A Wild Sheep Chase

This was my first time reading J-horror and I quite enjoyed it. Yeah, the book was kind of depressing but the writer Haruki Murakami describes everything in such detail he makes it sound less depressing. You can really picture the scenes in this whole book come to life. It was one of the smoothest reads I have read in a while. It is set up like a mystery novel and I love a good mystery. Murakami really makes you wait until the VERY end to reveal the secrets. It was not a very intense book but there definitely was A LOT of suspense. I could not put the book down because I could not wait for everything to make sense. I agree, that it is a little weird that nobody has a name in this book, except for a few, but I think that just adds to the mystery. To me, it didn't feel like anything was missing. I do not think it was have been as good if everyone had names. Its hilarious that he didn't even name his cat. He just called it "Cat." By making the world around him seem so simple and boring, it made this mysterious mission he was going on that much more prevalent. There were no distractions. I didn't have to worry about remembering names. Some of the characters in this book are so mysterious and good, they don't need names. My favorites were the Chauffeur and the Sheep man. I think there is a sequel that has some more of the Sheep man in it so I may add that to my Amazon wish list. Good characters and a good mystery make up for the doom and gloom atmosphere in this book. I can see this being a very good movie. It would be something different for us and we need that right now.

Reading this book really does make you sit back and think about your life and where it is and where it is headed. The majority of us are probably already like the narrator of this book, or we are on our way to being like him. It seems that today, most people just go through the motions of life. Nobody really LIVES anymore, and its sad. This book made me realize that sometimes we need an adventure, or something that will just shake things up a bit, no matter how crazy it is. It makes us realize how little we were living before. If somebody came up to me and asked me to find a chestnut sheep with a star on it's back, I would so do it. Bring it on!