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The nameless protagonist of A Wild Sheep Chase returns, several years later, to the Dolphin Hotel in Sapporo, looking for his lost ear-model love. The place has been completely rebuilt from a shabby former sheep research hall into a tower of gleaming luxury in which our hero finds an alluring bespectacled front desk attendant and an adolescent girl with a flighty photographer mom. Though he becomes fixated on Yumiyoshi, the clerk, he winds up escorting Yuki, the tween, back to her Tokyo home after her mother jets in a fit of artistic inspiration.

Back on Honshu, the narrator re-encounters Gotanda, a junior high classmate whoapos;s since become a B-grade movie star. His current release, Unrequieted Love, actually features the stunningly-eared missing girlfriend mdash; whose name, or at least whose assumed name, turns out to be Kiki mdash; in a bit part. Sick of fame and its trappings, Gotanda enthusiastically hangs out with and pours out his heart to our hero, a representative of his simpler past. Since both the narrator and Yuki are at loose ends, he joins her on an extended trip to Hawaii, where they find Yukiapos;s world-famous sometimes-adult-guardian shacked up with a one-armed Vietnam vet. But the people he knows start dying, and it falls to the protagonist to figure out whatapos;s going on.

* * *

Nobody likes this book except Haruki Murakami and me. Okay, thatapos;s an exaggeration, but Dance Dance Dance is roundly considered one of Murakamiapos;s inferior mdash; or at least less superior mdash; works. He says writing it was an enjoyable catharsis after getting blindsided by the staggering popularity of his previous novel, Norwegian Wood. He fled the public eye, decided to write not another wistful story of 1960s teen romance but a sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase containing whatever he damn well pleased. Out came this book. Detractors call it muddled and disorganized, but I prefer it to its (critically acclaimed) predecessor because it spends more time in real situations, or at least ones partially recognizable as real. And in any case, thereapos;s a lot less dialogue between the narrator andthatshortguyinthesheepcostumewhosewordsallruntogetherlikethis, which comes as a relief.

Even by Murakamiapos;s standards, this novelapos;s plot is tough to lay out. Like most of his protagonists, Dance Dance Danceapos;s just sort of lets fate take him where it may. When he needs money, he earns it by "shoveling cultural snow," i.e. writing restaurant reviews for a womenapos;s magazine, so heapos;s more or less free to do what he pleases, when he pleases. Which turns out to be encountering a series of eccentrics, including but not limited to those named in the plot summary. Amusingly, Yukiapos;s father is a mediocre but decent-selling novelist named Hiraku Makmura. Ponder that name for a sec. To commit the literary crime of going outside the text, I canapos;t help but think him a reflection of what the newly-popular Murakami thought he might, with complacency, become.

Dance Dance Dance isnapos;t just a Confederacy of Dunces-style walkthrough of colorfully-peopled settings, though: thereapos;s a plot, not to say a particularly good one, about a supernaturally affected (haunted?) floor of the rebuilt Dolphin Hotel. When the protagonist and Yumiyoshi visit it, it turns out to be one of those portals to a parallel world that Murakami so enjoys writing about. It also seems to predict, by way of a couch full of skeletons, the deaths of everyone the narrator knows, so heapos;s got that to intervene in. Fortunately, the magic part of this particular instance of magic realism is easy to ignore. To summarize, lamely: I canapos;t call this a prime piece of craftsmanship and it doesnapos;t quite add up to anything, but I had a fine time anyway. Your mileage may vary.

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