(My first shot at a review for the review forums - hope it's suitable!)

Japan is a complex and strange place; it must be, because from nearly every foreigner who goes there, it draws theories and explanations; it is a place where the why is almost as important as the where. It is strange then, that Japan's most famous and best regarded living novelist (in the West, at least), Haruki Murakami, writes what seems to be such simple prose.

Kafka On The Shore, Murakami's most recent full length novel is a classic example of his naive, almost flat style, a prose with simple descriptions and that very straightforwardly owns up to its influences. And yet, it is a cunningly complex book with a beautiful, dreamlike atmosphere that is as powerful and strange as anything Murakami has written previously, while being arguably more urgent and addictive than ever.

It begins by intertwining three stories; first, Kafka Tamura, a 15 year old running away from home, second, Nakata, a man who can talk to cats, but who, thanks to a childhood accident, has no memories or appreciation of the social norms of the adult world, and thirdly, a school trip one afternoon in 1944. As the novel progresses, the three stories distill into two very focussed narrative strands; it's a longish novel (500 pages in hardback), but fiendishly addictive; the directness of the prose, and Murakami's refusal to create multiple tones/languages/images for his separate stories, for the dream world and the real world, give the book a brilliant and compulsive consistency.

From (an aspiring) writer's point of view, there's plenty to admire, inspire and to analyse in Kafka on the Shore: the effectiveness of the dual stories, the power of the prose's directness in terms of reference to pop culture and to dreams, but it's Murakami's confidence to pick up realism and even mundanity when it suits (normal meals, car journeys) and to drop it when necessary (the pimp dressed as Colonel Sanders, super heavy dream stones) that really stays with reader, because it creates a book that both shocks (cat murders) and beguiles (60s pop records, depictions of friendship).

Lovely! You can't go wrong with a Murakami in my opinion - ever!!

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