Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami (1988)

A middle-aged man searches for the source of the weeping, the calling, he hears deep in his mind, and then tries to find a connection between the varied people he meets along the way.

Book Review:  Dance Dance Dance is the fourth book (following A Wild Sheep Chase) in the "Rat Trilogy" (yep, I know, but it's Haruki Murakami after all -- I wonder if at one time he was thinking of having all his novels have the same narrator, and even this book doesn't fully resolve so the narrative could have continued ...). I should note that even tho this is the fourth book in the "Rat" series, both Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and Norwegian Wood were published between A Wild Sheep Chase and this novel (making it his sixth novel). Reading the first three books isn't necessary as this book can stand alone, but I think it fits in quite well after the first three and a number of characters and incidents stem from A Wild Sheep Chase (tho with inconsistencies as well); your reading experience will be better, if for nothing else but to see the author's incredible growth as a writer over these books. Here Murakami is the Murakami we know and love. There is magic, a Sheep Man, call girls, a lost love, a famous actor, a young psychic girl, the ghost of an old hotel. There's an author named Hiraku Makimura (why does that name seem so familiar?). Dance Dance Dance is almost a picaresque novel, but instead of encountering a series of adventures our hero encounters a series of people of varied reality, and tries to decipher the links that bind those he meets (there's even a handy chart provided). This book meanders almost as if even Murakami wasn't sure what was coming next, but somehow it works and the story carries both protagonist and reader along on the quest. This isn't edge-of-your-seat reading, more of a calm intellectual and emotional search for the meaning in life. At one point  a character comments: "I used to think ... that you get older one year at a time ... but it's not like that. It happens overnight."  Dance Dance Dance starts with "It doesn't matter whether you like it or not -- a job's a job," and ends with "maybe, it was time to ... do some writing for myself ... not a novel or anything. But something for myself." The translation (by Alfred Birnbaum) is competent, if not inspiring. Dance Dance Dance quietly drew me into the mystery and kept me reading to the end of the journey. [4 Stars]