Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

The book that made me fall in love with Murakami's imagination. Surreal encounters, a parallel dimension... Though the rest of his work never quite achieves the same harmonics, I continue to read him hoping for another visit to the end of the world.

Jorm gave me a copy as a gift. Definitely grittier and more down-to-earth than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, as befits a book with "Hard-Boiled" in the title. The premise was interesting, and I liked the structure of the book, but I didn't find myself empathizing with the characters.