Kafka on the Shore
By Haruki Murakami
Rating 3/5
Genres: Metaphysical, magical realism, fiction, mysticism,2022-read
Man! What the hell is this book? What is it about? Don't get me wrong. I am not giving this a lower rating because it's prose is bad/ unreadable or the story/plot is not good or any such thing..its purely because I didn't really get the crux of what the author is trying to tell. Its highly addictive but the story he is trying to narrate is lost on me. I want to find someone, anyone - who has read this book and totally understood every aspect of it. Like who can answer all the questions as to what the heck is going on..whats the meaning of a certain episode, the motivations and significanceof a certain act.. I also bet there won't be any two people who read this book and take away the same thing home..it seems to strike a different chord for each reading and for every person..
The three main characters are Kafka Tamura, Sabato Nakata and Miss Saeki. Kafka is a kid of fifteen based in Tokyo, Japan. His father is a famous sculptor who is also very distant to his son. When he was four years old, his mother walks out of their life taking away his adopted elder sister. This leaves a scar on the child and he suffers from pangs of unwantedness and abandonment all his life. His father sort of puts a curse on him (why? We don't know) that he will be the cause of his death and he will have incestuous sexual relationship with his mother and sister. So he runs away from his house one day to avoid this curse and also because he doesn't want to live with his father. He has a imaginary friend called Crow who on occasions gives him philosophical advice when he falls into a crisis. He makes it to Takamitsu and becomes an assistant to a homosexual(why is this orientation important? I haven't got a clue) librarian. On the bus ride, he meets a girl whom he metaphorically refers to as his sister and is physically attracted to. The library is headed by a Miss Saeki who is in her mid fifties. He falls in love with her and builds oedipus relationship with her while assuming her to be his lost mother. Its a very very twisted sort of fate that he seems to be falling into..the very things he is trying to run away from are luring him and drawing him..just like his father has predicted/cursed. This Miss Saeki had a past where she was a successful musician and a cheerful person full of life but having lost her true lover at age of twenty, she becomes devoid of a vibrancy in life. Kafka on the shore refers both to the album song that had made her famous in her hayday and also a portrait of a kid on a shore which is the inspiration to that song. (At the end, she tells that metaphorically Kafka Tamura is the kid in the picture and he ought to keep her memories alive within himself by having the picture with him maybe accepting the role of a metaphorical mother to him who abandoned him as a child).
In a parallel line, from the same place where Kafka is from, an old man in his sixties, Nakata also lives. As a child during the world War, he has been through an incident that left him in a coma like state for weeks and as a result of which he loses all his memory, ability to read/write, develops a mystical talent for communication with cats etc. He kills a strange man who calls himself Johnny Walker and who eats raw hearts of cats in a bid to collect their souls and make a flute.After that he sets out on a journey to close an entrance stone that is opened by Miss Saeki as a young girl.. its all uncertain what this entrance leads to, what the snake like creature that crawled out of Nakata is, what did it mean for that entrance to be closed and the creature killed, why crow attacked the soul of Johnny Walker..all these are open questions and perhaps can only be answered by one's own imagination.
I myself am left in an unhappy and dissatisfied state of mind..because I haven't got any of the answers.. anyways, its a very gripping and engulfing read..hard to putdown.
Comments
Post a Comment