Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage: 100 Word Book Review*

Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is a novel about abandonment, loss and coming to terms with the past. Tsukuru Tazaki was one of a group of five friends, who finds that he has been cut off by the other four during a visit home from college. Each of these friends, except for Tazaki, had a color (Red Pine, White Root, etc.) as part of their surname. The novel chronicles the resulting depression, recovery and his eventual reconciliation with the surviving friends several years later. This novel, though exploring very deep and powerful emotional issues, seems very restrained. The characters lack the emotional excesses common to American fiction. This was not a problem for me, but some readers may not appreciate the cultural difference. Although not the type of novel that I ordinary read, I found Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage an engaging and interesting book. A-

*100 word reviews are 100 words long, more or less. Often more.