Smooth, flowing prose is so difficult to find!
The last book I read was the 2022 winner of the Booker prize, and I did not like it. Even before i reached half way through I had got tired of the ghosts and ghouls, the violence, and most of all, by the cumbersome writing style. So I was quite relieved to find a recent book by Haruki Murakami.
"Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" (2013) has its share of the usual Murakami elements - a protagonist (TT) trying to come to terms with a troubled past, a tangle of human relationships, and a piece of music that ties up the threads. In this book it is Franz Liszt's 'Le mal du pays' (Fr. homesickness, melancholy) from his Years of Pilgrimage, suite 'Year I: Switzerland', preferably played by the Russian pianist Lazar Berman. For a change, this book has few references to food, and none on cats :)
One thing I liked in particular about this book is the descriptions of Japan's amazing railway network, and its stations. It gives you a glimpse of the kind of passion that goes into building machines in Japan. TT is a an engineer who specialises in designing and building railway stations - Tsukuru visited railroad stations like other people enjoy attending concerts, watching movies, dancing in clubs, watching sports, and window shopping. When he was at loose ends, with nothing to do, he headed to a station.
This brings us to lovely descriptions like this one -
Shinjuku Station is enormous. Every day nearly 3.5 million people pass through it, so many that the Guinness Book of World Records officially lists JR Shinjuku Station as the station with the "Most passengers in the World". A number of railroad lines cross there, the main ones being the Chuo line, Sobu line, Yamanote line, Saikyo line, Shonan-Shinjuku line, and the Narita Express. The rails intersect and combine in convoluted ways. There are sixteen platforms in total. In addition, there are two private rail lines, the Odakyu and the Keio line, and three subway lines plugged in, as it were, from the side. It is a total maze. During rush hour, that maze transforms into a sea of humanity, a sea that foams up, rages, and roars as it surges towards the entrances and exits. Streams of people changing trains become entangled, giving rise to dangerous, swirling whirlpools. No prophet how righteous, could part that fierce, turbulent sea...The long trains, their arrivals and departures times down to the second, are like long-suffering, well-trained farm animals, systematically exhaling and inhaling people, impatiently closing their doors as they rush off towards the next station.
The engineer loves his work, but it is music - mostly classical - that binds his life together. So apart from Lizst, he has for company, Thelonius Monk ('Round Midnight, 1943), Antonio Carlos Jobim, and even Elvis Presley ("Viva Las Vegas", "Don't be Cruel").
As with other novels by Murakami, this one too is best savoured with his selection of music playing in the background :)
