He toils on as an engineer, depressed if not suicidal, plagued by frighteningly orgasmic dreams, until he meets Sara, who tells him he has to seek out his friends and find out what happened if he wants to be Sara-worthy. He’s alone, bereft, as if his whole world has been taken away. Tsukuru has been abandoned by his four closest friends, without explanation, when he’s in college. Unfortunately, Tsukuru lives up to the “Colorless” title a little too closely he’s more of a cipher than the usual Murakami stand-in. On the face of it, Tsukuru is like his other protagonists - diffident, longing for connection, something of a beta dog but curious what he can learn from the alphas whether they be male or female. A mere 386 reduced-size pages, it feels like a very unambitious book, as if Murakami is saying, “Even I need a break after that last one.” “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki” is at the opposite end of the pole. A bad Murakami novel is still a walk in a brilliant friend’s company, which is why “1Q84,” the stuck-in-place story of a female assassin, didn’t feel like a forced march. A bad Norman Mailer or John Updike novel is a bad novel. Not all writers are capable of providing that same sort of feeling. A lesser episode of one’s favorite TV series isn’t cause for alarm it still has the actors, cinematography, sensibility that can feel like a warm bath (even if it’s a “Breaking Bad” or “Sopranos” bloodbath). The answer is that readers just love spending time in Murakami’s Bizarro Universe, no matter what's going on there.

Why are people lining up for this odd duck of a writer, a quasi-absurdist, somewhat depressive Japanese novelist whose last three-volume set, “1Q84,” at close to 1,000 pages, had to try the patience of his firmest fans, myself included? (None in Boston, according to his publisher.) 12) for “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage: A novel” in Wichita, Seattle, Brooklyn and even Oxford, Mississippi. There will be midnight release parties (Aug. Facebook Email This article is more than 8 years old.Ī new book by Haruki Murakami, as Patti Smith said yesterday, carries the same weight as a CD release by Bob Dylan in the '60s.

Murakami colorless