New Reviews of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki in the American and French Press

A long review of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki appeared in the October 23 issue of the New York Review of Books.   Authored by writer and translation studies scholar Tim Parks, the review, titled, "Charms of Loneliness," begins this way: 

"In considering the life and work of Haruki Murakami it’s good to keep a sharp eye on the relationship between individual and community, on questions of inclusion and exclusion, belonging and abandonment." 
Although it cannot be called an enthusiastic review, it definitely merits the attention of all readers of this blog.  Parks criticizes dialogues for their "solemnly static tone," and dismisses similes and metaphors as being "invariably portentous." Noting that the novel offers an "intriguing core story of how an adolescent idyll went badly wrong," he characterizes Tsukuru's pilgrimage as "the story of a woefully prolonged adolescence," and ends the review with the tantalizing, and highly ironic, phrase: "There is talk of the Nobel."

You can read a longish part of the article (or the whole thing, if you are a subscriber) here.

In contrast to NYRB, The New Yorker eschewed a full review of the book, limiting itself instead to a single paragraph under "Briefly Noted."

The French translation of Tsukuru Tazaki, by Hélène Morita, came out in early September.  A review by Françoise Dargent, "Haruki Murakami, le blues de l'homme invisible" [the blues of an invisible man], came out in Le Figaro on August 28th.  It begins with the words, "Le dernier Murakami est arrrivé" [The latest Murakami has arrived]. The reviewer believes that Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki belongs to the genre of lyrical realism. 

Here is a longer fragment of the review:

Le dernier Murakami est arrivé. Au Japon, la nouvelle fut annoncée à l'aide de haut-parleurs par des libraires surexcités. S'ensuivit une ruée en magasin qui vit s'envoler les exemplaires de L'Incolore Tsukuru Tazaki et ses années de pèlerinage. Le voici qui fait étape en France, où les lecteurs ont fini par digérer les trois tomes de 1Q84. En comparaison, cet opus signe le retour du Japonais à une forme de normalité avec un seul livre. Finis les mondes parallèles, les sauts dans le temps et les créatures étranges, Tsukuru Tazaki est un homme au demeurant banal, un ingénieur de Tokyo qui vit sagement à notre époque. Il n'en changera pas tout au long du récit, s'autorisant comme seuls glissements temporels des flash-back sur son passé récent pour mettre le lecteur au parfum de ce qui le hante.

You can read the whole thing here.

Also, here is a picture of a poster advertising a play titles Nuits Blanches based on Murakami's story "Nemuri" ("Sleep," or "Sommeil" in this case), taken by my friend, Miljko, in Paris.