This novel makes easy reading. It's in a way not much more than a novella, or even a long short story. This suits Murakami's style, which these days is relaxed and spartan at one and the same time.
It's also refreshing, like one of the crisp white wines that feature in the story (Miu's job is importing European wines into Japan, and she makes a point of visiting the small vineyards she buys from, and getting to know the families that own them).
Time and again Murakami has done this -- taken a journey into a woman's mind and come up against a brick wall. And over and over again he has used the same vehicle for the journey -- a man who has happy but unemotional sex with one or more women, but no, or unsatisfactory, sex with the one to whom he is attracted at a deeper level.
It's as if what he's saying is that men are easily satisfied but need more than they can readily find, while the kind of women they really need are mysteries they can never manage to understand.
This is a very old proposition. Man is the quester, eternally searching and forever unsatisfied; woman is the mystery, on one level available, but on another utterly inscrutable.
It goes back to the ancient Greeks, and perhaps it is no accident that Murakami places the middle section of this short novel in Greece, in a setting of ageless Aegean beauty -- stony islands in a blue sea, olive trees, goats, fried fish, and a yellow wine tasting of resin.
Unfortunately, at least for this reader, he then plunges into the world of the paranormal. This harks back to earlier books such as The Wind-up Bird Chronicle but my guess is that even if you are attuned to that kind of thing, you'll nevertheless find this book, and especially its ending, unsatisfactory.
To be honest, this book feels like something Murakami began long ago, then set aside. Wanting something new to publish, he took it up again and added what musicians call a "development section." Then, in a bout of extreme concentration, he tied the two parts together in a brief conclusion.
So -- gem or botched job? I tend to opt for the latter judgment. For me this new book is Murakami's least satisfactory so far.
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