I think I may have reached saturation point with Murakami as I didn't enjoy this one half as much as I did with his previous books. The usual stuff is still there, the magical realism, the cats, strange girls and emotionless male characters, what is missing is that brilliant writing and a strong story.

The dual stories are, Kafka Tamura a tedious 15yr-old emo kid, I hated him and this is probably why I didn't get into the book. Kafka just seems to whine and whine and people do stuff for him. The second story though is brilliant, I loved Satoru Nakata, such a gentle old man, he might have been short on mental faculties but he was far wiser than anybody else and his relationship with Hoshino was fun to read.

The biggest failing of this book was the sex scenes, I felt embarrassed for Murakami whilst reading it, the sex in fifty shades is better, that's how bad it is. It feels like Murakami has read a sex education book and gone "Oh, so that's what the penis does....well that's going in the book".

I would certainly recommend the previous books by Murakami, not sure I would recommend this one to anybody though.