Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami



A new Murakami is always a reason to celebrate. Its been over fifteen years since I read my first one, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. My gosh, fifteen years. I wonder if your first Murakami always remains your favorite. It would be interesting to hear what other fans have to say about this. There are scenes from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that I'll just never forget.

I enjoyed the journey of reading his new novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It was truly a journey in every sense of the word. Thirty-six year old Tsukuro, who has always felt a bit lost in the world, seeks to find out why his close knit group of high school friends suddenly abandoned him with no explanations sixteen years ago. This leads him back to his old home town, Nagoya, and even as far away as Finland. I loved reading this book but the ending did disappoint me at first. There were too many open-ended questions left unanswered. However, once I had time to digest it more and read what other readers thought, I realized that it was a perfect ending. Tsukuro who had always been safe and lived in the fringes of life, found the courage to love. He takes that leap into the unknown not knowing whether he'd end up getting the girl or not. We never find out what happens but the point is Tsukuro finally had the spirit to live and let live.

Loved this quote from the book. It's so true.
"It's strange, isn't it? No matter how quiet and conformist a person's life seems, there's always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives."



Comments

  1. I'm a huge Murakami fan and I loved his latest one. I'm glad to see you enjoyed it as well. He just has a knack for describing loneliness in such an honest and open manner that anyone can relate to. His ability to create alternate worlds where cats talk and fish fall from the sky is truly amazing. With this book I just loved how straight forward he was with the story and didn't veer off into the surreal like he usually does. I loved getting to Tsukuru and going on this journey of his to find out what happened all those years ago. Such a great book!

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  2. I've only ever read a collection of short stories by Murakami, one that has an elephant in the title. It was a very eclectic collection and while I enjoyed some stories, others I was not really a fan of. He seems to write a lot about lonely, Millennial city dwellers. Is that just from the collection I read or is that his thing?

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    Replies
    1. Hi Aarti, I'm not really a fan of The Elephant Vanishes. I don't think I even finished it so yes, you should try one of his novels. I guess it is his thing to write about lonely city dwellers.

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  3. This is my first Haruki Murakami book and i became hooked. I'm itching to buy his other titles and read them.

    I also made a review of this book at the ff. link:

    http://www.literateknolohitura.com/2014/10/haruki-murakami-colorless-tsukuru-tazaki-and-his-years-of-pilgrimage.html

    Thanks!

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