A Decade of Living in Georgia: the Good and the Bad.Every once in a while, we come across a book we just can’t take our eyes off it.Īs much as we want to maintain the spectator’s point of view, this novel really sucks you into the plot and makes you feel like the leading character.

Book Review: 'The Pursued and The Pursuing' by A J Odasso.

Book Review: 'The Loss of El Dorado' by V S Naipaul.

Book Review: 'Witch King' by Martha Wells.

Book Review: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway' by Jeff Kinney.

Book Review: 'The Life of a Stupid Man' by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.

Book Review: Read to Death at the Lakeside Library by Holly Danvers.

Book Review: One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard.

Book Review: ‘Witch King’ by Martha Wells.

Book Review: The Bee King by Mathilda Zeller.

I also reviewed: Book Review: “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of Pilgrimage” by Haruki Murakami

“For a 15 year old who doesn’t even shave yet, you’re sure carrying a lot of (emotional) baggage around” remarks Oshima to Kafka Murakami is to Western literature what Studio Ghibli is to Disney, strange, enthralling, exotic and a little unsettling. The writer Kafka shares with Murakami a strange view of our individual existence. The “ Kafka on the Shore” refers to a painting in the library and a song sung by a teenage Miss Saeki that was a big hit in Japan. The solutions may be different for different readers, what happens is definitely open to many interpretations. Murakami suggests the book should be read several times to understand its meaning. The book has many riddles, some strange dreams and odd happenings. Murakami is an afficionado of Western Culture and tells us much about Haydn and Beethoven, for example, as the story unravels. There are elements of magic realism with ghosts and leeches and sardines raining down from the sky. The characters in the book are fascinating and strange. The two plotlines don’t converge until the last quarter of the novel. In the other plotline we meet Nakata, a simple old man who can talk to cats, as a child he was victim of an incident on a mushroom foraging trip, after which he lost the ability to read. In one the protagonist is Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old runaway who seeks a kind of sanctuary in a private library, where he meets the friendly Oshima, who is not what he seems and the more aloof Miss Saeki. We have two parallel stories running on alternate chapters. This is a strange and at times surreal story. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”