Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

I am a big fan of Haruki Murakami. I've collected and read all of his novels, so this is a must-read, his books are automatically at the top of the scale. It's hard to talk about a book that you've enjoyed so much, and doubly hard when describing a Murakami book. His writing is a combination of dreams and nostalgia that changes the way you look at the world.

Colorless is the story of Tsukuru, one of a group of five students. Each provides a necessary componant to the tight knit friendship, and each has a colour in their last name - except Tsukuru. One day out of the blue, they inform Tsukuru without giving a reason that he is no longer welcome in the group, that they never want to hear from him again. Tsukuru is devastated, but accepts he has no choice. It is now about 16 years later and Tsukuru still feels a deep depression. He cannot keep a relationship and wonders if they were right, perhaps he is so colourless that he does not or need not exist. When he begins dating Sara, she feels he is missing an important peace in his life, and encourages him to look up the four friends to find his answers. As he journeys from Tokyo back to his hometown of Nagoya, we learn what happened to the group and why they cut him off.

Murakami writes in a way that cuts to the heart of the emotion, and through subtle, simple ways illustrates Tsukuru's loneliness. When his friend Ao, incredulous that Tsukuru really didn't know why they did that, blurts out the reason I was actually shocked. It was one of those moments when you know the character so well that he would never act in the way Ao described, combined with a sadness that there is nothing that can change the direction of those lost years. As Tsukuru reunites with his friends, some resolution is found.

It's a melancholy novel, a character piece that reminds me most of Murakami's Norwegian Wood from 1987, one of the first Murakami novels I read. It was autobiographical about his days as a college student, and this has those overtones. Colorless does not have the surrealistic quality of his other popular novels, such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and A Wild Sheep Chase, although there are parts that are dreamlike. Like most of his work, it does have themes of alienation and fatalistic loneliness, but we move with Tsukuru through to more of a resolution.

If you haven't read Murakami before, I encourage you to check him out, and this is a great book to begin with. If you are a fan, I hope you agree that this some of his best writing, entertaining while contemplative, and accessible to a wide audience.

His international reputation as one of the best writers has earned him countless awards, and Colorless sold over one million copies in Japan in only it's first month. When it was disclosed that a new book was soon to be published, over 10,000 pre sales made it the fastest selling book on Amazon.co.jp with no details released about the book. Long lines formed at bookstores at midnight of the release and it was reprinted over eight times during the first week of release!

Always a pleasure to read Haruki Murakami. In fact, a new book is an event.

Highly recommended.

2014 / Hardcover / 386 pages