You know that old trick magicians do when they remove a tablecloth without breaking anything? Well something similar happens when you start a Murakami book, the book is the table, you are the items on the table and the tablecloth is reality. After a few pages reality gets pulled from under you and you find yourself in some crazy world that makes no sense but is mesmerising at the same time.

This story is in 3 parts. Parts 1 and 2 are brilliant, what you would expect from Murakami. Weird women, ears, random animal (Jelly fish), a cat, main character who is like an emotionless robot and gets phased by nothing, more weird women. These two parts are some of the best writing he has done. Part 3 though, he tries something new and I don't like something new! He includes letters, news stories and articles from a magazine, whilst these were interesting and well written they do break up the flow of the magical story.

There is something unique with his writing that no other author I've come across can do, if he is writing about a woman's body with only a few words he can make her seem incredibly sexy....even if she does have a cats tail, up until that point she was very ordinary sounding. And when he writes a torture scene it is more gruesome and shocking than anything from American Psycho, he doesn't go into too much detail but still you're left shocked.

Fantastic book, unfortunately the damage done to the flow in book 3 knocks it down to 4 stars.