The Peak, Simon Fraser University's Student Newspaper since 1965, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6, e-mail: epeak@mail.peak.sfu.ca, phone: (604) 291-3597 fax: (604) 291-3786
Volume 90, Issue 10 July 10, 1995 Arts 

dance, dance, dance -- Haruki Murakami

by Leslie smith

This book is quirky. The characters seem real in real settings with real problems but then a mysterious 17th floor in a new hotel named after a old hotel named after an aquatic mammal ....

Haruki Murakami places his protagonist in a web with many other flies. Flies start disappearing and the reader is left to figure out if there is a spider or if the flies got away. You are drawn to the characters, become pleasantly familiar with these people who wear their strangeness unabashed, and empathize with the “hero” as he mourns their loss.

Upper middle class (lower high class?) Japan is the setting, a living standard and place that can afford to pay attention to bizarre occurrences. Everyone is sexy, no one is satisfied.

A warm, thick blanket wraps the events, anticipating the darkness on the next page. Shadowing the narrator, you encounter the police, a movie star, a psychic, an artist, a one-armed poet, a hotel receptionist, and of course call girls, high-class call girls all of whom seem to appear and disappear .

These characters at first seem like background dancers in the cabaret act of the hero’s life. As the plot thickens, or rather simmers, one begins to notice their delicacies. The humour is vivid and based in the awkwardness of relationships.

Genres are mixed like salsa: hot detective, medium sci-fi, cool green romance — the reader never gets just one flavour. Like a great feast this book ended too quickly; I was more than satiated and drunk on the narrative, but was left wanting for more.

It is a book where the banal and absurd cha cha with hope and curiousity, seductively calling on the reader’s mind to dance, dance, dance.


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