Review: South of the Border, West of the Sun

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There's a frantic urgency to reading Murakami, his scenes are put together in such unity that each one forces the unfolding of the next till you find yourself sitting on the bed at 4 AM having spent the night reading from the front cover to the back. This is good. This is beautiful.

South of the Border, West of the Sun ends on a disappointing note. This ending comes too late to prevent the cover-to-cover frenzied rush through the pages, but is disappointing enough to blunt the force of the book. While Murakami's mystical endings often create unsatisfying but powerful books, it just doesn't have the strength to carry this one.

And once it was over, the signs became obvious. The missteps, the repetition, the bits which dragged or made little sense, the emotional beats that just refused to feel consequential.

Make no mistake, this is still a Murakami novel. The scenes follow each other in harmony, there are beautiful passages, tantalising mysteries, so much worth reading. Yet, if you were going to read a Murakami, perhaps I'd save this one for last.


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