Khushee Soni

the idea of this book is good but it feels very, extremely, horribly dull to read, the writing didn't appeal to me much and the ideas presented feel too vague and generalized. they also talk a lot in terms of teenagers' feelings of loneliness, which is very different from adulthood loneliness and is related to circumstances and projects one undertakes with no one to share with. I felt this is a decent book for young to late teens to understand their space and relationship with solitude but not as interesting for the demographic beyond teens. it was so incredibly boring I procrastinated reading this book by doing actual work instead of reading to procrastinate.

There are a lot of things this book did and one of those was introducing the grief of losing a friend from the eyes of a teenager who is somehow processing it throughout the book which stems into erratic behavior and some psychosexual issues. It also paints a good picture of how almost every close relationship most characters had was formed on or around the death of a person they were acquainted with. Murakami does have an eloquent style of writing where he describes the mundane aspects of life to such an extent that you can reach out and touch them from the protagonist's pov. He sure made me want to take that ride from Tokyo to the sanatorium with lush forests. There are some good characters that I would have loved to see through the end. There was however an unhealthy amount of sex in the book. I love a good smut but one that has meaning to it and suits the plot. A lot of the sex was just there for the sake of being there much like a bad HBO series. A lot of the female characters also lack depth in the story. Like whenever Toru describes Naoko, he describes how she looks instead of her personality, her likes or dislikes that made him love her, all he ever talks about is her body and how she's this perfect pretty girl. The book has a persistent "pick me" and "she's not like other girls" quality that ruins the take of the author on how and if he respected the female characters beyond the superficial aspects. In all it was a pretty decent book that brought a fresh perspective on death , grief, and mental health from the eyes of young teens who are barely surviving the world.