Colorless Tsukura Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimmage, Haruki Murakami, 2014

Another tour de force by Japan’s leading contemporary novelist.  Murakami once again creates a world of dreams, fantasies, and reality where the three elements weave into each other over and in between time.  The plot is straightforward—a group of five high school students become inseparable and the closest of friends until the only one who has left Nagoya to attend university in Tokyo returns and is shunned.  Tazaki, the only one of the group whose name does not refer to a color (Ao: Red, Aka: Blue, Shire: White, and Kuro: Black), hence colorless.  Tazaki nearly commits suicide but recovers to become a train station building engineer and when he meets Sara, who pushes him to reconnect with his old friends to sort out what happened.  A weird tangent introduces Haida and a jazz pianist who has a death dream. The whole book is beautifully written—-short, punchy sentences which convey way more than their share of description and meaning.  Once again, music is front and center as in Kafka on the Shore (The Archduke Trio) and this time it’s Liszt’s Years of Pilgrimage, played by Shiro as a teen and then by Haida on an LP.  Someday, I may understand Murakami’s writing.  In the meantime, I’ll just enjoy them.