I'm really feeling conflicted about my rating. In some ways I kind of hated this book, but in other ways I thought it was good. The main problem was all the little side stories and vignettes felt very separate from the main story, almost like Murakami had a bunch of short stories and he kind of built a novel out of them. (Similar to how I felt about Cloud Atlas). Somehow the separate vignettes never did meld; they felt superfluous, like the main plot didn't really gain much from the telling of some of these stories. At the same time, some of those superfluous stories, especially the war stories, were the ones that were the most interesting to me, perhaps because they felt the most "real" as I'm not big on the whole "magical realism" thing to begin with. This book isn't the usual type of book I like to read but I thought I'd expand my horizons and give it a chance based on the excellent reviews most people give it. That said, I was intrigued by Murakami's ideas about reality, dreams, fantasy, the thin veil separating what we consider reality from what we consider "other", how dreams can bleed into the day and alter and change things in subtle and not so subtle ways. I also liked the idea that events from the past reverberate through time, leaving a permanent scar that can taint the countenance of the present. I wasn't too hotsy on the hodgepodge way the book dealt with the characters, how some of the stories were never resolved or some of the characters just sort of disappeared.

I'll have to let this one settle for a while.