by Haruki Murakami
From internationally acclaimed author Haruki Murakami—a fantastical illustrated short novel about a boy imprisoned in a nightmarish library.
Opening the flaps on this unique little book, readers will find themselves immersed in the strange world of best-selling Haruki Murakami's wild imagination.
The story of a lonely boy, a mysterious girl, and a tormented sheep man plotting their escape from a nightmarish library, the book is like nothing else Murakami has written.
Designed by Chip Kidd and fully illustrated, in full color, throughout, this small format, 96 page volume is a treat for book lovers of all ages.
(Source: Goodreads)
I found the story to be deeply engaging, although very odd.
I hate that I don't understand the book but I'm even more confused to how I can't hate it. In fact, it's odd that I enjoy it despite not being able to understand it.
(exceprt from my Goodreads first review)
To be honest, when I was first asked about the book, that was the very thing I replied. Something mysteriously unfortunate happened to the guy and until the very end, the mystery was not solved, and he remain unfortunate. My understanding was somewhat limited but then my sister read it and we started a discussion which lead me to an almost immediate re-read.
I wouldn't know how to portray the book exactly without giving out spoilers. The boy who was stuck in the library, decided to read a book, and his experience describes exactly how I felt about the whole book.
"- each page stuck in my memory, word for word."An except from another review by Alan Cheuse:
As Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice in Wonderland, things get curiouser and curiouser. And the story itself, full of characters and images both awfully weird and utterly down to earth, transforms as you read it, becoming a living, nearly talismanic exercise in how to lift yourself out of the realm of the ordinary and allow the sentences to carry you into an alternate universe.
The mysterious pleasure of it all is the payoff when you read Murakami. Some scholar may explain it to us all one day, diagram the roots of his work in the Japanese storytelling tradition, in fable and myth, the special effects he imports from American literature. For me, now, I'm just enjoying basking in the heat of this hypnotic short work by a master who is playing a long game.
It's a curious book. Odd, but I like it.
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