Kafka on the shore...

“Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they're also what tear you apart.” 

There are certain books that get you completely hooked to the plot and some where the things that you are hooked on to has nothing to do with the plot. 'Kafka on the shore' was one such book for me where the things that made me think had hardly anything to do with the metaphysical plot of the novel. The story of Oedipus is the template for Murakami's narrative and yet his prose has the flow of jazz. 

“Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.” 

"Kafka on the shore" is a story of a Fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura run-away from home who finds himself in Takamastu, where he discovers a charming, privately owned public library to spend his days until things get complicated. Turns out the events in his life--and possibly even his body--is intralinked with a man named Nakata. When Nakata was a child during World War II, a mysterious force in a field put him and several other school children in a coma, but Nakata's mind was the only one erased entirely. As an adult, though mentally challenged, he has the ability to communicate with cats (along with several other larger-than-life talents). Surreal forces draw Nakata, all which relate to Kafka Tamura's world. 

“It feels like everything's been decided in advance that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It's like my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.” 

Damned with the oedipal curse, Kafka believes that he has no identity of his own and yet this is not a story of him trying to search his identity nor is it the story of him giving in to the oedipal curse. 

“Everything in life is a metaphor.” 

Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel that Murakami aimed to write.

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.” 

It is at once humorous and revelatory, all the while engaging.  I was charmed by the compellingly ordinary characters who move nonplussed through extraordinary realms and circumstances.  - Oshima, the person in charge of the library, who loves music and shares stories about musicians with Kafka; Hoshino, the truck driver who leaves everything and decides to accompany Nakata on his strange journey; Miss Saeki, the fifty-year old patron of the library whose tragic past clings to her even thirty years later, and who Kafka imagines to be his long-lost mother. These characters are as well-created as the two protagonists. When I started reading, I was more interested in Kafka's story, but as the pages kept turning, Nakata's strange mission intrigued me more.

“People are by and large a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel's always linked to the lie of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even.” 

“Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.” 

When asked about Nakata who is a lovable victim of the school disaster who is unlike everyone around him, in Nakata's words - "not bright", Murakami said -
I'm always interested in people who've dropped out of society, those who've withdrawn from it. Most of the people in Kafka on the Shore are, in one sense or another, outside the mainstream. Nakata is most definitely one of them. Why did I create a character like him? It must be because I like him. It's a long novel, and the author has to have at least one character he loves unconditionally.

Something that made me realize how all the characters in the books that I like are based on the exact same thing and it was one of the first things that attracted me to this book.

“Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside.” 

Kafka on the Shore showcases magical realism, people who can talk to cats, people who can cross the invisible barrier between life and death, which did not really encourage me to be so intent. And despite my reluctance to find anything grounded in reality, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There were times, I emerged from the book as if in a trance. The writing is deceptively simple.

“But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.” 

Unbelievable stuff happens on the outside, but underneath those, there are meanings. The book is written at such a metaphysical level that it's easier to grasp the threads once you understand that the world in this book runs on a different dimension. For that reason, this is a book that has to be reread - it's almost impossible to get all the threads at one go. I'm pretty much astounded at Murakami's ingenuity at writing this book. How he managed to hold this story together with all that happens is pretty much incredible. There is strange stuff happening in this book, and not even in the paranormal realm, but in a very metaphysical sense. It challenged me to accept the idea of a world where you can meet dead people to get answers to your most pressing questions. Like they say, once you accepted the impossible, the possibilities are endless. Mostly, Kafka on the Shore challenged me to construct my own barriers between reality and otherworld, and keep moving the barrier further as he put forth an idea.

“Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.” 

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.”