A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)
Paperback, 96 pages
English language
Published Jan. 7, 2002 by Continuum International Publishing Group.
Toru Okada'S Cat Has Disappeared And This Has Unsettled His Wife, Who Is Herself Growing More Distant Every Day. Then There Are The Increasingly Explicit Telephone Calls He Has Started Receiving. As This Compelling Story Unfolds, The Tidy Suburban Realities Of Okada'S Vague And Blameless Life, Spent Cooking, Reading, Listening To Jazz And Opera And Drinking Beer At The Kitchen Table, Are Turned Inside Out, And He Embarks On A Bizarre Journey, Guided (However Obscurely) By A Succession Of Characters, Each With A Tale To Tell.
The central character, after the disappearance of his wife begins meeting all kinds of strange people that are not decidedly located in reality or another world. The plot travels from an unidentified Japanese town to Manchuria to Malta to a deep waterless well near a haunted house.
Despite this strange plot, Murakami succeeds in writing a novel that makes you ponder about your own life and the nature of reality.
