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52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best books I've ever bought on a whim..., April 18, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) (Paperback)
I purchased this book on a whim - the descriptions sounded interesting enough to merit a look. Boy was I stunned by it. One of the best books I've read in a long time and probably one of the best novels I've read that's been written in the last 20 years. Beautifully written (and translated) it spoke to many different sides of me. The novel brilliantly fuses a number of different cultural genres (science fiction, mystery, film noir, fantasy, magical realism, "cyberpunk") into a mix that, amazingly, works very well. Try to imagine a collaborative effort by Garcia-Marquez, William Gibson, and Walker Percy and you almost might be able to envision what this book feels like to read. Who else but a Japanese author could make such an intriguing pop culture cocktail? Besides being a genre-bender, the premise of the book and the questions that it raises concerning the relationship between humanity and technology, the soul and the mind, and the individual and society are quite thought provoking. Did I mention that the book is very funny at times too? This is unlike any other book you'll ever read. Definitely worth checking out IMHO.
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39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
WHICH WORLD DO I BELONG TO?, December 22, 2005
This review is from: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) (Paperback)
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World follows two distinct and parallel storylines, both with unnamed narrators who might or might not be the same person. In the first storyline, the narrator is a "Calcutec", a computer specialist working for "The System" to protect data against the "Semiotecs", an organization of powerful black market information pirates. Called down into the sewers below Tokyo against regulations and against the law, the main character agrees to "shuffle", or encode the work of a nutty professor who says he has discovered a way to make bones talk! His life might be in danger though because all the major powers want a piece of this new technology. This plotline alternates chapters with a more fantasy type idyll about a town surrounded by an impenetrable and unscalable wall, in which the narrator tries to figure out who he is and how he came there. There are other inhabitants but all their comments are pretty cryptic. But there's some bizarre stuff going on. For example, there are unicorns grazing around the town, you lose your shadow, and the narrator is given the job of "reading dreams" from the skulls of strange beasts! He must set about figuring out how to escape unless he wants to be trapped there forever.
This novel was weird but refreshing. I thought it was pretty clever of Murakami to almost write two books in one, the first being a cyberpunk adventure and the other a strange surreal fantasy. But it worked. Don't worry, these two stories within a novel do have a purpose in being joined together, even though you might not understand all the "physics" talk when explanations are given. You get the gist of it. Harold Bloom once said that what gives a novel its lasting greatness is that it has to be strange. Murakami more than lives up to this thought and makes you feel as if you've entered a new world. That's a good thing. It really gives you a sense of wonder and mental adventure which you don't find too often in literature these days. I look forward to reading his other works.
If you liked this book, I would highly recommend viewing a Japanese anime called Haibane-Renmei which was greatly influenced by the fantasy parts of Hard-Boiled Wonderland.
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37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Interconnectedness of All Things, February 6, 2000
This review is from: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) (Paperback)
This is simply the best book I have ever read! I was hooked from the first page and drawn into the world of the narrator as subtly as one is drawn into a dream. The linking of the subconscious and conscious elements of the mind are at work here, and this is what makes this book all at once so wonderful, disturbing and enlightening. It is a psychological masterpiece and lays bare the interconnectedness of all things- the people in our lives, the places, the choices we make, our dreams, desires, longings and regrets and most importantly, the often inexplicable and enigmatic relationship between our subconscious and conscious mind. The masterful way Murakami interweaves the chapters begins with a divergent simplicity and gradually progresses to a complex, synchronistic web/mandala in which all points share a beginning yet have no end.
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