Flore's Thoughts

Imogen Heap – Clear the Area from the album Speak for Yourself (2005)

This is the second Murakami I’ve read and I must say I liked it. The first one was After Dark, but i didn’t like it as much.

Murakami has a way of keeping the reader always interested and waiting for some new mysterious thing to happen. That’s why each time i started reading a chapter i couldn’t stop until i fell asleep.

We are in Japan..obviously. Kafka Tamura is a 15 year old boy that decides to run away from home after his father “cursed” him. The curse says that he will kill his dad and sleep with his mother and sister. So, the boy figures that if he goes far away from home he won’t be able to kill his father and the chances of meeting his mother – who left with his sister when he was a child – are pretty slim. Along the way, he meets these nice people that let him work and live at a library. One of those people is a woman in her fifties called Sakura, which he falls in love with.

This is when the boy comes face to face with destiny.

Nakata is a man in his sixties that can talk to cats after having an accident when he was in school. Without even realizing it, he finds himself in a journey to find a stone that will help put the world in balance.

I could go on trying to connect all the dots here for you, but then what fun would you have when reading the book?

Actually, this is one of the things i liked most about he book. How the stories are connected to each other and they all come down to one thing: you can’t escape what life has planned out for you.

I liked how the author surprises us with fish and leeches falling from the sky, or with unexpected turnarounds. I also liked the descriptions and that is rare, but Murakami’s descriptions are quite interesting.

We are in Japan, a few days before New Years. Kenji is a twenty-year old nightlife guide for tourists in Tokyo who finds himself in the middle of a horror story when meeting a new client, named Frank.

Frank seems to be a bit strange from the beginning, but in his job, Kenji is used to all kind of people so he tries to ignore the bad feelings he has about this new american client. Most part of the action takes place on their first night out, going to different clubs in Frank’s search for pleasure. Things get gory in their second night, when Frank brutally murders all the people from a small club. Kenji then finds himself trapped between the duty of going to the police and turning Frank in and his disapproval of the life those people in the restaurant had.

The murder scene from the club is described in so many details that it makes you feel like you are there, in the club, watching Frank killing those people like it is the most natural thing for him and Keji being paralized with fear.

The story accentuates the Japanese life style that has begun to decay over the years, the american culture that has become a big part of japanese life and a society that has become inconsiderate to young people and their needs.

I can’t say i don’t like thrillers, though it’s not something i would usually read. But, In the Miso Soup is more than just that, it is an analysis of society and people and decisions that make them become monsters to those around them. What i liked most is the part that takes place in the abandoned building when Frank unravels the mystery behind his actions. The story makes him seem almost human looking for a certain purpose in his own existence, that he often finds missing in his victims.

I liked how many details the author gives us about the new years tradition, a tradition filled with spirituality and hope, that makes people feel optimistic about life. Also, the emptiness that can be felt in the most unusual way, a feeling of helplessness in front of life’s unexpected turnarounds, is something that made this worth reading.

Five more…

1. Holly Brook – Heavy (Like Blook Like Honey(2006))
2. Clint Mansell – Tree of Life (The Fountain soundtrack(2006))
3. Morphine – Cure for Pain (Cure for Pain(1993))
4. Room Eleven – Sad Song (Six White Russians and a Pink Pussycat(2008))
5. A Perfect Circle – Orestes (Mer de Noms(2000))

Enjoy!

                                         directed by Noah Baumbach

A semi-autobiographical story about divorce and the effect it has on children. We are in Brooklyn, in the 1980s, where Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels), once a great writer, and his wife Joan (Laura Linney ) are going through a divorce. They have two sons, Frank (Owen Kline) and Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) who are having a hard time dealing with the separation and joint custody. The youngest, Frank, takes his mother’s side while Walt is being influenced by his father. Focused mostly on teaching, Bernard starts a romance – if you can call it that – with one of his students when she moves in to his new place because her lease has expired.

I’ve always said that parents can mess up their children and this movie is a very good example. Walt starts becoming more and more like his father, thinking he is superior to the “philistines” and Frank starts developing language and behavior not suited for a 12 year old.

Bernard’s behavior really gets to me. Ok, you have been a successful writer and yes you are smarter than most people and you are able to do and understand things the majority of people can’t, but that doesn’t give you the right to judge others and treat them like they are inferior to you. And I won’t even get started with the example he gives to his sons. I’m not saying the divorce and behavior of the two boys are all his fault, the mother did have several affairs during the years and she is not being a good example for the kids either.

It is sad to see how a child’s life is being modeled after his parents’ actions and behavior. That’s why they call it drama i guess.

Quote:

Walt Berkman: It’s like… we were pals then… we’d do things together… we’d look at the knight armor at the Met. The scary fish at the Natural History Museum. I was always afraid of the squid and whale fighting. I can only look at it with my hands in front of my face.