Reviews for La fin des temps (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World)

The average rating for La fin des temps (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-04-30 00:00:00 Bobby Sullivan This is your brain (an egg). This is your brain on Murakami (an egg sprouting arms and legs and attempting to hump other eggs while doing the Electric Slide and attempting to save the world to a killer soundtrack). If you like Murakami, you'll like it, although it doesn't blend the two twisted sides of Murakami's writing as well as a book like "Norwegian Wood" or "Kafka on the Shore." In each of those novels, the reader gets transitions within chapters, and his talents for myth-telling in both the mystical and mundane worlds is woven together like two different colored pieces of yarn, fraying and blending at the end. A depressed hippy juggles his daily life - student and record-store shop employee who occasionally trolls for women with his amoral college roommate - with his intensely personal life - a boy growing into a man, learning about love, heartbreak and death. A talking cat accompanies a small boy on his adventures, the boy eating a lot of diner food and not really doing much but hanging out at the library. These are the things you get with Murakami, but they usually coexist fairly nicely, driving toward a space where fantasy and reality decide to have a nice conversation. "Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World" is aptly titled, because it really is two separate stories - the "And" is paramount - they are woven together, but more like two noodles can be woven together, but never quite mesh. Oddly, the formal structure of the book - one chapter in reality, one chapter in myth - lends itself to reading the two stories as each lending to the other, but one could almost (until the very end) read each one as independent of the other. Murakami's "reality" is far-flung and outlandish, but it obeys its own rules, and takes the reader for a nice tragic ride. The "myth" is much more prosaic and sedate, but is clearly too serene to be reality. Perhaps it is Murakami's commentary on life: truth is stranger than fiction, especially when the fiction is based on the truth is based on the fiction... The novel could be an ouroboros, but instead it is a little like the hospital symbol of a serpent wrapped about a knife. To understand this, read the book. I can't describe it any better than this. It gets a four, because it's frankly a little too self-reflexive for me - no main character should really ever say, "Stuff like this only happens in novels," as far as I'm concerned - but it is a stylistic precursor to Murakami's most famous and best work (that I've read), "Kafka on the Shore," so you get to see how Murakami's style evolves, a dualistic peek into the development of a dichotomous author.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-20 00:00:00 Chad Dobbins "Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams." Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World ~~ Haruki Murakami Buddy read with my friend, Srđan. There is so much to say about Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; I'm just not certain I'm the one to say it. I was never able to quite connect with the characters or the plot on an emotional level. Part of the problem is that Murakami attempts to blend so many different literary genres and only partially succeeds here. Is this a hard-boiled detective novel, or a sci-fi novel? Is it a romance novel or dystopian fiction? I'm not sure even Murakami himself can answer that. And, to make matters more confusing, Murakami threw some fantasy in here for good measure, along with a dash of cold war spy thrillers. It is obvious, that Murakami has a love for the hard-boiled detective novels of the 30's, 40's and 50's, and while his Hard-Boiled Wonderland portion of the book is interesting, it's also obvious that Murakami has a lot to learn from Phillip Marlow. Another issue with the Hard-Boiled Wonderland portion of the book, are the random references to Western culture sprinkled throughout the book. References are made to films, film stars and musicians for no reason other than to reference them. These references do nothing to further the story in any way, yet paragraphs and even pages are given over to them. Confused? So was Murakami. And yet, this book is fascinating. I could not put it down. Murakami promises much in this work. And, to be honest, he delivers much. Perhaps too much. Murakami's Tokyo is a wonderland. And we do end up at venturing to the end of the world. Along the way we encounter unicorns, gangsters, mad scientists, chubby girls clad in pink, subterranean monsters, seductive librarians, dream readers, mysterious forests, and the hallucinogenic effects of music between the mind and the sub-conscious mind. Adding to this wonderland is the Calcutec's penis. There is tremendous interest his manhood and it keeps popping up at the most inconvenient moments. Where Murakami best succeeds is with the End of the World portion of the book. It is a stark contrast to the neon saturated, Tokyo of Murakami's wonderland. In this world people surrender their shadows, extract and read dreams and live in fear of a mysterious wall. Yet even in this drab world, the characters we encounter are no less colorful. Here, Murakami's writing is unencumbered by the ghosts of Marlow, Cain, Bradbury, Jung and le Carré. Upon finishing the book I was bothered with the lack of an ending. Characters disappeared for no reason. Plots were dropped as quickly as they appeared. The book was overwritten and in need of editing, and still the ending was rushed. This was only my third Murakami, and second full-length novel of his. So, I am still quite new to his work. While I found the book to be utterly fascinating, I am certain it is far from his best work. In the end, I do recommend this book. Even second rate Murakami is better than many writers best efforts.