Where the hell did all the eloquent people in the world come from and how did they get to be so eloquent?

I have just finished reading Murakami's "the wind-up bird chronicle" and to be honest, I have this.. em, empty feeling inside. This, I assure you, is a direct result of the novel.

I am still not sure if this is a good kind of empty feeling, or a bad kind of empty feeling though. I'm still grappling with what the novel is all about. Even as I am typing this, I'm wondering, "what was all that about??"

In a way, I am typing this down to get rid of the feeling (or probably to better comprehend this feeling, or to be more accurate, to get rid of this feeling by better comprehending it. If you catch my drift).

Yes, I think I kind of get the whole general storyline but there are deeper ideas of the novel that I still could not particularly grasp.

Not to say that this is a bad novel. In fact it is far from it. This is just the kind of novel, which for me, requires some degree of thinking and analyzing before the understanding can even begin to dawn in. In all probability, on my part, the understanding might never arrive at all, but still it provokes me to thinkthinkthink, and that at least is certainly not bad. Just like what happened with sputnik sweetheart.

OK.I think i would probably have to re-read the book to be able to understand it. But this, I will do later. Much much later.

This is a book that sometimes have me feeling like I am slowly trudging through the pages, if only because some parts of the story are truly bizarre and let me tell you that the plots are not arranged in consequent order. So while reading this, you just have to have the conviction that the writer knows where he is guiding you, until you finally arrive where the pieces of puzzle fall into place. And trust me, there will be a point where the puzzle pieces falls into place and have the bigger picture unveiled to you. You just have to keep on trudging in order for them to do so.

Perseverance, my friend, usually pays.

But still, feeling like I am trying to find my way through a labyrinth-blindfolded, can be quite draining. And this is not an experience I would like to repeat anytime too soon, no matter how attracted I am to Haruki Murakami's style of writing.

I would say that I had enjoyed Kafka On the Shore, and Norwegian Wood much much better than this particular novel. Even Sputnik Sweetheart which have left me quite confused, I have taken to re-reading some random pages from it from time to time.

Thing is, I did not feel any affinity for any of the characters in the book. Not that I hate any of the characters or anything, I just didn't feel anything for them. Indifference might be the right word.

Usually when I am reading a book, I would become so engrossed with it that I feel like I am a part of the story. But not so much with this.

The best I can say is that curiosity was the largest part of the emotions that this book had stirred and alas, although the bigger picture was revealed to me, too many questions went unanswered. Well, maybe the answers were meant to be implicit, but to me they also come across as ambiguous (It is also possible that they are meant to be ambiguous) and I am left dissatisfied.

If you are expecting some kind of a review, then don't, this is not. This is me writing as I am thinking or thinking as I am writing, whichever.