A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (Vintage International)

I just finished this book. I really don’t know if I understood this fully. Before I read the reviews and get myself influenced by the thoughts and views of others, I decided to pen down what I feel as I change the status of this book from currently reading to read on Goodreads.Haruki Murakami was a stranger to me till the last week of December 2015. I had seen posts of his books tagged #Murakami on Instagram before but never thought of giving it a try until a couple of my friends (if I could call them so, at least) on the same platform announced a reading marathon scheduled for the third and fourth weeks of January 2016, titled #MurakamiMadness and invited their followers to join them. Me being one of their followers, took up this opportunity to know who Murakami is and expressed my interest to join them. Logging into Amazon.co.in, searching Murakami, browsing through his books and picking A Wild Sheep Chase, though I don’t find any particular reason for that, everything happened in the blink of an eye, but not literally. Everything takes it’s own time. The book was finally delivered to me by the first week of January, making it my first buy of 2016.There goes the flashback. Coming back to the present, let me write something about the book now. The very first I noticed as I picked up the book was it’s cover. It took some time for me to interpret the red black and white coloured theme and interpret the white half face and black horn of a sheep against a red circular background. The cover is well designed and it is catchy.It will definitely sound boring if I start now with the usual the story begins with thing. I have no intentions to write about the story or the what ifs or the author’s style. Other than the cover design, the characters are uniquely shaped up as none of them possess an identity called name. The narrator is nameless, so is his ex wife, girlfriend, partner and every single character other than the narrator’s friend, The Rat. The book is even listed as the last part of Murakami’s Rat Trilogy and i definitely have to read the other two works to figure out what exactly this Rat series is all about. Given my tight academic schedule and the long list of books already in my to be read list, it’s indeed going to take a pretty long time, I guess. The Sheep Professor and Sheep Man are two other significant characters in the book.The book started off as a murder mystery, introduced us to the characters and took a slow pace in establishing the storyline and often left me confused how the story would end. No clues were left to pick up his true intention as we move from the narrator’s failed marriage to his alcoholic business partner and then to the girlfriend. The way the author thinks of his wife, reasons for them falling apart and her new partner could be easily related to the way I think of the persons who are very much alive, but not in my life anymore.As the name suggests, the book is about a sheep chase. How an advertising executive with an aimless life gets caught in with the sheep myth and leads the chase forms the crux of the story. For me, the sheep was symbolic of life itself. There are characters in the story who had failed after leaving behind everything they had in search of a better life and their experiences influence the narrator in a way he could never even dream of. People who had read this book, if they happen to read this will have views which may or may not disagree with this concept. Even I am pretty sure that it is too early to draw conclusions as I have to cut down the gap between me and Murakami with multiple readings of this book.If this book happened to be published in India in recent times, I am sure it would be made mandatory to fix the warning “Smoking Kills” on the cover design as almost every single character of the story smokes, many of them, including the narrator himself being a chain smoker. I often felt that cigarette was one of the basic necessity of the characters along with beer, brandy and whiskey and what not.As I mentioned earlier, the book definitely calls for, if not multiple readings, at least a second reading for sure. I hope I can come up with something better than this then. Till then, this is it.

Reading Murakami is like falling into a dream, while being wide awake, holding a book in your hand! For people who are new to Murakami, they should know that this book is the second one, in a trilogy. The trilogy (which is actually called the ‘Rat Trilogy’), consists of below books in this order:#1 Wind/Pinball#2 A Wild Sheep Chase#3 Dance Dance Dance'A Wild Sheep Chase' is a weird dream-like tale with a mix of detective story, myth, fantasy, and philosophy. The story opens with the protagonist, owner of a translation and advertising business in Tokyo, a young man who seems to be embracing mediocrity. He clearly embraces his girlfriend, who isn't as beautiful, but has a sixth sense about the future and exceptional ears. At intervals, he reflects upon his failed past marriage too. A strange man in a black suit sends the narrator on a wild sheep chase, to locate a single and singular sheep with a star on its back. It is an offer the young man isn’t able to refuse. He accepts the challenge, gets rid of his employment, colleagues, and material matters, and leaves with his girlfriend, headed to the punishing, mountainous landscape of Hokkaido, in the search of ‘the sheep’. Rest of the story has many twists and turns, and also the mention of ‘Rat’ (from the previous novel). To know how the protagonist finds the sheep, and what happens once he finds the special sheep, pick up this book.The purity and beauty of the writing engage the reader into the core theme of emptiness, loneliness, and alienation. The actual detective story doesn't get started until about halfway through, and pages are spent detailing random trips the guy makes to bars, and other things that don't add much to the story.Anyway, as a Murakami fan, I liked the work. This may not be one of the best (if you compare it to something like ‘Kafka on the shore’), but definitely worth a read. I would rate it 4/5. Cheers!

