Dance Dance Dance
'Dance' involves a man with a reoccurring dream about a missing ex-girlfriend and the shabby hotel she disappeared from. There is briefly a cat. There are transformations. There is a haunting. There is a lonely and beautiful teenage girl listening to new wave pop music. There is that person you went to school with who is famous now. There is a one-armed poet. There'sthatguyonthecover. The novel's protagonist has seemingly been absent most of his life but, at the behest of circumstances, begins to connect.
I haven't read any other Murakami, the closest I came before 'Dance Dance Dance' was Ryu Murakami's 'In the Miso Soup', purchased because I thought Ryu was Haruki. Ah well. The two do share a noir tone, but one was a lot of fun to read and the other was 'Miso Soup'.
The novel is tied in with an earlier trilogy of Murakami's, but at no point did I feel like I was missing out on some aspect of the story. There is much that's left unexplained, there are some bewildering decisions, but the novel works. There was enough mystery and the characters and Murakami's Japan of the 1980s(?) were believable amidst the strangeness. I suppose I'm ready to tackle one of his doorstops soon.
