Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

4/5 stars.
ebook, 362 pages.
Read from December 29, 2019 to December 30, 2019.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I have read this series out of order. I thought this was number three in The Rat series but it turns out it’s the fourth. While I wasn’t a big fan of Pinball or Hear The Wind Sing I like to read everything that Murakami has to offer and this book was an improvement on the previous two. Apparently, the third book of the four is actually A Wild Sheep Chase which I’m still on the waiting list for at the library.

The unnamed protagonist of this story, after waking from a dream, suddenly feels beckoned to return to the seedy Dolphin Hotel where he once stayed with a woman he cared about in his past, a call-girl named Kiki.  His writing gig allows him a lot of flexibility so he decides he is going to book in for a few nights. He discovers that the hotel itself has been demolished and a new one has been built on top of it yet it still retains the same name. While at the hotel he tries to enquire about the previous owner but the staff all try to avoid his questions. He has dreams about a sheep man and Kiki being murdered by one of his old classmates that has become a famous actor. Along the way, the protagonist gets friendly with one of the hotel staff members in which she speaks of getting trapped in the darkness after coming out of the elevator on floor seventeen and be terrified after coming in contact with a presence there. The protagonist also helps out a teen girl who gets left behind at the hotel by her whose absent mother, a famous artist who gets wrapped up in her work. The interlinking of all of these lives and strange occurrences all lead back to the Sheep Man, presumably the figure on floor seventeen of the Dolphin Hotel.

How much of this story was in the mind of the protagonist? How much of it was actually real for him? These are answers that are left for the reader to determine. The book seems to focus on the protagonists’ issues in connecting with people and of course with those that he has lost as a result of it.  Like most Murakami books, nothing ends or is wrapped up nicely for you. Again though, I think that is one of the strange major appeals for me with Murakami. Did I fully grasp the story and what and why everything happened? Nope. But I still enjoyed the journey.  There was a serious lack of cats in this story, which, was disappointing. There are just somethings you come to expect when you read Murakami! Cats are one of them.

While I suppose it’s not essential to read this series in order, the characters do repeat and somewhat develop even if the storyline seems confusing. If you’re a first time Murakami reader, I would not start with this book or this series for that matter.  Stick with the Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Author: thepluviophilewriter

I have an obsession with running, pole dancing, cats, video games, books and angry music. I also like to write. Read my book reviews. View all posts by thepluviophilewriter