It is always a spiffing experience to read Murakami's uncanny stories. I simply love the naturally-bizzare situations in a mundane routine the characters of his story go through. A Wild Sheep Chase is just the way I wanted it to be: Slow and engrossing. I read this book for two months but surprisingly I never lost interest in the plot even after a few long breaks.As for the story line- our narrator goes through some rough instances this time; losing love and a buddy to name a few. He has to take some life changing decisions after winding up his work he set up with a friend. He's on a mission this time. The reader travels with our protagonist to the extreme north of Japan from the bustling Tokyo to find a sheep with a star mark on its back. Mind you this is no ordinary sheep! It can make or break you! (Quite literally!) and finding it is the need of the hour.The journey has mystery to it all the way till the end. It comes with pastures and sheep! A sheep professor and a sheep man something only Murakami can ingest in his stories to reveal the mind and it's weakness in a way like no other. Murakami's idiosyncrasy is clear with the beer, jazz, cigarettes and a detached narrator.The blurb is a real teaser so I suggest you pick it up to know it all and know it well.

How does one measure genius? What is high, and what is just literature? How and where to place Murakami? Leave that to each individual reader.

Our protagonist’s life has ground to his halt: his wife has divorced him after having an affair, his business is grinding to a halt as the friend with whom he founded it steadily succumbs to alcoholism, and his best friend Rat disappeared years ago – only occasionally sending bizarre, non-sequitur letters containing money or more recently a picture of some sheep.This picture becomes important, however, because it contains the image of a sheep with the mark of a star – a sheep that is of great interest to the shadowy right-wing organisation that have controlled Japan for years. An organisation that will pay him a great deal of money to find that sheep – or destroy him if he does not.Spurred on by his new girlfriend and her magical ears, this man with no motivation finds himself on a quest to find a single lost sheep on a mountainside in a country full of mountains. What he finds will make all that seem relatively normal.[MORE]What an exceptional book. To start off with it feels like a combination of the surreal humour of Douglas Adam’s Holistic Detective Agency combined with the magical reality of good Rushdie. But this is entirely its own creature. The translation is marvellous and the prose pure poetry – although the author seems to be obsessed with the main characters liquid consumption and expulsion! Plus, the smoking. Never has a book with so many cigarette breaks been so readable.I’m relatively new to Japanese literature – I’ve only read a dozen or so books (although naturally far more manga and all the Final Fantasy computer games!) – but there does seem to be a certain melancholy that keeps cropping up. Murakami makes the mundane interesting, the simple beautiful, and never lets the sadness drag the book down - far from it, I had to fight the temptation to skip to the last ten pages to find out how things worked out. But it is sad. Some things that are lost are never found. Some things that are found stay lost.This book does an exquisite job of showing sadness. I can’t wait to read more of his work.

At the start of this book I would have recognised Murakami's writing style instantly. It had been recommended to me by a Murakami fan and so I was eager to read it.The first, almost half of the book, did seem to plod along with little meaningful progress. It was almost like setting the scene for a movie, giving endless background and pointless sexploits that added nothing at all to the story. Then the Murakami magic sets in and it gets a reader's mind working and drawn in. The imagery is good, the descriptions are first class and enable readers to picture precisely what Murakami is seeing as he wrote the text, but the story itself I found to be on the thin side. If anything, this was more like a great Murakami short story that had been stretched into a full-length novel.I won't disappoint future readers by pointing out the several plot holes that are quite jarring by the time the book is finished, almost as if Murakami had wandered during his writing and just stopped before moving on to the next part. It really did need a little more explanation, a little more conclusive paragraphs before dropping one idea, for instance. The conclusion, though, was satisfying and it remained a good literary journey.Perhaps I was being too critical reading this book, perhaps I had noticed little things that other readers would not consider important or even necessary to explain/elaborate on. But, overall, I did enjoy the read and I did enjoy the journey the main character was taken on. However, for "real" Murakami literature laden with plot and sub-plots, imagery, surrealism, I still haven't found a better novel than "Kafka On The Shore". For someone wanting to know how good Murakamican be, I would recommend Kafka. For readers who want to simply enjoy a quite simply but nonetheless satisfying literary journey, then A Wild Sheep Chase is more than enough.Naturally I would recommend this book, it is by the wonderful Murakami after all, and the translation is excellent. He has though, written better.

An interresting read however not quite as good as many of his other works. Sadly this is translated into American English which makes it very frustrating to read. A mixture of bad spelling and over simplified translations that make it painful to read at times. I will be avoiding any publishing companies bought out by Random House in the future.

It was a good read although a little disappointed with this one.Characters were good and jogged along at a good pace.It didn't really deliver for me.Worth a read though.

Another book by Haruki Murakami which delivers - not the place to do the review as that would spoil the whole pleasure of reading. The only thing I need to point out is that this volume is second hand - nothing wrong with buying book which has been already enjoyed by someone else. Not different than having one from the library, I suppose. Arrived quickly and in excellent condition and it was cheap as chips - cost me just one penny !!! - you can't go wrong with this deal /p&p is just a detail at the end, honestly /. Great idea - would certainly use in the future!!