He offered no explanation and sixteen years later Tsukuru remains none the wiser. One day his friend Ao told him that none of the group ever wanted to see him again. Needless to say, nobody fucked but Tsukuru got fucked over. They’d to do everything together-hiking, fishing, studying, the works-and they wouldn’t hang out in twos or threes lest it somehow destroy their special chemistry. In high school he had been part of a close-knit group of friends-two girls, three boys, five thoroughly wholesome archetypes. On his fourth date with Sara, Tsukuru opens up about his childhood. This is a novel about the passage of time. He enjoys ‘the weight and heft of it‘, he enjoys its ‘mechanical whir‘. When his father died, Tsukuru inherited his beautiful antique Heuer. He entertains few bad habits, fewer guests, and for the longest time he was happy to wear any old digital watch. He lives in a studio apartment, takes his job seriously, swims routinely, never travels. Tsukuru Tazaki is another of Murakami’s ascetic types. It’s a weird phenomenon, one that you sense this book’s protagonist would have little time for. There were queues at midnight, reviews by morning. When his thirteenth novel came out in Japan last year, it sold a million copies in two weeks. I don’t know whose idea Haruki Murakami was, but it seems to be paying off.
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