Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami.

3/5 rating. 314 pages.

Book #56 of 2021. Read August 18, 2021.

This is a novel about Tsukuru Tazaki and his struggles to understand his past and accept himself.

I liked a lot of this book. Tsukuru’s feelings of loneliness and unimportance I think are pretty universal and so really touched me. There were a lot of quotes and thoughts that he had that I think are great discussion points for moving beyond this place in ourselves.

Apart from this, there were a few REALLY weird sex dreams that just come out of nowhere that completely threw me off. I also didn’t like how there was no real closure: how am I going to read a 300-page book and still be left not knowing if Tsukuru is going to be okay!?!

Haruki’s descriptions of depression and loneliness are hauntingly accurate. Here are a few illustrative quotes:

• “He set up a tiny place to dwell, all by himself, on the rim of a dark abyss. A perilous spot, teetering on the edge, where, if he rolled over in his sleep, he might plunge into the depth of the void. Yet he wasn’t afraid. All he thought about was how easy it would be to fall in.”
• “People came to him, but in the end they always left.”
• “It’s when you can’t even feel any pain anymore that you’re in real trouble.”
• “Vacations and friends are the two best things in life.”
• “Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.”
• “The right words always seemed to come too late.”

Overall, this book was alright, but I’m glad to get it off my shelf – it’s definitely not a keeper.

Additional Quotes:

“Maybe you needed to talk with somebody. More than you ever imagined.”

“There are certain thoughts that, no matter what, you have to keep inside. And it was those kinds of thoughts that ran through Tsukuru’s head as he rode the train home.”

“Tsukuru couldn’t tell him how a half year spent obsessing over death, over destroying himself, had changed him, how those days had permanently transformed the person he was. He had the feeling he couldn’t get across even half the despair he’d felt at the time. It was probably better not to bring it up at all.”

“The four of us who stayed behind weren’t brave enough to venture out like you did. We were afraid of leaving the town we were brought up in, and saying goodbye to such close friends. We couldn’t leave that warm comfort zone. It’s like how hard it is to climb out of a warm bed on a cold winter morning. We came up with all kinds of plausible excuses at the time, but now I see how true this was.”

“All you can do is be as honest and free as you can.”

“People come to him, discover how empty he is, and leave. What’s left is an empty, perhaps even emptier, Tsukuru Tazaki, all alone. Isn’t that all there is to it?”

“The air felt purer here than in Helsinki, like it was freshly made.”

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