Title: A Wild Sheep Chase
Author: Haruki Murakami
Type: Fiction
Page Count: 300
Rating: 3.5/5
This book was delightfully weird, but then, what else do you expect from Haruki Murakami? One of my friends asked me what it was about and I realised that I didn’t really have a good answer.
I guess it’s sort of surrealist magical realism novel about a literal wild sheep chase, in which a Japanese dude tries to find a magical sheep. I think that’s the best I can do for you. But this is the kind of book where the plot doesn’t really matter, and while the characters are pretty cool, they don’t really matter either.
Really, the highlight here is the writing and some of the ideas. That’s what Murakami is best at, and I’m always amazed by how evocative his work is despite the fact that it’s been through translation. And it wasn’t even my favourite Murakami translator.
Funnily enough, I was talking to a friend about Murakami because she hadn’t heard of him and so she watched the movie of Norwegian Wood, which I haven’t seen. She found it boring, and I can imagine that happening because for me, reading Murakami has always been about the experience of reading his words. The stories are almost secondary.
And so that brings us to the question that I ask at the end of most of my reviews, which is whether this is worth reading or not. To that, I’d say that it probably is, but only if you’re already a Murakami fan. It’s not the place to begin, and there are others that are worth getting to first. But if you see this in a charity shop, or if a friend offers it to you, get it.
