The eponymous Tamura Kafka may be only 15 years old, but he's actually the same disaffected thirtysomething protagonist we see in much of Murakami's fiction. He navigates the same absurd world, struggles with the same insecurities, and pursues the same process of self realization. The more this pattern repeats, the less intriguingly bizarre Murakami's world becomes.

Nonetheless, Murakami had a lot of interesting material in this novel, including a recasting of the Oedipus drama and a prolonged flirtation with the idea of the metaphor. But neither of these amounted to much more than quasi-intellectual pastiche. That is to say, where's the beef?

My decision to continue reading this 1,000 page whopper rested mainly on the substory concerning the adventures of Hoshino and Nakata -- the former a young, rough-talking truck driver; the latter a heartbreakingly polite old man who can't read or write, but can converse with cats and make leeches fall from the sky. It's the sort of writing that makes Murakami worthy of his reputation, not simply a drab rehashing of his previous themes. ( )

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