South of the Border, West of the Sun: A Novel

I am enchanted by his writing style that focuses on internals of his flawed protagonist, and his richly drawn secondary characters. This was a compelling read, but I was disappointed that the author left us with no answers about the core mystery. On the other hand, I suppose he left it to our imaginations.

Cold. I feel cold. My mouth is dry, my hands are shaking, and I feel my heart beating in an angry irregular cadence.It seems as though Hajime was right when he said that, “what’s missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I’m still the same old incomplete person,” and right now I feel the stab of my own incompleteness nearly as acutely as when that “something inside me was [first] severed, and disappeared. Silently. Forever.” For a book overflowing with decelerations of love and some of the most perfectly over-the-top admissions of the power of desire… the need to yearn… the want to need… to seek “the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial,” or to “want to be bowled over by something special,” it has done a surprisingly good job of crushing a heart that has been continually struggling to keep beating in the face of its own ineffectuality.This novel drips with foreboding foreshadowing; I am not surprised by the outcome, but Murakami was able to keep me desperately hanging on to a misplaced sense of hope. I wanted this novel to surprise me as much as I hope to be surprised by life. I’ve been able to extricate pieces of that hope from most of what I have encountered lately… extricate them and hold them as some kind of “vague dream” or a “burning unfulfilled desire.” This was, however, a vicious slap of the reality in which I feel most people are likely to find themselves in the end. It was a resounding pronouncement that this “vague dream” is simply “the kind of dream people have only when they’re seventeen,” and an acknowledgment that the youthful exuberance that gives rise to such sentiment is destined to decay and be relegated to the status of immature naivety.This is the first Murakami book I have read. It was a chance encounter… I stumbled into this as much as Hajime stumbled into his own “accidental family.” “If it hadn’t rained then, if [he] had taken an umbrella, [he] never would have met her,” and if I had clicked a different link or at a different time, I wouldn’t be here trying to claw my way through a frustratingly thorough deconstruction of the story I’ve been so carefully trying to craft for myself. Murakami is an extremely talented writer; this was a very powerful story from which I absolutely could not tear myself until the very last page. A last page that left me desperate for something more. Something hopeful. But I, instead, am left with a sense of defeated acceptance. He weaves a difficult tale vacillating between the search to “discover… something special that existed just for me,” the simple acceptance that, “I don’t want to be lonely ever again,” and finally the realization that, “no one will weave dreams for me – it is my turn to weave dreams for others. Such dreams may have no power, but if my life is to have any meaning at all, that is what I have to do.”Hajime is no obvious protagonist, and the reader is continually challenged to choose between “becoming someone new and correcting the errors of my past” and hoping that a truth already exists in a place “where I was loved and protected. And where I could love and protect others – my wife and children – back.” I fervently believe that, “you love who you love,” and that there’s “not much anyone can do about it,” and so I also want to believe that people do not succumb to that very real fear of being alone only to end up in a situation in which they are, “at least not unhappy and not lonely.” The question to, “Are you happy?” should be a wholehearted, “Yes!” In essence this was a story of a quest for that “yes,” and I think it painted a very real picture of the trials experienced in the midst of that journey and the confusion we face in determining what our own individual “yes” should be.The melancholia this story instilled in me stems from the fact that it paints such a bleak and absurdist picture of this search. If Hajime wasn’t the hero, it certainly wasn’t Shimamoto, and Yukiko was, for the majority of the story, simply incidental, so it fell (for me) on the shoulders of Love itself to bear the weight of the Sisyphusian boulder this journey became. Murakami wanted me to believe in Love, its eternal nature (“Nothing can change it. Special feelings like that should never, ever be taken away.”), its undeniability (“Maybe, but I did meet you. And we can’t undo that… I don’t care where we end up; I just know I want to go there with you.”), and its power to leave us empty. (“I didn’t feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing.”) Yet it was the importance of remembering the transient nature of all things that got lost amid the assertions of the immutable nature of Love. The author again (“Some things just vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist.”) and again (“Whatever has form can disappear in an instant.”) put this notion on display and despite the fact that, “certain feelings stay with us forever,” we, like all things, must also change. Not, as I’m afraid this leads me to believe, to simply accept the lack of something for which we yearn, but also to allow ourselves to see it in places we’d never have believed it existed.It was up to Hajime to, “find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality” to make this story work. Despite the past and the connection shared between Hajime and Shimamoto I could never bring myself to truly want to see that love realized in a way that would destroy the life he had chosen to create with Yukiko… Yukiko who, in the face of her own father’s tacit acceptance of Hajime’s expected infidelity, (is this cultural?) continued to stand by her husband no matter how hard the rain fell. Nor did I want to see Hajime fall back into his relationship with Yukiko in a sort of de facto existence. Someone, no matter the outcome, was going to be destroyed. I wanted to see a true Love blossom at the end yet the final result felt like a simple admission that the “real” Love Hajime used to know with Shimamoto could not be recaptured in his adult life. The slight glimmer of hope we are given at the very end feels like a hope in acceptance rather than a hope for any kind of true Love. That is just not the hope that I want to have; I would rather continue staring at the “rain falling on the sea” with no hand resting lightly on my shoulder than live with “all strength drained from my body, as if someone had snuck up behind me and silently pulled the plug.” There are, perhaps, “lots of different ways to die,” and it may be true that, “in the end that doesn’t make a bit of difference,” but there are surely not “lots of different ways to live.” There is one way – I don’t think I can accept that chasing boulders down a hill is truly living.I loved that this book had the effect that it did. Especially in that it made me work hard to find something I wanted to take away from it. I will, without question, return to this author in the future – an experience I await with great anticipation.

I gave this book to, Robin, a girl friend of mine who also is a book lover and reads a lot. I would like to use her resume of it as she expressed it better than I could ever have done.Robin wrote; I finished the book in 2 days and have to jot some things off to you before I forget. Somewhere 3/4 through I started thinking that Shimamoto was a figment of his imagination as she only appeared when it rained, her favorite color blue, going to the ocean/river. I was pleased at the end that the author allowed you to maintain this mystery.Hajime compared his life & his wife to the desert, and his desire/ love to water & blue which I thought was creative.I could definitely tell that this was written by a man as it was vulgar in areas and the women lacked depth, emotion. If I had been the wife I would have been beating him and screaming at the end of the book. But this may be cultural too? I'm a hot headed western woman?He was poetic and I enjoyed his jazz and musical references.I love the book! 5 stars!!My own words would be; The book is a gem, original and has a dream like quality about it; like a long, beautiful poem. I loved it too and would never have given it to somebody if I hadn't.

I love Murakami’s writing style. I always feel like I’m in the story and I get lost in the book

Im a huge Murakami fan but this is surely one of his lesser works. Lacks any magical realism or real intrigue. In a work, rather boring. Of course he's too talented to write a bad book, but skip this one.

Bottom Line First: Haruki Murakami ‘s South of the Border, West of the Sun is, I hope Murakami last effort to use his life as a Bar owner to tell a personal story. Based on the list I have this was his fourth or fifth book and all of them have been tied to his younger days as a Bar owner. Some have included magic reality but South, West is a slice of life with only a possible hint of the fantasy. Of this early group this is the best and may represent the story he was trying to tell from the beginning. The themes of this book are adult as are some of the situations. I am eager to read more of Murakami.Unusual in many of Murakami’s work the narrator and main character has a name, Hajima. In Japanese the word means Beginning. Hajima begins as something unusual in his generation an only child. We are told that that only children were expected to be self-centered and worse. Growing up he will resist and resent being typecast but he will also tend to behave according to the stereotype.Along the way he will make many of the same mistakes of children and young men, but he will be haunted by them. In he will come into contact with two particular girls and mishandle himself, causing hurt in obvious, avoidable ways.Having introduced himself and his history to the reader we resume with Hajima in early middle age, married, with children and in possession of two successful bars. Of material things his life is more than comfortable. He loves his wife and has the benefit of a rich and friendly father-in-law.He is burdened with his past and not sure that what he has is to quote the song “all there is”.The balance of this short novel, 212 pages in my edition is Hajima determining the answer to this question.Murakami men are often on some kind of self–discovery quest and always with one or more women helping him. In this case there is, or may not be a woman in blue, from his past who visits (haunts?) him and forces the confrontation that will end this quest.Reading Murakami in order has help me to appreciate the growth in the quality of the author’s story telling. South, West is direct with just enough embellishment. He uses, as he has, cultural references to western classical music and jazz. His world is material but with a deeper need for emotional and spiritual understanding. Given the importance of the female role in this book, women are not fully formed, but they display many personalities and degrees of strengths.

O autor nem precisa comentar : excelente. Porém já li outros livros dele mais interessantes. Gostar ou não de um livro é muito pessoal!

nice book

Il libro è stampato perfettamente e non presenta difetti. Per quanto riguarda il libro stesso...che dire, ho trovato un amico! Scrittore di una sensibilità, concretezza e sincerità emotiva senza eguali. Mai banale, mi ha completamente rapita :) - Consiglio

If I have to describe the book in one word, I would call it “hallucinogenic”. The book focuses on Hajime’s romantic relationships who’s been feeling a sense of loneliness and incompleteness. Having a single child was rare in Japan after the war and Hajime finds it difficult to be around kids as everyone’s having many siblings. Then he found a friend in Shimamoto who’s also a single child. They started spending time together and developed a fondness but they lost each other because of circumstances. The story begins with Hajime’s childhood and takes us to his middle age life where he’s still clinging to the past and longing for something even when he has everything to comfort him. It explores one of the complex human emotions; love and the possibilities of “what-ifs” and “what might have been” of unrequited love.This book has an open ending, leaving the readers with lots of questions to mull over. But, you will find the significance of the title later in the story.This is my second book of Murakami and I’m completely in love with his unique writing style. The way he weaves a story with a trace of surrealism, making everything so mysterious, is fascinating. His books are perfect rereads as every time you will find something new.

Ein Glück, wer in seinem Leben die eine Liebe getroffen hat und auch leben durfte.Murakami beschreibt hier, was manche spät im Leben erkennen müssen: dass sie den, den sie hätten lieben können, wollen oder sogar müssen, zum möglichen Zeitpunkt nicht erkannt haben und / oder ziehen ließen. Irgendwann trifft man auf eine Person, die einen an diesen Menschen erinnert oder - wie hier im Buch - man trifft eben jene Frau wieder, für die man bestimmt war ... (Mehr sei aus Spoilergründen nicht verraten.)Ich fand es interessant, dass dieses frühe Werk von Murakami schon alle Motive beinhaltet, die er in späteren Büchern exzessiv ausarbeitet (wie etwa in 1Q84): Murakamis Hauptmotiv ist die Suche nach der einen Frau, begleitet von Verlusten anderer Frauen, die seine Protagonisten versuchen aufrichtig zu lieben, ihnen ein guter Partner zu sein, darin aber regelmäßig scheitern. Nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil seine Protagonistinnen stets große Geheimnisse in sich bergen, Trägerinnen von Mysterien sind, deren Entschlüsselung dem Mann nie ganz, oft gar nicht gelingt.Ich habe das Buch gerne gelesen. Einziges Manko waren die letzten drei Seiten - da überdreht er ein bisschen die Pathosschraube. Aber: geschenkt, das ist ein frühes Werk und ihm danach auch nicht wieder passiert.