Kafka On The Shore

Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami has to be hands-down the strangest book I have ever read. I love working in a book shop, I get exposed to so many different writers and ideas I probably wouldn't have considered before. Although Kafka is an international best seller, my life and this book were unlikely to ever cross paths.

That, in iself, is not altogether unlike a lot of the novel's plot. In the book, Kafka Tamura runs away from home in order to escape a curse, handed down to him by his Father. Oedipal in nature, characters in the novel draw deliberate comparisons with Greek tragedies and in this way the book follows a very similar sort of path -- certain events are inevitable, and in a way we are all just playing our parts. Running somewhat parallel to Kafka Tamura's storyline is that of an old man named Satoru Nakata. Nakata was among a group of children gathering mushrooms one day on a school trip, towards the end of World War II. A strange silver light was seen in the sky and the entire class fell into a kind of waking sleep, or hypnotic state. Nakata was the only child not to awake shortly afterwards -- and when he did finally awake many weeks later, most of his mental faculties had been lost, and replaced with the ability to talk to cats.

While Nakata is trying to solve the mystery of a lost cat, Kafka is trying to find his long-lost Mum and sister, whom both left when he was a child. It's never explained why he is so keen to find them, when the whole reason he runs away from home is to escape the curse that he is destined to sleep with them both.

The two plot lines alternate with no seeming connection between them for most of the book. At one point a character mentions that in fiction if a pistol should appear then at some point it is going to be fired -- this clearly indicates that the two plots will at some point converge, otherwise they wouldn't both be included.

Among the themes explored in the book is the relationship between reality and dreams -- there seems to be a very flexible boundary between the two, and where one ends and the other begins is never made very clear.

I openly admit that many things in the book confused me. Nakata meets a man who has adopted the persona of Johnnie Walker. Not just the name, but the entire look -- hat, boots and everything else. Johnnie Walker is killing cats, in order to make a flute with their souls -- and he incites Nakata into killing him. Johnnie Walker later appears in one particularly surreal passage involving a crow. The name Kafka means crow in Czech, and the character Kafka seems to have a dissociative identity he refers to as "the boy named Crow". The conflict between the crow and Johnnie Walker could perhaps be interpreted as Oedipul. Who or what Johnnie Walker is is never made clear, other than that he is bad. All the business about the souls of cats and flutes is again never explained. What was achieved by Nakata killing him -- at his request -- is, guess what, never explained.

As if Johnnie Walker isn't confusing enough, later in the novel a truck driver who befriends Nakata meets Colonel Sanders. Like Johnnie Walker, Colonel Sanders has only adopted that persona -- but explains that instead he is a concept. He is also quite bad tempered, and working as a pimp.

If all of this sounds confusing, it is. I did say right away it was the strangest book I've read, but it is also incredibly well written and very engaging. The classical tragedy nature of the story adds symbolism to the strange events -- you don't ask why Nakata would be left able to talk to cats, it is clear that this happens so that he may fulfil a later destiny. Everyone has their roles to play.

The surrealism is welcome, too many books go from point A to point B and tie everything up in a neat little bow.