Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

very haruki to leave us in the dark of whether sara accepted tazaki or otherwise. i am devastated by that fact that i have no answer to the ending when i was looking forward to it so much.

it was about tsukuru tazaki, colourless only because his name does not have ‘colours’ in him, whereby, in high school he was part of a close knit group of five friends. however, he was struck off from this group with just one phonecall and with no explanation whatsoever. hurt and depressed, tsukuru thought of death at the same time, living his life monotonously, albeit successfully achieving his dream of working at train stations. Years of pilgrimage probably refers to his 16 years of enduring this hurt. When he met Sara, on the verge of going deeper into the relationship, she suggested on finding his friends and requested tsukuru to find out what really happened between him and his friends.

he took up her suggestion and returned back to his hometown, meeting with two of his guy friends, taking a ‘virgin’ trip to finland to meet with one of the girl friends. unfortunately the fourth member of the group passed away many years ago and the story now diverge to revolve around the fourth member. tsukuru probably understood only half the reason of why they ditched him because eventually, the dead holds the answer. the good thing about his meetings then was to finally understand it is not entirely his fault that he was left out. perhaps that brings to him a new positive realisation to face his own demons.

however, somehow i am able to relate to tazaki a lot more. i understood perfectly how he felt of being ‘rejected’ by a group of close friends. of the pain he went through to kind of understand what really happened and how he felt he is the victim. and then toughened up to be independent of friends and relationships.

i could never imagined that the book is actually about friendships, lost and found, of finding questions unanswered, of loneliness, of forgiveness when not given and in search of an understanding when wronged.

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of course i was able to relate to tsukuru. i understood very well about being left out without any particular reason just like that. i so understood that. i also understood the journey of emotions he had just to digest what actually happened and finally became immune to it and learn to live with it but perhaps became a deep-rooted feeling he had to finally face up straight in order to come clean.

i also understood the ‘need’ to reconnect with friends when in your thirties. because now that i am in my thirties, i felt i should find back some of my friends i’ve lost and what do i know, i managed to, this year especially. i was able to reconcile with two friends i missed so much. and i am so happy and actually surprised that i did. i am never going to let them go. although the story also told of no matter how close you were once, there exist a spot of awkwardness when you meet your friends again for the first time after years of disconnect.

i also understood the feeling of loss and loneliness. of being alone in a crowd.

and i finally realise haruki’s style of writing. he will always have philosophy thrown in and some cool classics piece that his characters are obsessed with (and in turn makes me want to listen to these pieces) and there is a tendency of his characters having to deal with emotions and intuition and some spiritual, in the midst of straightforward human nature and responses.

i guess that’s what makes me enjoy reading his books, regardless of poor ratings.