End of the world and Hard boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami

    

End of the world and Hard boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami

Tiny Overview

In one story, a man encrypts highly valued information with his unconscious and has to then run around in the sewers.

In another story, there is a walled off town filled with secrets and unicorns.

Themes:

• Contemporary Fiction
• Literary Fiction
• Sci-Fi
• Adventure
• Fantasy 
• Magical Realism

My Waffling

This is another book that I got from the secondhand book sale in my town. It was the last one left and I LOVED the cover - especially how it would relate to the story. The cover above is the version I have. Whenever I do these reviews I try my best to use the same covers that I read.

I have not read any of Murakami's work before, and my first thought was that he is very popular and well known, and he really must be goo if this was the last copy left on the display.

I have never read a book like this one. I was absolutely hooked by the first 100 or so pages, and the switching between the two stories knowing they were going to intertwine had me so excited. I was especially so intrigued by the idea of 'sound pulling' (taking away / lowering the sound of objects or people) and how it was going to effect the plot.

After this, I really struggled to power through. Especially after the 'twist' was revealed.

While I was still in the honeymoon phase of this book, I read what other people were thinking on StoryGraph. Somebody said that they really struggled through the last 150 pages of the book, and I can really relate to this. Another user said that it was 'another Murakami book with a hopeless male lead'. So all of his books seem to be full of mopey men.

This book had no characters with names. Both of the male main characters objectified women, and all the women mentioned threw themselves at them both. The noncing wasn't great either, saying he loves chubby women and constantly viewing a 17 year old in a sexual manner. I know this book was published in the 1980's but it's still a bit strange. There was also a lot of talk about the main guys penis and peeing.

There was no conflict between characters, everything was easy. This made it even more boring as nothing actually happened. I didn't understand what he was saying when he was trying to explain nonsense of made up things for the book. I was so done with it and nothing made sense.

I should never be happy to be done with a book. I genuinely did a sigh of relief when I read the last pages and closed it.

2.5/5