I have just finished reading Colorless Tsukuru
Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami and I must say, it could
have been the ‘fake’ book “An Imperial Affliction” in John Green’s The Fault in
Our Stars. “An Imperial Affliction” is the fake book that drove Hazel Grace and
Augustus to travel to Amsterdam just to question the author about several
things that happened but remained untold in the fake book.
It is the first time I read a Murakami novel and I
think his storytelling prowess is both enticing and disturbing, enticing
because he has this smooth way of transitioning between past and present while
maintaining the suspense for the readers and disturbing, because, how can one
author leave their readers in midair just like that?
The story revolves around (as the title suggested)
Tsukuru Tazaki who was friends with 4 other people who have colors in their
names in Japanese, all four of them except him. Because of this, he thought of
himself and his life as colorless and as boring as his name (which meant ‘to
build’ or ‘to make’) compared to his 4 other close friends. But this did not
prevent this seemingly strong circle of five to be good friends and all seemed
to go along smoothly until one day, one of the 4 other friends had called
Tsukuru and told him that they are cutting Tsukuru out of the circle of 5 just
like that and for no apparent reason.
Tsukuru, out of shock, did not even bother to ask
why and quietly went on with his life without trouble apart from his suicidal
tendencies in the first few months he separated from the group and the
insidious dreams he had of the 2 girls from the group, Yuzu and Eri, as well as
his irregular relationship with current ‘love interest’, Sara. Sara, the one
who feels this historical lump on Tsukuru’s past, was the one who encouraged
Tsukuru to find out the real reason why the 4 friends cut him out off of their
lives so that she and Tsukuru could also start afresh with their supposed
future.
So Tsukuru travelled back to his hometown and for
the first time, travelled abroad to go back to his friends, see how they are
and find answers to the questions that have long haunted him since they
separated ways.
Tsukuru’s ‘pilgrimage’ back to his past and the
novel’s overall feel is exactly as Murakami described it – “It’s like you’re
standing on the deck of a ship at sea at night and suddenly you’re thrown
overboard, alone, into the ocean.”
Murakami has described certain facets of humanity in the novel in exact detail in the simplest of description that any reader could find relatable. I got hooked on the story because I once considered myself "colorless" and that, like Tsukuru, got thrown overboard from a ship in the darkest of nights. Reading the story is like paddling through the ocean hanging on to dear life until someone saves us or until we get to dry land.
The novel is melancholic, yet inspiring, unpretentious yet mysterious. It is completely incomplete.
from the novel:
"People whose freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody. Right? I know I don't want to live like that."
"There must be something in him, something fundamental, that disenchanted people... I basically have nothing to offer others. If you think about it, I don't even have anything to offer myself."
"The human heart is like a night bird. Silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight toward it."
