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Jan 19, 20161aa rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
The tone is informal/ talkative, given from the point of view of the protagonist, a naive man in his 30s. Lots of unusual things happen, some connected, but mostly disconnected. The story starts all slowly coming together about halfway through, and gets more intense and suspenseful until the end, though there are several loose ends. Whether these loose ends are built-in or a by-product of this edition is not clear: it would be in keeping with 'postmodern' literary narrative techniques, but also its much shorter than the original: Rubin, the translator submitted two versions: a 900 page complete translation, and a 600 page version that he was asked for by the English language publisher (Murakami is so famous that one wonders why they jsut didn't publish the whole thing).