way behind on books so i'll probably be leaving the commentary a bit short on some of these, particularly these two. gone to the forest follows the lives of some lightly sketched characters in an unnamed plantation colony. there are hints, such as the existence of mahi mahi (referred to as dorado) and volcanic activity but as far as i can tell the indistinctness is intentional. it is a fine book about inheritance and political upheaval, the prose is spartan, direct, like mccarthy trying to find his voice, but it runs a bit thin. it would make a fine short story but needs some more consideration to be taken as a full fledged novel.
full disclosure on all this murakami: i downloaded his complete works (up to 1Q84) so they are always kind of there to fill in the book gaps. i was reading an article about his newest novel and the author cheekily name checks all of the standard murakami tropes as they appear in this latest story, the overall point being if you read one of his novels you kind of know what you're getting into with the others. generally this is fine as i do like his style, however if you've read as many as i have in a single year it does start to grow a little stale: another feckless man, another disappearance, another supernatural element. a wild sheep chase isn't bad (although i don't think its on the level of windup bird chronicle) and i want to read the other parts of the rat trilogy to see what is going on with these guys but it's also not the first of his i'd recommend.
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