Name: Slow Boat
ISBN: 9781782273288

古川日出男

Boku has an uneasy preoccupation with dreams - and with making and losing lovers. And when he first runs away from Tokyo, his dreams and his reality gradually start to shift and overlap. This is a story of three failed escapes - and the loss of three girlfriends in the process. The first girlfriend is taken away, the second runs away, and the third is sent away by Boku himself. A startling tale about the anguished battle to escape oneself, this structurally complex and fascinating novella is both a homage to Haruki Murakami and a stunning piece of magical realism.

A Slow Boat to China RMX

Slow Boat

Sabrina D. 

As always, Fuji TV’s globe-shaped observatory was hanging in mid-air—looking over everything like a transparent eyeball. 

The bowl doesn't have seats. Just stone steps that double as seats. I sit down-on the third or fourth step. Some pigeons on the next block take off when I crash the party. I wrap arms around my knees. I can feel myself becoming part of the stone (hard, cold, artificial), Then I go to sleep. I could almost hear the thud. As I break through. 

Through the wall dividing reality and dreams. 

Moray Lyle McIntosh

(I received an advance copy of this novel from the publisher in return for an honest review)

In his "liner notes" afterword Hideo Furukawa acknowledges his debt to Haruki Murakami and describes Slow Boat as a remix of Murakami's story Slow Boat to China.
"For me," he admits, "Murakami is at the centre of it all - the roots of my soul" and the influence is clear with his hapless narrator, constantly thwarted by fate and the transient love of the women that briefly intersect with his life. But Slow Boat is more than a fan's tribute to his hero, it's an assured piece of writing in its own right.

"This is the story fifth-grade boy hell-bent on making sense of his dreams. Cracking the code" . So Slow Boat's own narrator Boku describes his story and the tale often occupies that strange territory between sleep and waking. Boku's dreams often intersect with his life, tantalising him with hints of meaning (which also call to the reader as Furukawa tips his hat to his own novel with pop-culture references) and the writing is full of jerky, confused dream-logic, bringing with it the feeling of heart-racing awakening from frenzied chases and unbelievable twists of fate that balloon out of control. As a coming-of-age story it is full of the failings and frustrations of a youth in a world that seems determined to defeat him. The overarching theme of (failing to) "escape" from Tokyo is full of that deep, visceral need to just  get out of the place you were born that many will recognise. To slip the collar of the place that has for so long defined you. 

"Idiots." Boku sneers at one point, "Tokyo thought my Trojan Horse was avant-garde? Die, Tokyo, die."

There is also a preoccupation with language and its ability to confuse, miscommunicate, from the imperfect similarities of Chinese and Japanese Kanji to his attempts to understand the words of his hyper-vocal first girlfriend. But there is also the fellowship provided by a shared language as relationships develop through a shared vocabulary such as the secret language he develops with his friends to supply the deficiencies of Japanese to describe the experience of a changing world.

Mario Menti 

I haven't (yet) read the Haruki Murakami short story that this novella is a "remix" of, but I really loved it. Perhaps strangely, for a book that is all about (unsuccessfully) leaving Tokyo, I actually think it helps to be just a little familiar with Tokyo, as it lives and breathes Tokyo geography and public transport.

Slow Boat A Slow Boat to China RMX

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