Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

Title: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Author: Haruki Murakami
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Publish Date: August 12, 2014
Source: Library

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Here [Haruki Murakami] gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. It is a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages."

My Two Cents:

Let me caveat this review by saying I am a huge Murakami fan. I love reading his books and always enjoyed them for the most part. That being said he's definitely not for everyone. His stories are wholly original and most of them feel like dreams this book is no different. In this book, we meet a young man who once had four very close friends, each with different colors in their names. He doesn't have a color in his name and so he becomes Colorless Tsukuru. Mysteriously, they leave him behind without an explanation. He wonders about this and it haunts him.

This story definitely feels very dreamlike to me and may not be everyone's cup of tea. For the Murakami fans, this is definitely an enjoyable book. Tsukuru is such an interesting character. He is an adult now and is continuing to wonder about his friends. We get to follow him on a journey filled with surprises and twists!

This book is a translation and a pretty good one at that. There's a couple places in the book where is the translation gets a little garbled and makes the story a bit confusing but overall I thought that it was translated wonderfully. Again M Murakami has a very unique writing style that is definitely present in this book. I can't wait to see what he comes out with next.