Thursday, October 13, 2005

 

Dance Dance Dance By Haruki Murakami

Dance Dance Dance - My first for the author and can be aptly described listening to Floyd after smoking a joint - surreal, quite like poetry and blue.

Again another author that came highly recomended and lived upto the hype. The book was compelling enough for me to abandon Shalimar the Clown and now need to find justifiable excuses not to get back to it.

The story line is linear in one sense and layered like a lovely chocolate cake in another. One dream that triggers off a memory and forces the unnamed protagonist to take a trip down memory lane into the nether regions of TheSheepman and The Dolphin Hotel.

The why and wheres explained, the story really explores love. Unrequited love, filial love, need based love, lust driven love, love bought in return for money, love for the sake of love - all kinds. Each explored very nicely with words and some epiphanies to be had along the way. I cant remember any of the phrases that I particularly liked except for the one of shoveling snow - literally, culturally and even figuratively.

Made me wonder, like I used to when I was a journalist, about what the point of That One Story was....really how it anything every change?

There are times when open ended stories leave me feeling strangely unsatisfied but not this story. Its one of those books where the tale comes and goes with characters enmeshed and one wonders how can writing something so intricate seem so effortless.

While reading up about the book (which I always land up doing AFTER I have finished the book) makes me wonder why I did not do so before. This book is supposed to be a sequel to another Murakami but I have Norweigan Wood lined up so others are gonna have to wait.

Lovely lovely book.

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