Haruki Murakami

Combining an offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose, this novel is an assault on all the senses, a murder mystery that is also philosophical speculation, and a dark fable of advanced capitalism.

Dance Dance Dance

High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance. ** Murakami’s new novel is coming ** COLORLESS TSUKURU TAZAKI AND HIS YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE 'The reason why death had such a hold on Tsukuru Tazaki was clear. One day his four closest friends, the friends he’d known for a long time, announced that they did not want to see him, or talk with him, ever again.'

morgan

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don't buy it.

Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself. Is that too much to ask?

"That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry.

"Maybe I'm being too hard on you. But listen, I don't care what other people do. I don't want to hear that sort of talk from you. You shouldn't say things like that lightly, as if saying them is going to solve anything. They don't stick. You think you feel sorry about Dick, but I don't believe you really do. If I were Dick, I wouldn't want your easy regret. I wouldn't want people saying, 'Oh, I acted horribly.' It's not a question of manners; it's a question of fairness. That's something you have to learn."

"No, not true. I just put my heart into it. That's the difference. It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something, you can do it, up to a point. If you really work at being happy, you can do it, up to a point."

"But anything more than that, you can't."

"Anything more than that is luck," I said.

"You really know how to depress people, don't you? Is that what you call being adult?"

"Mama, she's always hurting me. She's just got no idea. And yet she loves me. I know she does."

"No other way," I said. "Everyone does, like it or not. People got older. That's how they deal with it. They deal with it till the day they die. It's always been this way. Always will be. It's not just you."

Latter-day capitalism. Like if or not, it's the society we live. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Like pulling on a Missoni sweater over Trussardi slacks and Pollini shoes, you can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the world--philosophy starting to look more and more like business administration.

In other words, what we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.

That's when I proffered my words of wisdom, that waste is the highest virtue one can achieve in advanced capitalist society. The fact that Japan bought Phantom jets from America and wasted vast quantities of fuel on scrambles put an extra spin in the global economy, and that extra spin lifted capitalism to yet greater heights. If you put an end to all the waste, mass panic would ensue and the global economy would go haywire. Waste is the fuel of contradiction, and contradiction activates the economy, and an active economy creates more waste.

Gazing at the rain, I consider what it means to belong, to become part of something. To have someone cry for me. From someplace distant, so very distant. From, ultimately, a dream. No matter how far I reach out, no matter how fast I run, I'll never make it.

Mathias Hellsing

The next thing I knew the room was flooded with silence. Waves of helplessness washed over me. I needed to rouse myself. I closed my eyes and counted from one to ten in Spanish, ending in a loud finito and a clap of the hands. My own spell to conquer helplessness. One of the many skills I'd acquired living alone. Without these tricks I may not have survived.

Jackie Lu

First Murakami book and I read this without knowing about the prequels. Very good

alyssa helena

I love how Murakami describes night vibes in this book

Dance dance dance

Virginia L

Bla bla bla bla bla bla  quanto sei carina Yuki bla bla bla bla l’affascinante Gotanda  bla bla bla bla bla bla bla “sei un tipo davvero strano”  bla bla bla bla bla bla quello che faccio è spalare la neve bla bla bla bla bla cosa vorrà dirmi Kiki bla bla bla bla bla le dita di Gotanda lungo la schiena di Kiki bla bla bla bla l’uomo pecora esiste per me bla bla bla bla *citare un evergreen* bla bla bla bla bla “Cucù” fece Mei.

Haritlak Thawikasikam

Murder mystery meets magical realism. And most of all, more Murakami for me to read.

Frederik De Bosschere

So clever and creative, I did not read the sequel but the book was still so captivating and coherent. Recommended by the loml americanbaron and so worth it 

aves! 

Charlotte 

Merve A. 

It was an interesting book, but it left me with so many questions. I found the I-could've-slept-with-her-but-I-didn't-but-I-wish-I-had main character quite insufferable and his interactions with Yuki, a thirteen year old girl, were sort of creepy. Guess this will be my first and last Murakami book.

Ender Ahmet Yurt

Bazen donguyu tamamlamak icin basladiginiz noktaya donmeniz gerekir. Bu Donus yolunda zorluklar ve gercekten basiniza gelmesini istemediginiz olaylar ile karsilasirsiniz. Iste tam olarak da ana karakterimizin yasadiklari ve zaman zaman cevap vermedigi sorular ile herseyin zamani vardir diyerek yoluna devam etmesi. Klasik bir Murakami eseri sade ama guzel.

Dance Dance Dance—a follow-up to A Wild Sheep Chase—is a tense, poignant, and often hilarious ride through Murakami’s Japan, a place where everything that is not up for sale is up for grabs. As Murakami’s nameless protagonist searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, he is plunged into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread. In this propulsive novel, featuring a shabby but oracular Sheep Man, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work today fuses together science fiction, the hardboiled thriller, and white-hot satire.

Mark Wadley

It’s tough to describe a Murakami novel without simplifying it to the point of absurdity. Like you could say Dance Dance Dance is about a bad writer solving murders with the help of a 13-year-old psychic, and you’d be right, kind of. But this novel, like other Murakami I’ve read, is so much more (and less?) than you think. On the surface, not much happens — the unnamed narrator travels, hooks up, hangs out — but there’s a supernatural mystery humming along beneath it all.

This is my favorite kind of detective story: an ordinary person (i.e. not a cop) stumbles into something strange and feels compelled to work it in a sort of shaggy adventure. There’s a lot of humor and Lynchian dreaminess in this version of that story, and I’m here for it. I read and really loved 1Q84 last year, and while I think that book is better, they certainly share a lot of DNA. Murakami’s writing is so direct and accessible that it makes the grounded elements feel very real and all the weird shit just sings. I really dig it.

Milk

I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. The first half of it was thrilling, the other half wasn't as compelling as Murakami's books usually are. It was good, fine. I liked it. I didn't love it. To be frank; I didn't find the main character to be too interesting and although I liked him to some degree, reading  Dance Dance Dance was mainly enojyable, to the degree in which I found it enjoyable, whenever Yuki was around. The story reminded me too much of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as well, despite the fact that the plot of these two novels aren't too similar. I don't know. It was fine.

Kirsten Devolder

Sonia Flores

“Es igual que una raíz: por pequeña que sea la parte que aflora a la superficie, si tiramos de ella, no para de salir. La conciencia humana vive en hondas tinieblas. Es enrevesada, compleja… Hay demasiados elementos incomprensibles. Sólo cada uno conoce sus verdaderos motivos. Incluso puede ser que no los conozca.”

Este me ha gustado mucho. De verdad. No sé qué tiene Murakami pero en este libro lo ha hecho muy bien, ya no me enfadé nunca ni nada por los personajes, aunque a veces resultaban un tanto planos. En general lo que hace de este libro algo especial es el modo de poner las cosas. No sé explicarlo bien, todo queda un poco difuso como el final de este libro. Y así tiene que ser.
Por supuesto que no habría leído este sin antes haber leído los que le anteceden si hubiera podido, pero espero algún día encontrarlos todos y leerlos.

Dance Dance Dance

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