowing insight or explanation to the events and interconnections between characters, but nope, ending was so mid and disappointing. I can’t even count the number of unnecessary characters (2 feminists, Colonel Sanders, philosophy-citing prostitute, Sada etc) and unnecessary events that happened with no explanation (the cat killing Johnnie Walker and his evil flute, falling fish from the sky etc)

I’m also really pissed by the so many reviews that praise this book on a higher philosophical level (?) that I did not see at all (the reviews tricked me into being interested in the book in the first place). And they almost never mention the problematic incest scenes, which is supposedly the main theme/character arc of the book (?) So many of these 5-star reviews over-analyze the symbolisms in the book but completely ignore the incest relationships and scenes. If you are so impressed and so deeply invested in the story, why don’t you ever discuss the main “oedipal prophecy� storyline??

All I got from this is, Murakami has some really troubling teenage boy fantasies.