Dance Dance Dance – Haruki Murakami

Dance Dance Dance - Haruki Murakami

I’ve been a fan of Murakami’s books for a while. I originally picked one up because it was in a double-pack of books by Vintage with Alice in Wonderland. I’d bought them to try and persuade my girlfriend of the time to read a little more (if at all), and I thought that Alice in Wonderland would be a good start and that she might get around to reading the other one if she finished the first. I’m pretty sure that she never read either of them (it was, admittedly, a venture obviously doomed to failure from the start), but I picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and decided to give it a go. It remains my favourite of his novels to this day. The outer placidity and the inner doubts of the main character resonated with me at a much deeper level than the action heroes or sad and misjudged but obviously deeply wonderful inside protagonists that I’d been reading about at the time, Toru just seemed to me like more of a real person trapped in an extremely strange world, giving you the chance to see this odd wonder through a relatable pair of eyes. To me this approach is what makes Murakami’s books so special. Irrespective of what is going on around them, the characters themselves make understandable decisions that I could see myself making in their shoes, and I think that’s why I enjoy him so much.

Dance Dance Dance is Murakami’s sixth novel (although the first two of these have never been translated into English), and follows the search of its unnamed protagonist on the trail of a woman he once loved but hardly knew, an ex ear-model and high-class prostitute, Kiki. Upon returning to the location of their encounter, the Dolphin Hotel, and finding it changed beyond all recognition in the four years since he last left, he meets an increasingly strange cast of characters who lead him to find out more about himself and his surroundings than he had ever seriously considered.

The novel philosophises a lot on the relationships between its characters, and their capability to love. Our protagonist fell in love with a strange girl he met a work four years ago who has plagued him ever since, and he shares a strange relationship with a receptionist at the hotel based upon their strange shared experiences. He seems to fall into these kind of friendships easily, quickly gaining the trust of a call-girl bought for him by a friend, falling in and out of what stretch just short of casual relationships through most of the novel. One his most enduring relationships is with a thirteen-year-old girl he chaperones back to Tokyo at the behest of his receptionist friend, always teetering towards a slightly confused feeling between the two of a mixture of comfortable attraction and propriety standoffishness, leaving you wondering slightly what value he gives to any of his relationships beyond that which he can quickly gain.

The other characters have similar problems in their ability to form relationships. The young girl is stuck in limbo between her brilliant mother who constantly forgets of her existence, and her father who, despite seeming to care greatly for her well-being, fails to manage to show any direct affection to her at all. The contrast between these negligent relationships founded on a parents love, and the present but shallow relationships shared by the protagonist bring an important depth to the novel, almost overshadowing the plot.

Plot, it has to be said, seems to be Murakami’s one weakness. Over almost 400 pages, very little actually occurs. The protagonist sits around in several different places, happily mulling things overt to himself, or chatting with friends, before almost all of the plot exposition and action of the novel occurs in the final 50 pages. I don’t begrudge Murakami for this, he’s by far at his best when philosophically pontificating, but even by the standards of his other novels, things seemed to progress rather slowly. I don’t think I’ve ever read a Murakami novel and known where anything is going to head next, but I got a slight feeling of being lost when reading. I can never quite be sure that this isn’t deliberate though.

I’m reliably informed by Wikipedia that this is, in fact, a sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase, apparently the third of “The Trilogy of the Rat”, though the only one to be translated into English. I never got the impression when reading that I was missing some vital part of the story having not read this.

On the whole, I rather enjoyed Dance Dance Dance. The interaction between the characters, and the strange and subtle oddness of the world was, as usual with Murakami books, fantastically realised. It’s slightly longer-winded then others of his books that I’ve read, and probably a rather difficult introduction to the author to people who’ve never read his work before, especially those who are looking for something with an easier to follow plot (I’d recommend Norwegian Wood or Kafka on the Shore), but for those looking for it, it continues his beautiful and brilliant look on the human existence, aided by a wonderful translation by Alfred Birnbaum.

Now, only a day left to finish the remaining two-thirds of The Coincidence Engine. Off to read I go!

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