Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Author: Haruki Murakami

Translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel

Publisher: Alfred A. Knoft

2014/ 391 pages 

Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.

I have finished reading this latest book from my all time favorite author, Haruki Murakami, couple days ago but to date I still feel so much drowning with the plot and the main character found in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and kind of sad to say farewell to them. It means I have to wait for another 1-2 years before Murakami releases his new work.

This Murakami's latest work is definitely much simpler comparing to his previous book, 1Q84. Simpler in pages (1Q84 has 1000 pages while Tsukuru only 300 something pages), plot, characters, illusion, etc. But still Murakami always fascinates his readers in creating an interesting flow of the story and characters. Not to forget his references to music, pop culture and literature. No wonder readers claim his books are a strong read. A food for mind. 

This book reminds me of Murakami's other work, Norwegian Wood, since the plot is about teenagers life including everything about it such as love, jealousy, dissapointmen, music, competition,etc. The lead character is a 36-year-old man, Tsukuru Tazaki, who is addicted to anything related to train and railways station thus he works as a railway builder now. Tsukuru's life seems great although deep down inside it doesn't. 16 years ago, during his high school time, he got four best friends, two boys and two girls. They're so close to each other and considered this friendship as their life. All his four friends having  a family name that cointaned colour, i.e. Akamatsu means red pine, Oumi means blue sea, Shirane is white root, Kurono is black field but unfortunately the name Tazaki has no colour in it. 

One day after finishing their school holiday, suddenly all his four friends said that they didn't want to have any contact with Tsukuru anymore without explaining the true reason. Tsukuru was shocked. His world turned upside down. He couldn't think clearly and just wanted to die.

Life goes on. After 16 years Tsukuru's latest girl friend, Sara, said that it's time for Tsukuru to find the real reason behind the termination of their friendship. Tsukuru follows Sara's advice and starts to track down all his four former best friends. His trip even takes him to a very far location, Finland, where one of his friends stays there now. The description on Tsukuru's trip to Finland is very touching makes me want to visit the place myself :)

Not Murakami at his very best but still worth to read. Even for a new Murakami's reader, I think this one is easy to absorb.