Haruki Murakami follows up the brilliant Wild Sheep Chase, with the satisfying Dance, Dance, Dance. The unnamed narrator of the last novel continues his adventures – and while the two stories do not follow directly on, the second makes enough references to the first to make it best to read Wild Sheep Chase first.
The narrator returns to the newly remodelled Dolphin Hotel, where he believes he has been summoned by his girlfriend from the previous novel, a call girl we come to know as Kiki. Kiki, who possesses a pair of magical ears, has disappeared. He meets the sheep man again and a strange young girl – Yuki – who has been all but abandoned by her famous parents. The pair strike up a friendship, one of the two central relationships in the novel. The other is with an old school-friend, now a moderately successful actor, well suited to playing squeaky-clean matinee idol parts. On the screen at least.
Murakami’s characters continue to deal with destiny, the supernatural and loss, all woven together in a story of epic proportions. Each of the characters finds something that they need or are looking for in the end though…
Welloflostplots 