Tsukuru Tazaki is one of the five friends group - three boys
and two girls in their school days. After their school, only Tsukuru leaves
the comfort of hometown to head to Tokyo for further studies. He is passionate
about building railway stations that becomes his subject of study and the
profession too. Whenever he is back in hometown Nagoya, he regularly meets his
friends. During one of such visits, all of his friends refuse to meet Tsukuru
or talk to him. He finds it strange and after repeated attempts, he learns that
his friends have abandoned him, cut him-off from their group without an
explanation. It pains Tsukuru a lot; he goes into depression for five months. From
the verge of suicide, he recovers and learns to get on with his life. After
that incident he finds it difficult to make friends and it takes two decades
for him to find a promising girlfriend in Sara Kimoto. After they get to know
each other better, Sara notices the emptiness in Tsukuru and feels that it has
roots in what has happened to Tsukuru in his school days. She helps to track those
friends and advises Tsukuru to meet them to fill up the void and eliminate the
emotional baggage he is carrying for years.
Tsukuru goes on to meet his two boyfriends first, hears
their version of stories and reasoning. One of the girl friends is already dead
and she was the prime reason behind the friends maintaining distance with
Tsukuru. But another girl friend is living in Finland far away from Japan.
Tsukuru goes to Finland to meet up with her friend and many of the facts which
were unknown to him open up and things start falling up in place. His friend
suggests Tsukuru to hang on to Sara. Once he is back in Tokyo, Tsukuru proposes
to Sara and waits for her response.
This has all the ingredients of Murakami’s novels. Loneliness,
depression, death, wild dreams, music, liquor and sex. Using all of that into a good recipe, Murakami transports the readers into the story he tells. But he
makes few observations which are not usually part of novels, such as science of
building railway stations, skills needed to sell the cars, and the effort
needed to be competitive in corporate world which he explains through the characters
of this novel.
A million copies of this book were sold in the first week of
its release. That shows Murakami’s acceptance and commercial success as an
author.
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