'Dance, Dance, Dance' -Haruki Murakami 1988 (English translation by Alfred Birnbaum 1994)

Murakami's novels are so unusual I find them very hard to describe. He is definitely one of my favourite authors, for a number of reasons relating to his style of storytelling, but especially because I read two of his books while travelling in Japan alone earlier this year and they became a big part of my journey. Thus far I have read (in this order); NorwegianWood(The movie of which I saw recently and enjoyed), The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase, and today's review Dance, Dance, Dance. All four feature a Japanese male protagonist who deals with love, loss, loneliness, rejection, dislocation and friendship. Feelings of isolation and despair are pervasive in all four books, yet somehow they are not depressing.

But for today we will focus on 'Dance, Dance, Dance'. This is the sequel to 'A Wild Sheep Chase', something I did not realise when I bought the book, but was immediately clear once I began reading. I think you could read 'Dance, Dance, Dance' alone, however reading 'A Wild Sheep Chase' beforehand would definitely help to make sense of some of the more bizarre supernatural elements.

I honestly believe that the people who write the blurbs on the back of books must not have read the books they are writing about (This is a long running bugbear of mine). The same goes for many reviewers, or the people who choose which quotes go onto book covers. With 'Dance, Dance, Dance' this was especially irritating, as the blurb and some of the quotes (in my opinion, feel free to correct me) completely misrepresent Murakami's work. Dance, Dance, Dance, is not science fiction. Murakami is not 'imagining the future' as one reviewer mentioned, the book is set in the late 1980's in Japan, a real time, and in real places. There are real celebrities mentioned, many many real songs from the correct periods mentioned, and references to real events such as the Vietnam war, World War 2, student riots in Japanese universities etc. None of these events are 're-imagined' and the world is not an alternate universe, a dystopian or indeed utopian future. The closest thing to 'science fiction' are the supernatural elements I mentioned before. However they are written in such a way that they could be explained as vivid dreams revealing the (unnamed) protagonist's subconscious. The main supernatural character 'Sheep Man' is described as being a part of the protagonist, and the supernatural worlds visited are described as belonging to the protagonist (though a hotel receptionist also accesses one). Another main character described by the blurb as a 'lovely teenage psychic' specifically says she is not a psychic, though he abilities add a strong element of the metaphysical to the novel, and I think you could call her an empath.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I love the way Murakami writes (there are a couple of quotes below to demonstrate), and the story like that is a slow building detective novel or crime drama. As more and more information comes to light and more and more people become implicated, the original investigation reveals many related crimes, and ultimately there is a resolution and a mostly happy ending. 

[With regards to advances in phone communication] "But no matter how advanced the systems, no matter how precise, unless we have the will to communicate, there's no connection" (p126)    

[Dick North is a character with one arm, who, in the preceding chapter, died] "The house was still haunted by Dick North's presence. Dick North was still inside me as well. I remembered his smile, his surprised look when I asked him if he used his feet to slice bread. Interesting man. He'd come more alive since his death." (p335)

Love it, Read it,
LR

'Fight Club' -Chuck Palahniuk 1996

This is a guest review from the 'Handsome Leper':


I don’t consider myself to be a reader of literature. I was about to insert some witty sentence here about you giving me a book by such-and-such author, but I’m so ‘uncultured’ I can’t even think of a relevant name. Dostoevsky? Even his name puts me to sleep. If I find myself unable to read at night, I’ll read a page or two of 1984 and that knocks me out in no time (sorry princess...). I’ll be honest though; I haven’t read much of classic literature to begin with. I’m a fantasy and science-fiction fan, through and through (though given my distaste of 1984 a sentence ago I draw a line even in the genres I truly love) so it was with no small amount of trepidation that I bought ‘Fight Club’ from the ‘indie’ kind of independent book store in the swanky part of Melbourne city a while ago. I’d seen the movie, so unfortunately the ending was spoiled (and will be for you if you hadn’t watched or read the movie or book, so consider this my warning), but I was sucked in by the first couple of pages, so I decided to risk my hard-earned fifteen dollars and buy the thing.

Well, I can’t say my money was wasted. But then again I don’t know what to say.

Let’s start with the technicalities. The book was good. Really good. Incredibly good. I can see what everyone’s been going on about. First rule, second rule, et cetera. I have finally been enlightened. Granted the book’s hardly old enough to be considered a classic, but it is nonetheless literature, and I did in fact enjoy reading it. And there’s an added bonus that I’m now one of the clique who can look down their noses at those who have ‘only’ watched the movie and haven’t read the book that inspired it.

Okay no, not really.

The writing style was thick and fast in the truest sense of the words. To me the book felt like a key. Not because it unlocked some hidden thing within myself or any of that nonsense, but rather in the design of it. A key is simple. It’s plain. It unlocks things. That’s all it does. It doesn’t have any unnecessary bells and whistles attached to it, because it doesn’t need them. All it needs is... well, itself. As it is. ‘Fight Club’ is just like a key. It has no superfluous description. No flowery words, no unnecessary paragraphs describing someone’s hair. Not unless said description was utterly crucial to the plot or the development of the central characters.

And yet, I still found it hard to read through. Perhaps in the way that someone finds it difficult to live off multi-vitamins and baby food. Sure, you’ll get all the nutrients and vitamins you’ll need, but damn, that’s just no fun.

I’m not going to talk about the themes it presented because frankly, they’ve been talked to death already. I’m just going to say that personally, once I finished this book I didn’t really get the urge to form anarchic fight clubs, develop a borderline-psychotic alterego and unleash him on the town and myself. In fact, after I finished the book I nodded, relieved I had managed to plow through a piece of ‘literature’, and began reading the next book in the Codex Alera series.

But maybe I’m just weird.

And from Little Raven:
I read this book in a single afternoon, which should give an indication of how absorbed I was by the narrative. That said, having only recently watched the movie I found that I did not imagine/visualize the book, I was simply recalling the visuals of the movie and overlaying that with the additional dialogue and scenes. In the end I loved it, despite wishing I had read it before seeing the movie, it was all kinds of brilliant and that is enough for me.



Love it, Read it,
LR