The first time I picked up the book, I put it aside after something like 50 pages. It wasn't the book's fault.

This time I was determined to get through this - and also I got pulled into the story right away.
Kafka on the Shore is not a book for those readers who need tidy and illustrative endings. The world and events of the book remain a mystery in many parts which was ok for me - though I would have loved to see some of the mysteries solved, just out of sheer curiosity.
There are two main characters who the reader follows in the story: "Kafka" Tamura, a 15-year-old runaway from a strange and broken home, and an old man called Nakata, goodhearted, simple-minded, illiterate and full of strange talents. Their fates get entwined in the most bizzare ways without them knowing, or even ever meeting each other, and in the end only one returns to the place they each started from.

In the world of the book, reality is quite an elusive thing which can't be grasped by logical thinking. It moves on the border of what we call reality and the fantastic, partly in a beautifully mystical way, partly in a desolate dystopian nightmare. So it seems quite logical that one of the great topics for the characters moving in this world is identity and the self.

I enjoyed the book a lot, and I didn't mind the many unsolved threads one is left with. The feeling that remains is that, for all the information and all the insight I gained concerning the characters, I was somehow kept outside and at a distance in the same way that one can never quite know how it is to be another person, or to see into them. Very strange.