In my first year of undergrad, I read one of Haruki Murakami’s Rat Trilogy books. I found the novel so unremarkable that I don’t recall which one it was. Having announced this judgment to several Murakami advocates over the years since, they implored me to give him another chance. A dozen years later, I relented.
Picking up a copy of South of the Border, West of the Sun, I was surprised with what I found: it was even worse. Sorry not sorry.
The entire novel follows a pre-pubescent Hijame through his middle-age, and more specifically, follows his Odysseus-sized hubris and unrelenting, lust-crazed hormones toward a childhood flame he eventually discovers and—surprise!—has sex with. The end.
Can someone please explain the point? Maybe there’s someone I’m missing due to translation. Maybe. I respect Murakami’s craft (as I understand it, he wrote too floridly in Japanese and so to be more succinct he learned English, wrote his manuscripts in English, and translated them back into Japanese in order to have a more limited—and thus concise—sentence structure), but no amount of pith can save this story from a one star review.
Not much else to say. Stay north of the border, stay east of the sun on this one. 1/5 stars.
Second Time Books 