by Ms P. K. Styles

Created on: July 30, 2008

First of all, let me say that this is not a review from a fanatical Murakami fan, so you will hear no blurb from me. I'm just going to give you the raw facts about this book and what I took away from it as an avid fiction reader, not a drooling fan.

Also, there will be many SPOILERS so I advise you not to read this until you've finished the book for yourself.

Toru Okada, being the main character, was obviously the greatest attraction of the story in my opinion. I was amazed by how . . . laidback . . . he was about everything. People say it's because he's "passive" but that isn't true at all. Toru has a great talent for not letting people get to him. He takes nothing personal and instead takes it out of himself and transports the feeling to "another place." This way, he almost never winds up holding grudges or getting in heated arguments or suffering needlessly, and because of my own short-tempered nature, I found this ability of his to be a truly amazing feat.

Toru's ability to overlook petty squabbles, however, does not make him "passive" in the slightest. He's a very calm and assertive man in situations where anyone else would have flown off the lid. This is almost to the point of being bizarre. And because he's so assertive, he never lets anyone push him around: when they hit him, he hits back and twice as hard.

I love this about Toru and I have taken it from this book and applied it to my own everyday life. Now when some petty person pisses me off, I take that feeling from myself and put it away "somewhere separate." And every time I exude this sort of patience, I do not suffer needlessly.

Toru being too "passive" is only one of many complaints people have with this book. People have also said that Toru supposedly "lacks emotions" when his wife walks out on him, but this isn't true at all. Toru was devastated when Kumiko left him to the point that he was walking around haggard and pale and May Kasahara told him he looked terrible. To add a bizarre twist, Toru decides to climb to the bottom of a well and sit there for three days, so he can use this quiet place to figure out why Kumiko left him.

Come on now! No one does something THAT bizarre unless they're really torn up. It is my opinion that Toru was devastated that his wife left him, but as time passed, he learned to put it aside like everything else and struggle on the best he could until he could find some way to communicate with her.

There are also many other questions that people complain have been unanswered

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