by Haruki Murakami ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1991
Winner of the Tanizaki Literary prize (the Japanese equivalent of the Pulitzer), by acclaimed young Japanese novelist Murakami: a stunning combination of the contemporary and brash with elegiac allegory, all topped off by a strong measure of cyberpunk. The "hard-boiled" hero, 35 and divorced, is a man of possessions—a collection of imported whiskeys; interests—old American movies and cooking; but no emotions. Which, coupled with his brilliant work on computers, makes him the ideal candidate for a mysterious aging scientist holed up under the sewers of Tokyo. Here, protected by a waterfall and by flesh-devouring creatures, the INKlings, from the two competing information organizations that control everything in the country, the scientist has devised a perfect secret code by operating on the brains of selected computer workers. The hero, summoned to the scientist's lair, is presented with a unicorn's skull and told of a project called "The End of the World." Alternating between these encounters with the scientist, the scientist's granddaughter, and bully-boys bent on finding out what he knows, there is the story of the ancient walled town at the end of the world. In this home of one-horned beasts, a young man arrives, is separated from his shadow, and is set to work interpreting the dreams of the skulls in the library. The two worlds increasingly connect and at the end fuse, with the hero, though certifiably dead, for the first time morally and emotionally alive and resistant to the society's pervasive control of the individual. One of those rare postmodern novels that is as intellectually profound as stylistically accomplished, by a writer with a bold and original vision.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0679743464
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
Share your opinion of this book
More by Haruki Murakami
BOOK REVIEW
by Haruki Murakami ; translated by Philip Gabriel
BOOK REVIEW
by Haruki Murakami ; translated by Philip Gabriel & Ted Goossen
BOOK REVIEW
by Haruki Murakami ; translated by Philip Gabriel
by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2019
Absolutely enthralling. Read it.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
20
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2019
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!
Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends, in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.
Absolutely enthralling. Read it.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More by Sally Rooney
BOOK REVIEW
by Sally Rooney
BOOK REVIEW
by Sally Rooney
BOOK REVIEW
by Sally Rooney
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Toni Morrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 1970
"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970
ISBN: 0375411550
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
Share your opinion of this book
More by Toni Morrison
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by Toni Morrison edited by David Carrasco Stephanie Paulsell Mara Willard
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.