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South of the Border, West of the Sun

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South of the Border, West of the Sun

By: Haruki Murakami
Narrated by: Eric Loren
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Growing up in the suburbs in postwar Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch.

Now Hajime is in his 30s. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.

©1999 Haruki Murakami (P)2021 Penguin Audio Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

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South of the Border, West of the Sun is a relatively short novel about a lonely deviant and his lifelong obsession with a girl he met in his childhood.

As usual, it's weird but engaging. It's more 'Old Murakami' than new; it's more real than surreal. There's themes of loneliness, longing and being an outsider with most of the defining ambient features of Murakami (e.g. smokey jazz bars, classical music).

The book is not as memorable as some other Murakami. It feels like another (weaker) angle of Norwegian Wood which also means a fair amount of pretty laughable sex scenes.

Norwegian Wood LITE

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the narrator is too young to convey the sorrow in this book, but that is a small weakness in such great beauty

the narrator is it's only weakness

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Unlike his best novels and short stories, there’s was a lack of a compelling protagonist. Rather, it’s a story about love, loss, and emptiness; which, while meaningful conditions to tell, seems a little drawn out and forced as a listener. It’s certainly not a feel good book, and it paints a morose and disconcerting picture of internal dialogue and emotions well in that sense. But by doing that well, it creates an uncomfortable narrative that, for me, isn’t as well balanced as Norwegian Wood, or other similar Murakami novels. There’s a distinct lack of his usual humour, intrigue, playfulness and mystery.

Solid, but not Murakami’s best

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Enjoyable in its way, a love story but without a lot of other dimensions that usually accompany romantic themes from murakami. I struggled to really get into it a lot of the time save for a few passages and thought provoking elements. The character development and atmospherics in parts are what you have come to know from murakami but outside of this it felt a little flat.
I enjoyed the narration in general but I suspect it may not appeal to all

A different murakami story

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I have been a fan of Haruki Murakami for a while, but there seem to be two types of his books. The first is the really enjoyable kind, in which he messes with reality and conception, like in 'The Windup Bird Chronicle' or '1Q84'; the other type are stories that focus on socially awkward men and their disturbed relationship with women without touching on the other dimension. This book is one of the latter. For me, it lacked plot and depth and just seemed to meander without really going anywhere. The narrator is also pretty mediocre...not bad but I have definitely listened to better. Overall a pretty average experience.

Mediocre

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