Customer Reviews

A Wild Sheep Chase (Naxos Junior Classics)

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The genius of Murakami's "Wild Sheep Chase" (like the genius of his other works) is the total believability of his characters and plot. Everyone who reads this work is immediately engrossed and sucked in, and only realizes how truly bizarre the whole thing is when they try to tell someone else about the book.

The narrator of "Sheep Chase" begins as something of an Everyman. His mate leaves him, his job pays him well but isn't very satisfying, he is intelligent but little in his life seems to stimulate him to thought. You wouldn't say he is going through life with blinders on, but nor is his life totally examined, either. Life is, more or less, something that is just happening to him. You could probably think of a dozen people you know who would easily fit his character.

Still, this is a Murakami novel, after all, and pretty soon he is, in the words of Tolkein, simply swept away, a stranger in a strange land with no idea of how he got there. A perfectly ordinary photo that he uses in a brochure catches the attention of a powerful political figure, "The Boss", who has been inexplicably lying on the verge of death for some years, hanging on as if by some supernatural power. The photo, it's discovered, has a special sheep in it. A type of sheep who's breed does not exist. A minion of The Boss makes him an offer he cannot refuse: find that sheep...

He meets up with a young woman who, among other things, is a call girl for an exclusive members-only club, and does ear modeling on the side. Together, they set off to find this elusive sheep-that-doesn't-exist, all the while trailing the narrator's old friend, The Rat, who seems to always be one step ahead of them.

Much has been written about Murakami and "Wild Sheep Chase", including that this work is a shining example of the postmodern novel. While this may be the case, potential readers shouldn't shy away from this book simply because they may not know a fig about postmodernism. Unlike other "postmodern novels", which are often thickets of high rhetoric and voluminous nonsense, "Wild Sheep Chase" can be read on a multitude of levels: both as lit crit and as pure, enjoyable fiction. To read it strictly as one or the other is to do a great injustice to this work.

...and I use the term freak in the most reverent of ways. I also use it to describe the author; because while the main character is a freak in his own right, he's one of an entirely different caliber.

A Wild Sheep Chase takes us to Tokyo Japan 'round 1980 and dumps us into the sharp but entirely unexercised, and increasingly apathetic mind of our 30 year old (male) main character. Funny, I just checked the book because I couldn't remember his name. I couldn't find it. I may be wrong, but I don't know if the author gives him one.

Anyway...

Newly divorced, incessantly smoking, and always musing in very interesting ways about largely uninteresting things, I found myself pulled into this novel immediately. "We" soon find ourselves embroiled in an epic and supernatural mystery with only a half-tank of gas. When tasked by an uber-powerful businessman to find a certain certain one-of-a-kind sheep or face financial ruin (if not death), our adventurer shruggingly agrees, and half-heartedly pursues.

The slurring pace of this book, filled with philosophical musings, "David Lynch like" weirdos, and a spattering of phenomenon, was a rare treat for me.

Murakami is a wonderfully gifted creative writer. His prose (even though translated) is at once elegantly crafted and playful. I recommend this book highly.

Christian Hunter
Santa Barbara, California

I enjoy Japanese authors, Kawabata, Dazai, Mishima. All very different in style, but all presenting serious work. So when I randomly picked this book up after seeing it was by a Japanese author, I really had no idea what I was getting into.

I more or less read it in one sitting because it's quirkiness grabbed me. A lot of people compare Haruki Murakami to Kurt Vonnegut. But I have to tell you, after reading nearly all of Vonnegut's work (Excluding Happy Birthday Wanda June, and the two "new" books, Bagombo Snuff Box and God Bless You Dr Kavorkin), Vonnegut is a thousand times more lucid.

That isn't to say I didn't like A Wild Sheep Chase, it was bizzare, humorous, and at times touching (when the protagonist visits the beach he used to hang out at, and finds that it has been filled in and there now sits pavement really affected me.)And in many ways the non clarity could be considered a strength. When you have a story as absurd as this one, trying to explain the universe in which it is operating can cause it to just fall apart.

But I was also left with a feeling of, "What the hell is this guy trying to say?" Then agian, does he really *have* to say anything?

Interesting characters and extremly fun. I enjoyed it and would recommend A Wild Sheep Chase.

