My general gut feeling remains the same on this. I feel that the story is wonderful, but would have liked to see better handling of that story.
Now I’m sure that Murakami fans think I’m off the wall on this, but I just feel a bit disappointed by the ending that was presented almost as the end of a fantasy fic novel, leaving some of the more intriguing questions raised either answered by a preachy-form of character (Oshima) opinion:
"Every one of us is losing something precious to us," he says after the phone stops ringing. "Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means o be alive. But inside our heads–at least that’s where I imagine it–there’s a little room where we store those memories." (p. 463)
Sort of anticlimactic, I thought. And this wisdom is from a twenty-one year-old who admittedly is quite together despite some complex gender association. But it’s nothing particularly deep, and the boy Kafka has been through so much and yet merely makes up his mind to go back home and finish school.
But there was enough here for me to explore Murakami’s work further and I will indeed soon order The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to see what else Murakami has to offer.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology