Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World – Book Review

It’s September, and my Goodreads’ goal to read 16 books this year looms.

Oddly, Goodreads considers DNFs towards the goal, and this year, it’s Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland that will skew my end-of-year reading stats.

If this was the last book at the end of the world, I might have finished it, but I have other books I am excited for, like the finale in Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy.

So, why did I bounce off Hard-Boiled Wonderland after passing the 33% mark?

Hard-Boiled Wonderland Review

I’m not a fan of hard-boiled eggs. I much prefer dippy egg, poached egg, fried egg, etc.

I don’t think my taste in eggs really has any connection to why I disconnected from this novel, but then again… I spent the first 100 pages of this book feeling like I was eating the stiff, unsalted white of the egg, waiting for the gooey golden centre, only to find that the middle is as stiff as the outer flesh.

I got to the heart of Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and instead of the book spilling out in front of me, all I found was a chalky, yellow-grey middle.

The Narration

I’ll name the narrator as the first flavour that missed my palate. He’s neither someone I want to root for, but neither is he a character that I would delight for evil to happen to. I don’t really know who he is, and there’s nothing inspirational driving him. He’s not particularly kind, but neither is he malicious.

The second narrator—who I’m sure will later be revealed to be the first narrator—interested me at first, but I became less interested as the pages turned. They’re empty, and so are the people around them. I’m sure it’s intentional, but I can’t help but find it intentionally dull.

Between these two narrators, there’s a mystery connecting them, but I can’t care enough about either to care about it.

After character, the next item that will surely drive me into or away from a book has to be the quality of the sentence craft.

The Sentence Craft

I can’t deny that Murakami, or Alfred Birnbaum in translation, has skill, but there’s an edge to it that I don’t enjoy. To return to the egg metaphor, it’s like I’m repeatedly finding shell between bites.

The sentences are all very short and pithy, and yet I’m bored. Everything is described—including the fantasy world—with a straightforwardness that I’m sure some readers find refreshing, but which leaves me feeling thoroughly unsatisfied.

It’s hard to describe the lack in this novel, but I could try to describe it as the difference between song and a monotonous speech. For me, Hard-Boiled Wonderland read like a monotonous speech. It lacks lyricism, and the rhythm of its prose is plodding.

The Story

The budding story of this novel is that of a lonely, talented salaryman who gets roped into something bigger and stranger than he can handle. The catch is that in being so removed from society, there’s no-one else he can turn to for advice or inspiration either.

Unfortunately for me, being a character-focused reader, the main character’s isolation leads to facile relationships. By page 125, the relationships aren’t what is driving the plot. Instead, it’s driven by whimsical farce that might all come together in the end, but which I don’t have the patience to discover.

I won’t touch on its successes or failures in world building because this simply isn’t something that ever interests me as a reader—you’ll have to find other reviewers for that perspective.

Summary

I’ve been intrigued by the name ‘Murakami’ for many years now, but Hard-Boiled Wonderland really wasn’t the title for me. Are his other books similar, or should I try Kafka on the Shore one day? Let me know in the comments!

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