Product Description

High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance. It is an assault on the sense, part murder mystery, part metaphysical speculation; a fable for our times as catchy as a rock song blasting from the window of a sports car.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10124 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-07
• Original language: Japanese
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

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

Customer Reviews

Very Good
Dance Dance DAnce is a follow up novel to a Wild Sheep Chase, but it stands very much on its own as a book. You don't particularly need to read Wild Sheep Chase before this one. Anyway, I can say that Dance Dance Dance is a huge improvement on a Wild Sheep Chase (which I thought was pretty dire). Murakami delves into the surreal with this one, and usually when he writes about surreal metaphysical situations, it either tends to be really symbolic and thought provoking or really contrived. This however is Murakami on form I think, and found the peculiar situations that occur to the main protagonist to be reminiscent of Philip K Dick. Furthermore this books was definitely more mystery than his others too. And was really involved until the last page. He also manages to capture the feeling of loniliness really well within the book. And found myself thinking about the book alot days after I finished it. It's definitely one of the better Murakami novels, and definitely one of the darkest

Cult Fiction of the highest standards
With 'Dance, Dance, Dance' Murakami has scored another major hit. Here we have a typical Murakami anti hero, a journalist who specialises in magazine articles of the most un-inspiring variety. He is fascinated by an old relationship and by the hotel in which this came to an end. he re-traces his steps back to the hotel which is no more and that has been replaced by a stylish and modern hotel. But something is not right. The resulting quest to find out the truth about his past lover, the hotel and the other characters he meets takes us into the usual Murakami world, part urban realism and part magical realism.

It say on the sleeve that Murakami most be one of the greatest novelists in the world - probably true this! A truly original talent.

Yougottadance...
I've been aware of Murakami as a writer for a couple of years now, but it wasn't until last year that I finally bought a couple of his books (needless to say, very soon afterwards I bought the rest and devoured them one after the other). Dance Dance Dance is very much in the vein of Hard Boiled Wonderland & The End Of The World, and A Wild Sheep Chase (to which this book is a sequel, though it doesn't matter too much if you haven't read it) - in turns surreal, scary, funny, romantic and moving.

While it isn't my favourite story by this author - that would be a toss-up between Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - it does contain some utterly fantastic characters and typically unusual plotlines that keep you guessing even after you've reached the final page. If you've never read Murakami before, this perhaps isn't the best place to start, but it should on no account be missed.