Source of book: Audiobook from the library
Having exhausted my initial supply of audiobooks that I borrowed for our trip, and realized I needed either another medium-long one, or a couple of short ones, to get us home. Since I replaced my old truck (with an old-school CD player) with a new one, I have switched over to using Libby for our audiobooks. This comes with the advantage of being able to borrow books from the Los Angeles County Library system, which is better funded than the network of San Joaquin Valley libraries. (This is a travesty, and yet another symptom of how Right Wing areas throughout our nation devalue the arts, knowledge, and education. This is different from when I was a child, and a significant reason that educated people continue to exit the GOP.)
It is one thing to request books in advance - just check the wait time, and make a good estimate as to how far in advance of a trip to request it - and another to browse the “available now” lists, which are a total grab bag.
I started punching in random authors that I liked and thought the kids might be old enough to be introduced to, and found that a couple of novellas by foreign language writers were available.
The first of these was this short work for children by Haruki Murakami. Since I have enjoyed Murakami over the years, and figured teens were old enough to understand his weird imagery and surreal plots, I grabbed this one. At only an hour long, it is almost as short as a short story, but long enough to build real characters and contain several of the usual Murakami tropes.
The basic idea is this: the narrator, a boy of vaguely older school age, visits the library on the way home from school. But today, the library is…strange. When he asks for a book, he is directed to a creepy old man in an office in the basement.
And that’s the most normal part of the story. Soon, he is being escorted through a seemingly endless labyrinth under the city, locked in a jail cell, and introduced to a “sheep-man” who will keep him fed while he memorizes the books he has requested.
As it turns out, the old man intends to eat his brains later - and brains filled with knowledge are much creamier.
Clearly, he has to figure out how to escape. With the assistance of the sheep-man and a mysterious bird-girl who waxes and wanes with the moon, he makes his escape, only to find that his world has changed.
So yes, very Murakami. And wistful and creepy and surreal.
Several of the common Murakami images appear in this book, although the idea of the well is missing. (As is the weird sex - this is a children’s book after all.) Instead, his other common metaphor for the subconscious is used: the labyrinth of underground passages. I have found these in most of his books (the only exception being the realistic novel Norwegian Wood.)
There is also a bird who is not just a bird, but perhaps a symbol of a part of his psyche. Is it hope? The superego? Budding sexual desire?
The monstrous, terrifying, and supernatural being is there in the form of a giant dog (which is also associated with an early-childhood trauma), and the sinister older man. Again, definitely typical Murakami.
The other missing element in this case was pop or classical music, which plays significant parts in many of his books. But, in something this short, you can’t have it all.
I rather enjoyed his brilliant descriptions, which have a unique flavor even in translation. His ability to blur the lines between reality and the supernatural (in the sense of Magical Realism) and alternative realities (bleeding into Science Fiction) is a technique I rather enjoy.
The Strange Library occupies this weird borderland. Is it a horror story? Yes. Is it Magical Realism? Maybe. Or maybe it is SciFi? And how on earth did he decide on Tax Collection in the Byzantine Empire as his arcane topic? It is simultaneously out of left field and brilliant. I suspect that Murakami, like me, read the encyclopedia for fun as a child, because these weird niche areas of knowledge pop up in his books fairly frequently.
The kids seemed to enjoy this one, so that was good. I personally love Murakami, and, since this was at the end of a long trip, it was nice to have something fairly easy to follow for our final book.
***
The Murakami list:
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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