It's hard not to reach the end of Haruki Murakami's wonderfully entertaining A WILD SHEEP CHASE and not find yourself asking, "What was THAT all about?" Sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad with loss, almost always quirky after the style of Kurt Vonnegut, Murakami's story line pulls you in and keeps you hooked with unexpected twists and turns that leave you as desperate as his nameless main character to learn the ovine truth.

On its face, the book is a combination mystery story, grail quest, and science fiction novel, laced with biting sarcasm. A perfectly regular young advertising executive is approached one day by a mysterious stranger concerning a photograph of sheep grazing in a mountain pasture that the agency used in an insurance company ad. Buried within the herd is one sheep of an unknown breed with a star-shaped birthmark on its back. Unbeknown to the young executive, he has transgressed some unmarked boundary and caught the attention of The Boss, an immensely rich Tokyo businessman and power broker. The mysterious stranger delivers an ultimatum from The Boss: find the sheep in one month and be exceedingly well-rewarded, or be forced into permanent career ruin if he fails. The balance of the book traces the quest of the young executive and his unusual girlfriend to find the sheep and discover its bizarre significance.

With A WILD SHEEP CHASE, Murakami has constructed a bizarre novel populated by an alcoholic business partner, a godlike mysterious stranger dressed in black, a girlfriend with uncanny sixth sense and ears that turn her into an irresistible beauty when exposed, a philosophizing chauffeur, a borderline psychotic Sheep Professor, and a man who lives in the woods and dresses like a sheep. All of the characters are nameless, at most given nicknames like The Boss, The Rat, J, and Sheep Man. Only the hero's aged and unnamed cat is bestowed with a name, Kipper, in the course of the story.

Fabulous imagery and clever prose riffs abound in Murakami's world. Consider the following small sampling:

-- "Far off, someone was practicing piano. It sounded like tripping down an up escalator."
-- "The elevator shook like a large dog with lung disease."
-- "Occasionally, someone coughed with a dry rasp that sounded like a mummy tapped on the head with a pair of tongs."
-- "The yellow glow of the light bulbs drifted about the room like pollen."
-- "The house kept its own time, like the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the living room. People who happened by raised the weights, and as long as the weights were wound, the clock continued ticking away. But with people gone and the weights unattended, whole chunks of time were left to collect in deposits of faded life on the floor."

So what is the book really all about? Perhaps it's a commentary about economic and emotional gain and loss in our lives, or maybe it's a parable about the existence of free will and how much more difficult it is to exercise than we think (and how less often we really do it than we believe). Or possibly, it's a novel about individuality and mediocrity in Japanese society. Then again, it could be a protest against a powerful and homogenizing globalization that threatens to turn us all into nameless, unindividuated sheep. Of course, it could just be a silly, pseudo science fiction story without any meaning. Whatever - res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.

A WILD SHEEP CHASE is a great read, fun and funny, full of memorable characters and pungent commentary about modern life. This is Murakami with a twist. Step up to the bar and take an unforgettable drink. And don't forget to write down God's phone number and give him a call.

Murakami is an acquired taste, but fortunately he's very easily acquired. His novels are typically a mixed bag of comic absurdity, pathos, suspense, and philosophical speculation but written in a straight-ahead, colloquial style. *A Wild Sheep Chase* is no exception. Here a struggling adman ends up recruited by a mysterious client in black to find a sheep that has appeared in an insurance company advertisement our hero's firm has designed. The sheep in this ad is special...it takes over people's consciousness.

That's the least of what you need to know to understand what kind of novel *A Wild Sheep Chase* is. And yet for all its imaginative "wildness," the novel has a traditional, hardboiled-style first-person narrative that easily draws you into the story. In fact, I'd say that three-quarters of the pleasure of this novel comes from spending time with the likeable, hard-luck narrator. Witty but not a wisecracker, laid-back but no Joe Cool, fatalistic but not cynical, he's a guy who is thoroughly convinced of his mediocrity and okay with it. He's got the kind of applied equanimity to life's vicissitudes that you wish you had, taking things as they come, taking things as they go. He knows life is heading for loss and sadness, but he's not whining about it. If he's not the kind of guy you could ever be, than he's the kind of guy you wish you had for a friend--and that makes spending 350+ pages in his company a pleasurable experience. And that's a good thing because if I had one criticism about *A Wild Sheep Chase* it's that it's about 70 pages too long. In the last third of the novel, there's a lot of description of the narrator sitting around waiting for the climax to occur when it could have occurred pages and pages beforehand. Well, as I said, he's pleasant enough company so it wasn't intolerable. Still...I got a little tired of hearing what he cooked for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, how long he slept, what things he saw upon looking out the window.

