Of the Rat Trilogy, this was easily the weakest volume.

Within the book was a quote that seemed to sum up the experience of reading this novel with great accuracy, "So why was I racing through the darkness? To keep a date with fifty pinball machines. It was idiotic. A dream. A dream without substance."

As in a typical Murakami novel, Pinball features a protagonist who is going through the motions, even as events around him seem to go haywire. This particular unnamed narrator also happens to be dealing with regret and a specific form of restlessness stemming from a disconnected and unsatisfying life.

We follow this character, juxtapose to the Rat, but each of their journeys are remarkably inconsequential, and ultimately forgettable. Perhaps most annoying is the detached arrogance that each character seems to embody, which made the whole process of reading this even more taxing.

This is easily the lowest rating I have ever given Murakami. Some better recommendations of his earlier work would have be Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, A Wild Sheep Chase (the third volume of the Rat Trilogy), or even the outrageously popular Norwegian Wood.