Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am rushing this review to warn other Murakami fans (fanatics?) that this one starts out surprisingly slow. It wasn't until Part 2 that the pace started approaching a typical Murakami. I am also warning those who have never read Murakami before that that is NOT the novel to start with. As always with his novels, it is of little value to attempt a plot summary. Cults and Little People and two moons? Yep, sounds like Murakami. In fact you can open the book to any section and after a few minutes know that you can be reading no author other than Murakami. It is a highly unusual voice, and comes through as distinctively in this as in his other books. There are two main characters, a man and a woman who knew each other as children. Both had typically Murakami odd lonely childhoods, and though they haven't seen each other since they were young, both continue to remember the other with a particular intensity. In alternating chapters we follow the lives of these two, and soon we figure out that their stories are slowly (oh so slowly) leading towards each other. As always, I am immensely enjoying reading this book. But I do have reservations. The book is too long, maybe 1/3rd too long. A typical feature in his books is to present an idea, an object, a reference from one perspective, and then repeat it, often multiple times, from other perspectives. Only through these repeated narrow views does the reader begin to piece together the true import of what is being presented. This layering of perspectives, added to the unusual nature of what is being seen, is core to the world Murakami unveils to us in his fiction. The problem in this book is that the perspectives are over-layered and at some point lose their power. I was thoroughly sick of the Little People, two moons, 1Q84... the entire "other" world way before it even really appears. There are insufficient ideas for the size of the book, and this increasingly claustrophobic duality of the 2 worlds and 2 characters coming increasingly close simply gets old after a few hundred pages. I've read every single book by Murakami, including the non-fiction cult and running books, but this is the only one that has not 100% engaged me. His characters are usually somewhat flat, and it works well for the hyper-active worlds these characters inhabit. But that same flatness continued for almost 1,000 pages is tough. Without the characters as a strong focus for the readers, you are forced to concentrate on the events as the main focus of the book, and following flat characters through a dizzying world of ever accelerating events left this reader exhausted. I expect to have my reactions mediated through the characters actually living those events. But because these two characters are emotionally stunted I found myself almost ignoring their responses as my mind leapt straight into the events themselves. I realize this is a less than coherent review, but I am trying to explain how this book by one of my favorite authors has so far left me alternately bored and exhausted, yet I can still recommend it to fans of Murakami, since we've been without a novel from him for too long.