And, as for the climax...well, don't expect the usual resolution in a Murakami novel. The original mystery--or what seemed to be the original mystery at the start--has a way of shifting around to become something else entirely. It's the kind of mystery where the search becomes even more important than the answer and the answer is often left open to a good deal of reader interpretation. In this instance, however, things seem even more obscure than usual and I found the resolution of the novel unnecessarily muddied. In a novel that depends a lot on chance, coincidence, and the arbitrary, the pay-off struck me as a little too much dependent on all of these. Perhaps something was lost in the translation from the Japanese, but I found the ending of *A Wild Sheep Chase* rather unsatisfying.

These caveats aside, Murakami is more than just a mystery writer. With his reality-bending plots, ambiguity, and philosophical questioning, he is a genuinely thought-provoking literary artist and a *A Wild Sheep Chase* is an ultimately intriguing, rewarding, and, perhaps most of all, fun read.

This was the second of Murakami's books I've read (previously read "Sputnik Sweetheart") and I can easily see myself becoming addicted as I have fought all urges to buy "Dance Dance Dance" before I work down my pile of previously purchased books.

Murakami is particularly gifted in working with imagery and symbolism which are the qualities that give this book its dreamlike atmosphere throughout. Everything takes on a feeling of "unreality", as if we are walking through a waking nightmare which can turn disastrous or horrifying at any moment. I was reminded of my own nightmares where I struggle to speak or perform some act that increasingly seems impossible, or reach for a person or object that manages to remain just out of reach. When I wake from such nightmares I'm left bothered and questioning for the remainder of the night, sometimes days afterwards, questioning with nothing there to offer me solace or comfort. I analyze every angle and image and am often left with nothing but a mystery that will not leave me.

That's what "A Wild Sheep Chase" did to me.

What does it mean to be "sheeped"? Who is The Rat? What will become of the Sheep Proffessor? Murakami seems content to not let us know. I'm perfectly willing to not know.

This book is not for you if you must have answers to all questions. I could attempt to make comparisons with other authors, but I feel he is unique (to me at least). The only comparison I could make outside of literature is to say reading the book is like watching David Lynch attempting to be slightly more accesible- and I pray that never happens.

What remains is a feeling of a need to re-read, knowing there are mysteries that will reveal themselves in time and with patience. Meanwhile, I itch for more of his work. The titles need to be devoured.

I've never read a novel which passed between the mundane and the bizarre so easily. Once I accepted that a magical sheep with a star on its fleece could become an obsession to an absolutely normal lead character, I stepped into a world where anything could happen. And Murakami does not disappoint. And he never over-explains, either. The story is told simply, refreshingly bereft of any self-agonizing characters or deep dissection of events. The plot unfolds and the reader is left with absorbing its odd contents and memorable characters. Overall, a beautiful, reality-suspending novel written with a light touch.

I like this book very much because I couldn't help identifying with the central character who reminds me in some ways of Woody Allen's screen persona - a nerdish type loser of no particular physical attraction who has a way with words and who usually gets a very attractive woman to sleep with, though he spends most of his time rueing what he HASN'T got and is continually in search of that SOMETHING. This novel is about a quest. About dreams. And finally, about the realisation that life is about bugger all, so you'd better enjoy that friendship, that meal, that lovemaking, that scene, that memory, and relax a bit and have a laugh. There are laughs aplenty in this sly book, many of the laughs are in the details such as the scene where a very damaged black moggy cat sitting on the front seat of a distinguished limousine causes the Chauffer to lower the windows from time to time on account of the deletirious odour the cat emits from time to time in the form of brief but audible farts.
And I suppose, in our life we don't wander around the shopping mall thinking "themes" or "great and noble thoughts" but more like " Why does that woman get into the 8 item express lane when she clearly has 11 items?" Incidentally, the novel is also a very likeable and satisfying read.

