This book had passages with stunning insight. I liked the talking cats, the hermaphrodite, the library as a magical place. I found it masterfully well written, unique and thought provoking. But the last 150 pages of this book dragged on and on and for an eternity, and I found myself getting terrible ADD and finishing two other books in the interim. It gets a 5 for being well written, and a 2 for being entertaining, something like My Name is Red, which lingers still on my list, half read and most likely abandoned now for good. Kafka on the Shore is like a piece of inventive experimental modern music from the 30's, that is fun to think about intellectually, interesting to dissect and inventive in form and content, but not something you want to listen to over and over again.