Really confusing book at times. I think it was about identities, but I’m honestly not sure 😂. I really enjoyed the journey, and was very moved by aspects of it, but I’m not entirely sure where the journey took me. I need someone clever to explain it to me! Lol! 

My first Murakami, in Dutch. After a couple of hundred pages I loved diving in the atmosphere the writer created and the story he wanted to tell. The many repetitions and other long, seemingly unnecessary parts of text overshadowed the beautiful aspects of the book heavily for me. Though these parts did maybe make it a more relaxing read, allowing my mind to wander or speed up in the text from time to time, as a counterpart to the puzzling it had to do trying to find the metaphors for the elements of the story that seemed to have a deeper meaning. By the end I can say I enjoyed reading it and it indeed gave me the feeling of entering the dreamworld myself, apart again from the many repetitions that had too much weight. Or did they perhaps anchor me in the real world? ;)

Dat was vreemd! 

First, things I did like: This is certainly a strange little book, and it challenged me to think about what was truly happening and what that meant for the story overall. There are many oddball plot points and weird little details included, which mimics how life truly is, since you never really know what's going to be important until you get past something and have the hindsight to go, Oh, that's what that meant! I also really enjoyed having the context from Murakami's note at the end that he worked on this story basically his entire career. I'm sure if I had read more Murakami, I would really appreciate how this work meshes with his entire library. I also think if you're just in the mood for a Weird Story, this would work for you.

Now, things I struggled with: I was never sure what storyline to follow — the perspective changed a few times, going from first to second then back to first. It felt like the story ended up coming to a good circular conclusion, but again, there were so many loose ends and unanswered questions and (ba dum tsh) *uncertain* elements. I think part of these loose threads might be the fact that Murakami, like I said, originally wrote only a small part of this and published it in a little journal, but decided it wasn’t right and worked on it his whole career, seriously committing to it during the pandemic.  And in typical Murakami fashion, the women in the story were all considerably younger than our main character and consistently sexualized for no apparent reason/bearing on the plot (so if you are sensitive to this, just know that). Even after talking through the whole plot, I’m not sure what the message/point of the story was, other than being entertaining and strange. Some of that I suppose I can chalk up to things being lost in translation, but I also think this is just a Weird Story. I’m glad he was finally able to get this book over the finish line, even though I can’t say it was my personal cup of tea.