Haruki Murakami is modern-day Japan's most popular novelist. Both a literary success and a commercial success, Murakami has been the recipient of the Noma Literary Award for New Writers (A Wild Sheep Chase) and the Tanazaki Prize (for The Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World).

Murakami's fiction shares almost nothing in common with more classical Japanese authors like Kawabata, Mishima and Tanazaki, and early reviews compared his work to that of Raymond Carver, Thomas Pynchon, Raymond Chandler and Thomas Berger. Comparisons, however, are always unfair. Murakami is most definitely an original. The worlds he creates are his and his alone, and although he invites us to visit for awhile, only he can truly inhabit them.

Embracing Murakami's signature themes of isolation and alienation, A Wild Sheep Chase is part detective thriller, part allegory, part fantasy, and part post-modern send-up. It is thoroughly Western in both its outlook and writing style and thoroughly original by any standard.

Murakami, who is more likely to speak of the Beatles (a book he titled Norwegian Wood remains his best seller in Japan) and Heineken than of kabuki and sushi, takes us on a wild-and-woolly roller coaster ride in A Wild Sheep Chase that often modulates from deadpan minimalism to a kind of fantastic fantasy world reminiscent of magical realism wherein sheep inhabit men's souls, a woman possess ears so beguilingly beautiful that they must be perpetually covered and old friends often return as ghosts for no other reason than to share a beer and a chat.

A Wild Sheep Chase features a signature Murakami protagonist: a nameless, aimless, ordinary man, just about thirty and living an equally aimless, ordinary life in an essentially nonexistent Tokyo. In other words, "Everyman." It is this talent of Murakami's to capture the everyday individual innuendo so easily and fully that endears him to the hearts and minds of both Japanese and Westerners alike. In fact, a signature Murakami protagonist could well be Charlie Brown all grown up--a seemingly ordinary man caught up in extraordinary problems and one for whom nothing ever goes right; the personification of Murphy's Law in the extreme.

This particular novel's protagonist has his "sort of" life interrupted with the unexpected arrival of something as seemingly innocent, innocuous and mundane as an advertising photo of a field of sheep, sent to him by his old friend, "the Rat."

When the narrator makes the mistake of printing the photo in a newsletter, he then draws the unwanted attention of a singularly sinister stranger currently in the employ of "the Boss," a powerful political and financial magnate who is now lying near death and whose extraordinary avocational abilities are somehow derived from the very same sheep pictured in the mysterious photo.

Blackmailed into procuring the definitely desired sheep, the nameless narrator, along with his girlfriend (she of the covered ears), embarks upon a parody of adventure of near mythic proportion that finds its climactic end in a stormy sea of surprises on the remote island of Hokkaido.

Although not as densely-layered as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, (to date, Murakami's masterpiece), A Wild Sheep Chase is nonetheless filled with the verbal agility, antics and double entrendres for which Murakami is so well-known. It is, after all, Murakami's narrator, himself, who says, "sure we're tossing out fluff, but tell me, where does anyone deal in words with substance?"

The answer, of course, is: right here. Murakami does. Although A Wild Sheep Chase may, at first, seem almost as inconsequential as the latest detective thriller in a long string of detective thrillers, the weight of this book, as with all of Murakami's works, eventually lands on the reader like a ton of...sheep.

If this was Murakami's first novel translated into English, he must have been born with the knack.
This is a little more juvenile than some later masterpieces, possibly. But what a great mess of worlds. Mystery plus surrealism plus existentialism. And a conspiracy theory in the center of it all. Entertaining writing without joining the trash league.
The big right wing Capo has tied up the world behind the screen, but met with natural problems. His underlings try to bully our hero, the little uptight nobody, and the little guy stands up and becomes obnoxious. Add some weird characters like the Rat or J or the narrator's alcoholic business partner or the narrator's divorced wife, not to forget the Capo's personal assistant, who is maybe one of the best incarnations of Mephisto.
And of course: the girl with the most beautiful ears. This is all ear fetishists' favorite novel, I am sure.
Great entertainment on an intellectually pleasing level.