natashak1's Reviews (265)

Murakami is Murakami and for all that other people might struggle with some aspects of his work I have such a fondness for his style of writing and the sort of stories he creates that I find it hard to not adore all of his writing. 
This is no exception, and I felt like parts 1 and 3 were a lovely contrast of style to the second part, which felt a lot more standard Murakami to me. Had a great time, honestly just pleased there is still new Murakami for me to read.

The beginning and end are strong, but the middle section felt like it went on forever while nothing was happening. While I do see that it's sort of necessary to give the ending the proper setup it needed I just felt like we could have had a little more insight into that characters, as even by the end they didn't feel massively fleshed out to me.
Bit bad by any means, just not really for me.

First part dragged a lot but was necessary to set up and justify the second part, which was altogether pretty great. 
As a whole very coherent and sort of a time capsule of life five years ago, but it was also very heartfelt and o think does a good job of making nameless characters feel like people.

Very solid short story collections with only one or two that I didn't adore.

A solid concept and I found the initial "reveal" of what Blackeath was quite good. The last act was messy though, and seemed convoluted in a strangely dull way. 
Altogether very ambitious and with it's strengths, but not always completely coherent and a bit boring at times.

I feel like this book did the most boring thing possible with a potentially interesting concept. The prose was also somewhat uninspiring which didn't help, and I felt it really relied on the idea that the main characters had to be flawed but ultimately good, which in a story like this is both the most obvious and least interesting way to present any character let alone the two who we're forced to spend the most time with.

Ouch.