[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1 Introduction: "Isn't it wonderful when a person dies?" she was talking right in my ear, and her words slipped softly into my body along with her warm, moist breath. Why? I asked. She placed a finger on my lips as if to seal it. Don't ask questions," she said. And don't open your eyes. Do you understand?" I nodded, my voice as small as hers. (From the text)
(Translator: DeepL)
It’s messy in the way a life crisis is messy: too long, too quiet, then suddenly violent.
Overall I really liked the trilogy. It’s ambitious, atmospheric, and unlike anything Murakami had written up to that point. At the same time, the pacing is undeniably uneven. There are stretches where the prose becomes almost narcotic in its slowness, not because the plot demands it, but because Murakami seems to have surrendered completely to the flow of his own subconscious.
In that sense, the novel feels like an experiment, a deliberate attempt to break free from his earlier, tighter narrative structures and to see what happens when intuition is allowed to overtake his discipline. Sometimes this works brilliantly: there are passages where the surreal, floating quality becomes emotionally overwhelming, where time seems to stop and you feel like you're inside the characters psychology instead of just reading about it.
But the other side of the experiment also has entire chapters that read like improvisation for its own sake. Repetitions, lengthy descriptions, and background stories that don’t always earn their space. It’s not that they’re bad, rather, they stretch the narrative in a way that doesn’t always add to its thematic weight. You can feel that this is his first attempt at a true multi-volume structure, and the quality required to sustain it isn’t always there.
Still, the book’s best moments are among the strongest of what I have read from him. The imagery is unforgettable, the emotional stakes are higher than they appear, and the overarching metaphors come nicely together in the final volume. Even the excess, in a strange way, becomes part of the experience.
So yes, it drags, it meanders, it occasionally loses itself. But that’s also exactly why it leaves such a lasting impression. It’s messy in the way a life crisis is messy: too long, too quiet, then suddenly violent. And when Murakami hits the emotional notes he’s aiming for, they resonate in a way only a writer willing to take this kind of risk can achieve.