The Strange Library

A fantasy tale with quirk, character and a shape to the darkness we fear as children. This tale is enveloping you in a strange world where we collide with what we don't understand but live with the consequences. Very cool. Very quick read.

Strange Library is a dark work, powerful in its own terms, yet ultimately quite stark and grim.The first thing to note is the exquisite design of the book. A Kindle version will not do. It is a beautiful object and is meant to be handled and appreciated for the artistry of presentation. There are all sorts of little things, like, for instance, a notation on the spine of the book that let's one know that one cannot read the book outside the precincts of the library. So, you, the reader, are also inside the strange library.The voice of this work is vintage early Murakami: Whimsy, laconic humor, a mysterious beautiful girl, a sheepman, labyrinths, and worlds with permeable borders. Critics sometimes note a connection to the French theorist, Lacan, and a theme of ever deferred desire in Murakami. This may be true, but this work is more Heidegger and his notion that all being is "being towards death," for mortality is the overt threat and deep context that suffuses the entire tale with ennui.For the rest of this, I am going to talk details, so this is a spoiler alert. Don't read further if you do not wish to discover the plot and denouement.The modern West is secular, superficially optimistic, and more deeply nihilistic. This is my view. We distract ourselves from the ominous and ever present danger of death, which we nonetheless have hidden away as much as possible. Our consumerism is driven by the need for novel spectacle to keep darkness at bay. And yet, we are also still the heirs of Western Christendom. Why this excursus? Because Christianity tells a story of death's defeat. The most fundamental reality is deeply comic, because life has the last word.So, even a secularist in the West will often bear a trace of religious belief. We like happy endings and we "believe" in them. Thus, Murakami's tale will be unsettling and disappointing, because it subverts hope. Death is victor in this fairly tale for adults.If one wants a rationalist version that could explain the plot. Here it is. A little boy, thoughtful and sensitive, is living with a sick mother and his pet bird. At a subconscious level, he knows his mother is dying, but he doesn't want to face it. Then one day, his pet bird dies. The death of the bird makes grief and loss existentially real for him. The yawning abyss of loneliness that awaits should his mother die suddenly becomes overwhelmingly real. The little boy hides out in a library for three days. He loses his new shoes. When he returns home, his mother is sweet to him and doesn't berate him, for she is full of unspoken understanding.The last page of the book is written in tiny print. The boy's voice is reduced to almost nothing. His grief wishes to make tragedy disappear. He announces that his mother has died of a mysterious illness and he is alone. Grim, single m.In this context, the fabulous tale is an effort to escape what cannot be escaped. That is why the boy's allies disappear and his seemingly successful attempt comes abruptly to nothing. The boy's courteous nature before the menacing old man is a wish that decency and good manners would win out over evil and decay, but it just doesn't. More could be teased out, but this is probably already too prolix.Bottom line: This is a good, early work, but you might feel cheated. You might feel it's unnecessarily bleak and mean. One might alternatively appreciate the work as a blend of adult insight, ingenious design, and child-like dreaming that embodies an idiosyncratic myth. The darkness at the end may appear a relief from sentimental and too cheaply bought victories.This reader appreciates the latter possibility, but as a believer in what Peter Leithart calls "deep comedy," I was rueful of the ending. I prefer Murakami when he offers a more comic vision, though I suspect his metaphysical agnosticism more naturally tends in this direction.

