Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Originally posted on 2/16/19.

Author: Haruki Murakami.

Genre: Cyberpunk, surrealism.

Year of Original Publication: 1985.

First Line: "The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent."

Any Triggers? If you're afraid of leaches, there's a scene that will give you nightmares.

Summary: The first thing to understand about this book is that its actually two parallel storylines that switch chapters back and forth. One of the stories is called Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the other is End of the World.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland takes place in a cyberpunk futuristic Tokyo. In this story our unnamed narrator works as a Calcutec which, as far as I can tell, is a combination between a computer engineer and a living external hard drive. All Calcutecs work for a quasi-governmental organization called the System, which is intent on protecting data. The narrator takes on an assignment from an eccentric scientist who is working on a project involving sound removal. But the scientist has secret information that the System wants, and the narrator is caught in the crossfire.

End of the World has more of a fantastical, magical realist vibe. In this story, an unnamed narrator who is only referred to as the Dreamreader is a new citizen of a small town called the End of the World. At first the town seems perfect, but as the seasons change our narrator begins to expect that nothing is as it seems.

My Thoughts: This book was published the year I was born. There's no point in saying that, I just thought it was an auspicious pick for my first review.

As you already know from my first post, Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite authors. Which isn't to say that I've enjoyed everything he's ever written. I've read some of his more normal works and with the exception of Norwegian Wood (which is excellent) they don't do anything for me. A Murakami book is at its best when it's filled with what I can only call a deadpanned strangeness. I'm here for the weird, man. And Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World delivers.

A big part of where I got enjoyment from this book was trying to figure out what connects the two storylines. I won't give away the twist here, but suffice it to say I enjoyed catching all the clues. I sort of figured out what the connection was before they revealed it, but I didn't fully solve it so it was a satisfying surprise.

I have one caveat. There have been a few think pieces online about the problems some readers have had with the female characters in Murakami's work. I was confused before, because I have read a few of Murakami's books and I had no problem with any of the female characters. Well, that changed with this book. There is a character only referred to as the scientist's granddaughter (none of these characters are given names). When she is introduced, the narrator has an inner monologue that lasts for several paragraphs about how fat women confuse his boner. I'm not being hyperbolic. The scientist's granddaughter is also young and naïve but asks the narrator for sex in a way that feels like a male fantasy (they don't have sex, by the way). This uncomfortably fetishistic vibe continues throughout the book. Maybe these interactions were supposed to be funny? I didn't think it was enough for a trigger warning, but I did find it icky and unnecessary.

With that out of the way, I would still recommend this book. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is an overall well plotted and intriguing story for fans of multiple narrative books like Cloud Atlas.