Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

By: Haruki Murakami

Narrated by: Adam Sims, Ian Porter

Length: 14 hrs

Publisher's summary

Information is everything in "Hard-Boiled Wonderland". A specialist encrypter is attacked by thugs with orders from an unknown source, is chased by invisible predators, and dates an insatiably hungry librarian who never puts on weight. In "The End of the World" a new arrival is learning his role as dream-reader. But there is something eerily disquieting about the changeless nature of the town and its fable-like inhabitants. Told in alternate chapters, the two stories converge and combine to create a novel that is surreal, beautiful, thrilling, and extraordinary.

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©2010 Naxos AudioBooks (P)2010 Naxos AudioBooks

transcendental

two parallel stories of love, existence and nature of self. intriguing neuropsychology and the metaphysically transcendent.

A TWISTED Carnival Mirror of the Mind

Left-brain/Right-brain; Up/Down; Awake/Asleep; Self/Shadow; Life/Death -- this novel is a twisted carnival mirror of the mind. So it is fitting that I both loved and hated it. I loved it for its absurd brilliance and hated it for its brilliant absurdity. Murakami's novels are always risking absurdity and death. He is adventurous, clever, silly and serious and he manages to pull it all off at once. The closest analogy I can make is the novel seems constructed to both produce the literary equivalence of consonance AND dissonance at the same time; two stories but three harmonics that seem to play with the arrival, rest, and resolution of my consciousness.

Good story, but missing images.

I enjoyed this story, balanced somewhere between science-fiction and fantasy. This particular version is great and the two narrators are perfect for their parts! The only issue I had is that there are two diagrams specifically referenced in the text of the book (one diagram and I can't remember what the other one was) and there's a halt in the audio as the narrators wave their arms around (or something) in a vain attempt to indicate what you're missing out on. Don't let that dissuade you from listening if you're interested as it's not crucial to the plots, but possibly worth knowing about ahead of time.

OK, but Not Great

There are problems with the narration, which is unfortunate because for the most part the guy's voice is easy to listen to. That said, when you have to pull out a dictionary, search google, and ultimately consult an e-book to determine if the guy's pronunciation is off, or if Murakami is making up new words for the story there's a problem. For example, the word "sanctuary" is used many times throughout the novel, and yet the narrator insists on pronouncing it "SANG-turry." Another example is the word "pathos" in which he says "path - aws" every time it appears in the text. These and similar mispronunciations will be distracting to readers who are used to hearing these words.

Beyond that, if you've read a lot of Haruki Murakami and are just coming across this book, you may be a disappointed that this book deviates from his usual formula of having a painfully ordinary guy placed in a fantastic circumstance, because the protagonist of the first narrative is anything but ordinary. So much that it took me nearly a third of the book to realize that it wasn't a strange world that the story was unfolding it, it was a guy with a strange background interacting with what he knows. I much prefer the style of his later books.

Fascinating!

Possibly my favorite Murakami novel to date. The characters are intriguing and surprisingly endearing, and I found the plot more accessible than some of his other works. The story clips along with the usual Murakami twists and shifts, but I wasn't struggling to keep up. The narrators are both excellent as well. They really draw you in and make the words live. Complex, but definitely fun!

Beautiful Exploration

Murakami explores the well trodden topic of human consciousness/sub- consciousness in an exceedingly imaginative and insightful manner. The layers of symbolism and representation are profound. Murakami is, without question, one of the great writers of our time.

Strange

Strange characters. strange story. lots going on but no real point to anything. it did keep me interested to anything the end though.

Expectional

I had no idea where the author would take me on this adventure. I was always surprised and never let down!
Great read.

Grown-up Hiyao Miyazaki

I really enjoyed this book, though, as you can tell from other reviews online, it's not a novel for every taste. Let me put it this way: if you like the films of Hiyao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke), and relish a few dashes of metaphysics, literary/movie/music references, and existentialism, then Murakami's mix of fantasy, surreality, and realism might speak to you. If not, you'll probably be frustrated with the listening/reading experience. (If you don't know Hiyao Miyazaki, then get ye to Netflix first, then come back here.)

On the surface, the book has two intertwining stories. One is about a 30-something loner guy with slacker tendencies and cyberpunkish skills who lives in Tokyo and takes a job with an eccentric scientist, a choice which soon sets off a cascade of strange consequences. This is interleaved with a second story, in which a man with no memory finds himself trapped in a fantastical, dreamlike town, trying to make sense of its fable-like inhabitants and his reasons for being there. As the novel progresses, the two stories begin to intersect. While "magic realism" is a genre that can really fly off the rails sometimes (see Mark Helprin's A Winter's Tale), Murakami keeps his story readable and grounded in a coherent flow of events.

This is one of those books where (in my opinion), you'll enjoy it more if you don't expect the author’s stew of ideas and imagery to make perfect sense or try to analyze his science and philosophy too much. Yes, there are a few logic holes and not everything in the surface-level plot gets resolved in an obvious way. Rather, this is a novel to read for its oddball characters, the vision of the writing, the strange-but-fitting twists and turns of the story, the humorous juxtaposition of the surreal and the everyday, and the existential questions under its fanciful trappings. If you had only 36 hours to live, what would you do with the time? I found the way Murakami chose to answer this question unexpectedly moving. Even with the end of the world coming, you might still have to do laundry...

I enjoyed the narration and voice-acting in the audiobook. The main character's voice reminded me of Spike from Cowboy Bebop, which (in my world) was a bonus.

Ethereal

The first HM book that didn't draw me in and engage me. It has that familiar weird charm and hey this book even has an ending that I'm going to pass as a satisfying resolution (Murakami is often happy to leave loose ends reeeaaallly loose).
I still really enjoyed HM's writing and it kept me interested enough to get through the book in a week or so but putting fantasy aside, I couldn't buy into the insufficiently fleshed out story about the Data War between the Calcutecs and the Semiotecs. It was all just too vague and ethereal to me. This and the underground world of the Inklings that seemed to have no real point kept my engagement at arms length. I floated through this part of the story looking for something solid to hang onto but it was just all so wispy and aloof.
I finished the book feeling like maybe I'd rushed through reading it and I'd missed something blindingly obvious. I'll probably revisit this one in a few years to see if the second times a charm.