This book is two hundred odd pages long and I read the whole thing from start to finish in one sitting. It's the first Haruki Murakami book I've ever read. It seems to me that there are two sides to this book. The standard fiction side of the book reminded me of Nick Hornby. His characters are real but easily definable because they have extreme personality traits. The main girl in the story is a typical bohemian taken straight out of the 60's and put in the 90's. The main guy is nice and easy to associate yourself with, but he's essentially a hanger-on. It also reminded me of Nick Hornby that what you like is more important than what you are like (though the character in High Fidelity who says that rejects the idea). So we can tell what the girl is like by the books she reads and how she dresses. We can tell about other characters by the cars they drive or the clothes they wear. The main girl even changes her clothes when she changes her character (or is it the other way round?). The weird part of the book reminds me of Roald Dahl because it's like he's sat down and wrote on a pad "I'll write a story about a man who learns to see through cards" or "a girl with a magic finger". Basically the change is so small that the rest of the book grounds it in reality and it therefore becomes semi-believeable and therefore weird. It was a really quick read and it was fun. I was worried about the ending, but he came good in the end.

I'm reading 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' now, it is slower going but his style is still easy and I'm in no rush. I liked this quote "It occurred to me that true believers in hard-driving jazz...could never become owners of cleaning shops in malls across from railroad stations." Is that true? You wouldn't have thought so but experience seems to suggest it. I guess it is the same question as above.