Product Description

'A story of love in a cool climate, intensely romantic and weepily beautiful-it is startlingly different: a true original' Guardian

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6972 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In South of the Border, West of the Sun the arc of an average man's life from childhood to middle age with its attendant rhythms of success and disappointment becomes the kind of exquisite literary conundrum that is Haruki Murakami's trademark. The plot is simple: Hajime meets and falls in love with a girl in elementary school but loses touch with her when his family moves to another town. He drifts through high school, college and his 20s before marrying and settling into a career as a successful bar owner. Then his childhood sweetheart returns weighed down with secrets:

"When I went back into the bar, a glass and ashtray remained where she had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts were lined up in the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound".

Murakami eschews the fantastic elements that appear in many of his other novels and stories, and readers hoping for a glimpse of the "Sheep Man" will be disappointed. Yet South of the Border, West of the Sun is as rich and mysterious as anything he has written. It is above all a complex, moving and honest meditation on the nature of love distilled into a work with the crystal clarity of a short story. A Nat King Cole song, a figure on a crowded street, a face pressed against a car window, a handful of ashes drifting down a river to the sea are woven together into a story that refuses to arrive at a simple conclusion. The classic love triangle may seem like a hackneyed theme for a writer as talented as Murakami but in his quietly dazzling way he bends us to his own unique geometry. --Simon Leake, Amazon.com

Synopsis
Growing up in the suburbs in post-war Japan, it seemed to Hajime that everyone but him had brothers and sisters. His sole companion was Shimamoto, also an only child. Together they spent long afternoons listening to her father's record collection. But when his family moved away, the two lost touch. Now Hajime is in his thirties. After a decade of drifting he has found happiness with his loving wife and two daughters, and success running a jazz bar. Then Shimamoto reappears. She is beautiful, intense, enveloped in mystery. Hajime is catapulted into the past, putting at risk all he has in the present.

About the Author
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo.

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Customer Reviews

Melancholic view of modern contemporary life
This minimalist novel tracks the life of a middle aged man in Japan. Born in 1951, he grew up in a suburb outside one of Japan's great cities. At 12, he fell in love with one of his schoolmates, a girl called Shimamoto. However, she soon left town with his parents. After that, life went on for him. At high school he started going out with girls, he went out and study literature at the university, after that he was employed in a boring job at a publishing company. Fortunately for him, at thirty he married the daughter of a rich (if somewhat shady) man, the owner of a construction company. With the help of his father in law, he decides to open a bar, which becomes succesful. Married with two girls, owner of a succesful business, life seems to go fine with him now. Until he meets again Shimamoto, and life threatens to unravel for him. A fine melancholic novel by Japan's Murakami, about the solitude of modern life, it includes some steamy and even graphic love scenes.

Another Marvellous Murakami
I thought this was a beautifully written book. I have now read every single Murakami book (except the new one, waiting for that in paperback). Some I haven't liked and some I have loved. This one I loved.

Murakami takes a simple tale of a man's childhood crush and turns it into a gut wrenching tale of obsession and loss. If anyone has ever been in love with someone to the point of obsession (unfortunately I have) then this story will bring you to tears.

I would say this is in my top 3 Murakami. My favourite is Wind Up Bird Chronicle.... Don't worry I am over the guy I was obsessed with now. I think ;-)

Every Murakami novel is worth reading, this is no exception
Having spent his 20's drifting about lonely and in search of himself, Hajime has found love and security with his wife and two young daughters. He runs two successful jazz bars and spends his days keeping fit and taking his children to and from school. But he is haunted by the memory of the girls he first loved: Shimamoto, a fellow only child with whom he lost touch when he moved to high school, and Itsumi, a girl whose heart he broke when he was seventeen. Then, out of nowhere, Shimamoto appears in his bar, beautiful and mysterious, as if plucked straight from his memories and Hajime is forced to choose between his past and his present.

More reminiscent of Sputnik Sweetheart or Norwegian Wood than Wind-up Bird Chronicle or Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, South of the Border, West of the Sun is a simple, sweet love story set against the background of personal self discovery. As with everything Murakami there is the familiar otherworldlyness to the plot, the fantastical mixing almost invisibly with the everyday. In my opinion he is at his most poignant when this otherworldlyness is combined with the longing of a love story; when it seems that the emotions of the characters are too powerful to be contained and must explode forth in any way possible. This surrealism can thus be read both literally and metaphorically as the externalisation of emotional frailty which knows no boundaries and cannot be contained in just one place. This emotional vulnerability sums up Murakami's well meaning loaners and individuals in search of themselves. It was most exquisitely realised in Sputnik Sweetheart and although this is not quite as good, South of the Border, West of the Sun remains a beautiful novel, well worth a few hours reading.

When each and every book he writes has the same basic characters and the same atmosphere, how does he maintain the suspense and readers interest? Haruki Murakami continues to amaze me with his timeless style and beautifully subtle stories. His is a special talent and his prose remains sublime even in translation, which says much for the simple symmetry of his writing. When I am stuck for what to read next one of his books invariably jumps out at me, offering such a satisfying and tactile haven of retreat it is impossible to refuse. Murakami thinks the things you think, listens to the music you listen to and reads the books you have read. You can almost reach out and touch his fiction, it is so immediate and familiar. And he renders this all in such simple beauty that it fairly breaks your heart. If you have not discovered Murakami yet, you should make it your number one priority.