Dance, Dance, Dance

The nameless everyman narrator of A Wild Sheep Chase returns, still pining for Kiki of the perfect ears. This is pretty typical Murakami, with its grab-bag of kooky characters and surreal situations. It's all mysterious hotels, Duran Duran obsessed teenagers, disenchanted b-grade actors, international call girls, endless pop culture references, obsessive unrequited love - and the SheepMan, of...more

The nameless everyman narrator of A Wild Sheep Chase returns, still pining for Kiki of the perfect ears. This is pretty typical Murakami, with its grab-bag of kooky characters and surreal situations. It's all mysterious hotels, Duran Duran obsessed teenagers, disenchanted b-grade actors, international call girls, endless pop culture references, obsessive unrequited love - and the SheepMan, of course. Scratch a little deeper and Murakami seems to be talking about the commodification of society, how we try to place a value on everything, even friendship. That's capitalism for you, as several characters comment to the bemused narrator, before filing away their receipts for the inevitable tax write-off. However unlike, say, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Hard-boiled Wonderland & The End of the World, Dance Dance Dance doesn't really lead you anywhere new. If you've never read Murakami before, don't start here. It's a follow-on novel and it's not his strongest work by a long way. If you have, then you already know what to expect.   hide

This is my favorite Murakami book. His words seem to envelope the reader inside a world that is familiar but at the same time unknown. Murakami doesn't just write a story, he paints a clear picture in the mind... something most writers get lost doing with too much setting or too much prose. Yuki, Ame, Kiki, Gotanda, the lovely Yumiyoshi, the tragic Mr. Makimura, the Rat (Subtle in this...more

This is my favorite Murakami book. His words seem to envelope the reader inside a world that is familiar but at the same time unknown. Murakami doesn't just write a story, he paints a clear picture in the mind... something most writers get lost doing with too much setting or too much prose. Yuki, Ame, Kiki, Gotanda, the lovely Yumiyoshi, the tragic Mr. Makimura, the Rat (Subtle in this novel)are all are connected to the protagonist and are connected to us by such simple words. Never has a book used its philosophy so well to reach out to a reader in recent times. The sheepman talks of dancing and we dance along with the protagonist all the way until he is woken up by Yumiyoshi at the end of the novel. Gotanda has ridden into the sea and Yuki has gained an insight to her forgetful genius photographer mum. The aptly named Dick North simply vanishes. The Dolphin Hotel has changed once again. Wonderful Murakami book.    hide

i read the wild sheep chase the first time when i was like... 14. it tripped me out so bad, that i 1. couldn't put it down, 2. finished the novel at some ungodly hour of the morning, 3. couldn't sleep the rest of the night cause i thought i had sheep men chasing me. then i read this book, i think out of obligation and some perverse sense of continuity. for some reason it tripped me out just as...more

i read the wild sheep chase the first time when i was like... 14. it tripped me out so bad, that i 1. couldn't put it down, 2. finished the novel at some ungodly hour of the morning, 3. couldn't sleep the rest of the night cause i thought i had sheep men chasing me. then i read this book, i think out of obligation and some perverse sense of continuity. for some reason it tripped me out just as bad, and i didn't touch another murakami book for like... 5 years! so my buddy sent me this book as a part of a "joblessness package" which contained anime, this book and my driver's license, which i most naturally forgot in california and 20 bucks, which i also most naturally forgot in california. he told me to read this book, b/c it's perfect for somebody who's bumming around and doesn't have a clear direction. i read it, and i can't believe i thought it was trippy at one point in time. it's so nice, and so sweet, and answers my internal longings all of a sudden... did i change or did the book change? BTW, haruki murakami is on facebook. you can befriend him. if it really is him, of course. i sent him a buddy request. i wonder if he'll respond.   hide

The "sequel" to A Wild Sheep Chase, this book picks up with the same narrator, the same Dolphin Hotel, and the same Sheep Man, but becomes darker -- quite literally at some points. The narrator is consumed by a lack of direction that leads him to follow a random assortment of new characters around Japan and to Hawaii, and to what might be a completely different world. The relationships between...more

The "sequel" to A Wild Sheep Chase, this book picks up with the same narrator, the same Dolphin Hotel, and the same Sheep Man, but becomes darker -- quite literally at some points. The narrator is consumed by a lack of direction that leads him to follow a random assortment of new characters around Japan and to Hawaii, and to what might be a completely different world. The relationships between the characters are hard to sort out, and while some of them are beautiful and tangibly important -- particularly that with Yuki, a stubborn thirteen-year-old abandoned by her famous parents -- the relationship that is cast in some ways as the most important is quite literally inexplicable. The narrative is difficult to follow at some point -- not that it is not linear, but that it sometimes seems less the intricately woven, deeply meaningful nonsense of Murakami, but simply nonsense. In many ways, this is a good thing, but in some ways, it simply piles darkness and mystery on an already deeply convoluted character sketch. Not a good choice for a first Murakami, but in some ways maybe the most classically Murakami of them all.   hide