Kafka on the Shore

The vague symbolic meaning of which I realised during dinner, two hours after finishing the book. I seem to do that a lot with Murakami's endings, though The Wind-up Bird Chronicle I shall never get.

So. Prostitute sex. Incestuous sex. Spiritual out-of-the-body sex. Consensual sex. Not-quite sex. Most of which involving a fifteen year old boy. Throw in the great kitty massacre (which rather made me want to kill Murakami, then myself), Colonel Sanders (from, er, KFC) pimping, leeches and fish (tuna and mackerel) falling from the sky, an educated homosexual transsexual, a cat named after expensive tuna, a lot of metaphysical talk and the phrase life is a metaphor. Naturally, it all plays out to be quite a lot of love (minus the cat murder part).

I loved Nakata, the "aging simpleton" who kept saying Nakata isn't very bright in that heartbreaking way. Rather a victim of circumstance but lacking even the mechanism to understand that. Up to the point of the book, in fact, he is morally and emotionally vacant, functioning for the sake of functioning. But, naturally, Things happen and emotional and moral responses are pulled out of him and Nakata eventually proves himself to be far wiser, more capable, and even more morally upright than anyone else. Which is, you know, nice. And a direct contrast to our so-called intelligentsia who abuse power relentlessly under the guise of authority.

And I loved the librarian. Something, I suppose, about the way his fringe falls across his forehead, his impeccable taste for clothes, his long, perfectly sharpened yellow pencil, how the gears in his head turn at full speed, and the intellectual authority he oh-so-politely commands. And there's the cutest good-for-nothing former delinquent who unexpectedly finds redemption through Nakata and Beethoven and eventually inherits the ability to converse with cats. And the cast of cats, including a haughty Siamese who watches opera.

The explicitly sex scared me initially. But since life is a metaphor, the book has to be a metaphor. Allegory. Whatever. The Great Greek Tragedy, only the hero doesn't die in this case. Which is really good enough for me. I suspect I don't understand half of it, but the little details, the subtle nuances and the suggestions of hope balances out the moments of O.O-ness.

I shall never read it again, though, for the feline massacre scene made me want to tear my hair out and throw myself into the Nile. Like, stop killing cats, talented authors with astoundingly good writing.