How does one even write about a Murakami novel. You could use words like beautiful, poetic, surreal, mystical, out of this world, deep, soulful, and yet it wouldn’t really capture the experience. Because, it IS an experience. This is my first Murakami (and I’ve been told not the best choice for a first Murakami), but ‘reading’ is not the word I would use to what is really, turning the pages and experiencing the world of Murakami.
The ‘world of Murakami’ is probably the closest I can get to describing the book. It’s a world that is full of metaphors, where every emotion in one situation is felt through another and often unrelated situation. It’s a world of parallel dimensions that we experience all at the same time, just by being connected and disconnected from who we are. It’s a world of fierce individuality at odds with an Asian culture, that is born out of decades of developed urban living. It’s a world of sensorial experiences of everyday things around you that you didn’t know could have that impact. It’s a world of hopeless desire that struggles to stay alive like a flickering candle just before it dies out. And it’s a world that you enter, every time you pick up the book, leaving the reality of your own world far behind.
And just like the protagonist wonders when his friend disappears into the ‘other side’, we also wonder while reading the book, which is the real side of our lives and which is the other side. What if our real lives everyday is actually the ’other side’ of our lives.
The story of the book revolves around a naive young girl, Sumire, a dreamer, wanna-be-writer, who is trying to find herself, through conversations with her best friend, college mate, K. Sumire falls in love with a much older woman, Miu. And after starting to work with her, during a professional-cum-holiday trip through Europe with her, suddenly disappears. As Miu struggles to reciprocate Sumire’s desire, just like Sumire is unable to see K’s love for her, the story takes us through a futile journey of trying to find Sumire and more importantly the reason she disappeared.
Through the eyes and emotions of Sumire, K and Miu, the novel tells the story of how our identity forms through our love for others and the love for ourselves.
It’s a story of our life-long attempt at making sense of what our life-plan really is. It is a story of endlessly chasing the mirage of purpose, that in fact does not exist.
It is a story of who we were and who we are today. Over the years of living our lives day-after-day, what have we gained, what have we learnt, how have we grown… but perhaps more importantly, what have we lost, what have we had to unlearn and what part of ourselves have we left behind. Are we still the same person that we once were? Or has that person gone to the ‘other side’?
But, most of all, it’s a story of loneliness. A loneliness that creeps in on you over the years, and seeps into your bloodstream and without you knowing, becomes your primary life-force.
In one of the last chapters, K wonders to himself “Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the Earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”
…
And to think what I read is the English translated version from Japanese. I can only imagine the richness of the experience of the World of Murakami, if I could read his language.
Norwegian Wood, next!
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