I like trying new things. New foods, different videogames, new TV shows, new ways of doing things. You get the idea. This is also true of my approach to reading and writing. I've always been one to want to delve into something that's unique or different in some way. One of the ways I've been doing that is by participating in the BookTube SFF Awards where I've been reading some of the nominees in different categories. One such book was Haruki Murukami's THE STRANGE LIBRARY. I didn't really know what to expect other than that this would be a weird one and I was excited to see just what this book had in store.I think I'm going to be a bit in the minority on this one, but I truly just did not care for this book as much as I thought I would. I found it lacking in a number of different ways and am actually hurrying to write this review because I find myself forgetting this story's details already.VISUAL PRESENTATIONWhile not normally something that I'd put in a review, the visuals for THE STRANGE LIBRARY are actually very important to one's enjoyment of the piece. Additionally, it is critical that you buy the "correct" edition of this book and avoid my mistake of purchasing the rather pricey eBook (it costs almost as much as the paperback). This story is filled with trippy artwork and when reading this on an eReader app, those images do funky things with the way the text appears. Pages won't be filled all the way, sometimes there will be a couple sentences below the image and there is just an awful lot of white space around said images. In short, this is clearly something that the publisher had no business turning into an eBook, especially if they were going to do such a sloppy job with it. That said, I really should have looked into the contents of this book a bit more like I normally do before making a purchase, but because I wanted to get this bought and read right away for the readalong, I sort of just hastily got the lackluster Kindle version.I don't know that buying the hard copy edition of this work would have solved all of my problems with it though, because I didn't care for the artwork very much. It's not bad, so much as that I didn't find it aesthetically pleasing. But, after checking out videos of people who have the hard copy, I can say that the way the book is put together is definitely weirdly unique and well worth the couple extra dollars plus shipping. If you are going to read this, it really needs to be read on paper.CHARACTERSThe characters in this story are a bit of a double edged sword for me. On one hand I really loved how exotically colorful and paranormally weird they were, but on the other, they felt like empty shells of characters that could have been interesting. They were effectively both my favorite and least favorite part of this story.The main character is a polite, young boy. I can't quite remember what his name was or if he even had a name at all. Could I look in the book and find the answer to that? Yes, but there really isn't any point because he could be anybody. He's one of those characters that isn't quite a Mary Sue since he does have a tiny bit of character development, but he's also generic to the point of his name being entirely irrelevant.The same is true for pretty much everyone in the supporting cast. The Sheep Man and the Old Man are by far the most distinct personalities in this story, but even they just don't feel complex enough for me to have really found them compelling in any way. I think a good analogy for this cast is that they feel like people you might meet in a dream. They are wild, wacky, and sometimes a little twisted, but they're so out there that by the time you wake up, you realize they aren't even close to an actual person in real life. This was effectively the sensation I had upon finishing the book. After "waking up" I just had an overwhelming sense that all of these personalities felt too wispy to be truly memorable.WORLD/SETTINGThis world is a regular rabbit hole if there ever was one. What starts off as a normal library quickly turns into a horrific dungeon of strangeness and woe. Like the characters, the setting is very dreamy, but is far more distinct. If I had to pick one aspect of the book that I liked consistently the best, I would say it was this very strange library. Murukami vividly describes each section and I rarely felt wanting for more detail in this area. I'd like to go a little deeper with this particular element, but because this is such a short story, it would be difficult to do so without getting into heavy spoilers.PLOT/TONELike I just mentioned, this is a VERY short piece of fiction. I don't know what the exact word count is or anything, but I would be very shocked it it was anything more than what most generally consider a short story (15,000 words or less). It could be within the novelette range, but I'd be shocked if it was in the novella category. Page-wise, I think it will probably fill the same space as your typical novella, but half of that is really just pictures.To be clear, I have NO issues with short stories. In fact I love them. The main issue here is that since this is being given the full book treatment, I think I wanted more from it. More content, more character development, more substance in general. I really just felt like plot seemed rushed or somehow abrupt at every turn. The world is intriguing and the characters show promise, but Murukami seems bent on rushing readers in and out of this tale as quickly as he can. Now obviously, that is not Murukami's intent here. Despite all of my criticism so far, I actually think that Murukami is an author of exceptional talent.Where I believe the story might be tripping me up is in the fact that everything in this book appears to be a symbol for something else. I'm the type of reader that likes a bit of symbolism or open endedness. I think books that leave a little room for a reader's own thoughts to enter into the story space are those that resonate the most with readers that like interacting with the fiction they read. I suppose I've just never run into a story where there is so much empty space, that the work seemed a little empty. I simply wanted more substance with which to draw conclusions and come up with different interpretations.CONCLUSIONI wanted that little bit of space at the top of the coffee cup with which to put my cream and sugar, but what I got in this case was a cup half full. There's just too much negative space here for the story to feel truly worthwhile. I know the elements are purposeful and representative of much larger ideas and I have several interpretations of my own regarding what all of this strangeness really means. It's just that I wanted a story with a little more depth in terms of the main narrative. I think I'd be open to trying something else by this author later on and I certainly didn't hate this book. I'm just not understanding where all the love and praise is coming from for this work (maybe there's something I missed) and it's very likely that the details of this story will fade from my memory at a rapid pace.Because of it's short length, this can be easily read within a single sitting and I'd recommend that anyone reading does in fact consume this all at once in order to potentially get the most out of it's contents. It is a curious read that's (kind of) unlike any other that I've read before and any who are entertaining the thought of picking it up should definitely do so and see if it resonates with them a bit more than it did with me.

This short and sweet little book (it is quite short, hardly 100 pages, a very quick and easy read) is the epitome of what makes Murakami's work enjoyable. An average, slightly dorky protagonist enters a dream-like world that blurs the lines of fantasy and reality.This bite-sized work is great for a Murakami fan looking to devour more of his work, or for a new reader to get a taste of Murakami's world - but it definitely isn't as in depth or satisfying as some of his better known works (Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84, Wind Up Bird Chronicles, etc).The interesting and original thing about this novel comes with the beautiful artwork interspersed throughout the book, that accompanies the story. It's like having pieces of amazing cover art spread throughout the story, and complementing the story as you read it.Highly recommended!

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The experience was incredible, it was better than I thought. I found the concept of the cover of the book really good. Overall, feeling the hardcover on my hands, flipping through the glossy papers was absolutely mind blowing. The story and the illustration were also stunning. It was like being immersed into the journey of the little boy. Impressive.

Nice book. Very well written. But the price though is quite expensive for a short story book like this. It's not even that thick.

More of a murikami-light offering.. Maybe it is geared for kids.

I loved the history and illustrations. A different narrative by Murakami and a chance for beginners have the first contact with the writer