Quand on chemine sur un sentier de montagne sombre et désolé, la seule chose qu'on puisse faire c'est de trouver sa lumière soi-même.

Tout le monde est appelé un jour à se disperser dans le ténèbres du temps et à disparaître.

Je voulais toujours garder présente en moi l'idée que j'allais mourir un jour. Sinon, comment avoir la sensation d'être vivante?

Tous les gens qu'on aime meurent les uns après les autres. Et pourtant, il faut bien continuer à vivre.

This is supposedly the novel that made "Haruki Murakami " famous . .

     summary :

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before.  Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable.  As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

       review :

Where do i begin? .... i assumed this book had a slow start but turns out that's how the entire story goes until the very  end , There is no real story to be told , and the plot is boring and barely existing. 

The characters don't spark any interest either , we have:

"Toru" a student who can't decide anything so instead he wallows in his self pity

"Naoko" a depressed girl who has no experience with the real world & her roommate "Reiko" who i still don't know what's her role in the story

"Midori" she's supposed to be the "independent and sexually liberated young woman" but throughout the story she is nothing but clingy and insecure,  i swear i thought it was a joke with all that "oh please don't leave me" attitude.  Actually here's one of her best moments *I'm being sarcastic *:

"I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I  tell you I want to eat strawberry shortbread. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortbread out to me. And I say I don't want it any more and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for."

Wich of course made our hero "Toru" fall in love with her.

Really, there is no story .. , there is the usual weird sexual content that seems to be "Haruki "'s specialty.  And oh! The ending was just horrible , the most weird ending you could ever read .

I realise that maybe his books aren't for me , so this is the last book I'll read by him.

I would not recommend this book to anyone , or maybe i Would , just to have someone to talk to about that creepy ending.

A dear friend of mine suggested this book , so i thought "why not?"

        summary :

   Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder. Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s great storytellers at the peak of his powers.

       review:

  I wasn't sure what to expect from this book , but as i started reading it , i found the characters relatable and likeable,  each one of them is fighting his own demons and trying to find his purpose or run away from his past. The story however was truly weird ,i felt like it was all over the place , from the young boy "kafka" looking for his mother and talking to an imaginary crow :

To the old man "Nakata " who talks to cats and makes the sky rain with fish:

The characters themselves were very nice , but their stories bothered me , i didn't enjoy them nor understand the point from them, And don't even get me started about the sexual content !, but i went through this story and read every page , because obviously all this weirdness left me with a lot of questions

But guess what??

I finished the book and still couldn't understand a thing! 

I would say the only good thing about this book is the character of "Oshima" , that character was the only thing that made sense in this book.

maybe it's just that this book isn't for me , but i wouldn't recommend it to anyone.   

Great book that tells a great story! The Translation of Love was the April selection for Keep Turning the Pages book club and I happened to win a copy through a Doubleday Books giveaway. Double bonus! I thoroughly enjoyed this well written book, which is also Kutsukake's debut. The story centers around a young Japanese girl who is searching for her older sister who seems to have vanished in the Ginza district. WWII is over but the American GI's are still very present. Japan is under General McArthur's military Occupation, American and Canadian Japanese have been sent back after living in internment or POW camps, and democracy has new meaning in a war torn country that appears to want to embrace the unfamiliar American customs. Occupied Japan is place of turmoil and people are faced with harsh realities and having to comprise morals just to eat and survive. Families that once had everything are forced to beg for food. It's a matter of survival. Believing a rumor, Japanese citizens begin writing to General McArthur in hopes that he will answer their pleas for help. Fumi is unable to understand English and enlists the help of Aya, an American Japanese girl, who Fumi has befriended, to write to McArthur and ask for help in finding her missing sister. Together, the two girls hold out hope of finding Fumi's beloved sister. Soon, the girls and their quest have drawn the attention of others, including their teacher. Tokyo is not a place for an innocent young girl. American GI's and their Japanese girlfriend's can be seen all over. Unsavory people are taking advantage of other's misfortune. Fumi and Aya will see and learn a lot during their search for Fumi's sister, Sumiko, lessons that young girls would never know had it not been for a war that changed everything for everyone. There are other stories interspersed throughout the book, each coinciding with the main theme. 

Kutsukake's story was well developed. The characters were likeable, even the supporting cast was great. Lots of things going on but everything is relatable and ties the story together. The relationship between the characters, the search for Sumiko, Sumiko's struggle to survive, the plight of a country trying to recover, the different people that inhabit this harsh reality...all of these things combined make this a glorious, wonderful story. Heartbreaking at times, yes! But, still. So very good!

*Many thanks to Doubleday Books for providing a copy through a super fun giveaway on Goodreads that asked reader's to describe a letter writing experience with a pen pal(s).