it's no "Hard Boiled Wonderland..."

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	• Dance Dance Dance Haruki Murakami The Harvill Press, 2002 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 70 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not Your Normal Senior Prom

We interrupt this review for a Public Service Announcement. It is STRONGLY recommended that you read Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase before reading this book. While not 100% necessary, your enjoyment of DDD will be greatly enhanced! We now return you to your regularly scheduled review.

I got so wrapped up in the book I almost thought I was a part of it. There was that gnawing at the edge of my mind - a glimmer of understanding. Then an insight: I am in the book! Murakami has a way of writing the reader into the story; making the reader an unmentioned character.

This is too real for magical realism; it's post-modern with a reliable narrator; it has a tinge of science fiction and fantasy but is really neither. It's simply Murakami.

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if only we all understood japanese

this is my second haruki murakami novel, having previously read "norwegian wood". i wont go into detail about how much i enjoyed the novel, which is apparent anyway from my rating, but i do want to agree with the reviewer who mentioned that the english text is abridged.
i read the novel in the mandarin-chinese translated edition, and though i ( not being able to read japanese) obviously cannot be certain that the chinese version isn't somewhat abridged as well, after comparing segments of the book i own with an english translated and adapted version, i found several substantial differences, and I have reason to believe that the version i read is probably closer to the original text.
I actually felt, very strongly, in fact, that I liked the chinese version i had read more as it seems more in the style of HM ( but having read norwegian wood in chinese also, i cant promise that i dont have an unclear perception of what his style is), and some segments in the english text make the novel seem boring( e.g the narrator rambling on and on), while in the chinese text there is more use of free indirect discourse/stream of conciousness and it's hardly as annoying.
so, perhaps, if you didn't enjoy the novel because of that, dont blame haruki murakami. blame the translator.

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really compelling

Loved this book. Maybe the best Murakami book I've read. I really fell into his world, feeling that his insight into the character's lives was continually poignant and full of a human empathy. of course, its also surreal and uncanny in that special murakami way.

Japan's Magic Man

I read a couple other Murakami novels and they glanced off me, but this one stuck. An unnamed narrator, adrift in modern Tokyo, dreams of a girlfriend who disappeared years ago. He returns to the hotel where he last saw her and there discovers a secret floor that's a gateway to another dimension. On this floor he encounters the Sheep Man, making a return appearance from Murakami's earlier novel A Wild Sheep Chase. Our protagonist searches for his lost girlfriend, befriends a teenage psychic, and reconnects with an old high school buddy who's now a famous actor. The plot meanders between Tokyo, Osaka and Hawaii, but the pages keep turning. In the end, we find out what happened to the girlfriend, and our anomic hero learns what it means to reach out to other human beings.

Murakami is a bit of a one trick pony, but it's a good trick. He speaks through a disaffected thirtysomething narrator with a vaguely creative profession (the one in Dance, Dance, Dance is a freelance journalist). In flat, precise prose, this narrator takes us through his unremarkable daily life. At some point in the story, our narrator bumps up against another realm or dimension outside the quotidian one he lives in, a dimension where the past is present and dead people are still alive. Out of this collision with the metaphysical emerges a new understanding of the mystery and complexity of existence.

Why is this a good trick? Because the Japanese culture Murakami writes about is fascinated with surfaces and secrets. His hard-boiled prose captures the surface; his metaphysical plots expose the secrets. Although Murakami is very international in his outlook and his cultural references, his emotional preoccupations are Japanese to the core, which explains his popularity there.

Murakami also manages to wring a surprising amount of emotion from his tight, reportorial prose. The main characters in Dance, Dance, Dance want something they can barely glimpse and struggle to name. Murakami's best trick of all is that he makes their yearning so affecting.

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it's no "Hard Boiled Wonderland..."

The hotel in Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance seems to have been built by the same guy that built Danielewski's House of Leaves.

I didn't enjoy this one as much as Hard-Boiled Wonderland... but it still had some entertaining moments and was certainly worth the read.

That said, I didn't feel that it was a particularly special or memorable werk.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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