![]() ![]() Wondering whether this is the real thing - and does it mean she's lesbian? - Sumire chews the whole thing over with the long-suffering K, who listens willingly but has to bite his tongue because he is himself very much in love with Sumire. ![]() In fact, Sumire believes she has fallen truly in love for the first time, with an enigmatic older woman called Miu who has given her a job in her wine company. Sumire and K are close, close friends - but platonic ones. She smokes too much, clumps around in rough workboots and "an oversized herringbone coat from a second-hand shop" and wants to be a character in a Kerouac novel - "wild, cool, dissolute". Sumire has dropped out of college and is bent on becoming a novelist. K, the narrator, is a sober, solitary, kind and intelligent young primary-school teacher in Tokyo. ![]() But it has touched me deeper and pushed me further than anything I've read in a long time. How to begin to describe what it is or does? So I'll come right out and say it: I don't really know what Murakami's startling new novel is about. It's that very slipperiness, of course, which makes it complex and demanding, but also infuriatingly seamless. One that works - that, yes, entertains, captivates and energises you, the reader - but, when you try to define its magic, pin down its themes or even grasp its story, just slithers away out of reach. All too rarely, a different sort of novel altogether comes along. ![]()
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