2014 book 189

Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
NEW MURAKAMI! I don't read a lot of books by men, but exceptions will be made, and Murakami is a permanent exception. This one has plenty of the usual Murakami themes and motifs, but still feels like a departure somehow--the characters and plot feel really fresh.  The story revolves around the titular Tsukuru, an engineer whose new girlfriend convinces him to confront his past, and in particular, confront the four friends who suddenly stopped speaking to him when they were twenty (an event that still haunts him). It's a really compelling story--I feel like I was totally immersed in it, much more than with some of Murakami's other works (of course, I was equally immersed in the Jaclyn Moriarty book I read yesterday, so maybe that's just my mood this week). I will say that I had some seeeeerious mixed feelings about the big reveal, and wished the ending had been a little more conclusive (reading it as an e-book, I didn't noticed I was at the end until it just ended--and it felt abrupt). Definitely I wish a few of the hanging plot points had been resolved! But it's not like this was a mystery, and I guess resolving things isn't always Murakami's style. That did knock some points off of my grade though. A-/B+.