I read and enjoyed Kafka on the Shore years ago (although I could barely tell you what it was about now). After enjoying Kafka I’ve tried a few times to read some of his other stuff and inevitably end up stalling out. This has happened with IQ84, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and now with Sputnik Sweetheart. It’s always during the first chapter that I get bogged down in this miasma of being bored, and the reoccurring theme of one of the characters going on and on about some classical composer and the sublimity of their works (blah blah blah). It starts to grate on me as pretentious, boring and droll. Does anyone else feel this way? I was honestly kind of surprised that he has consistently used this same device in multiple stories I’ve read, to the point that now it just feels silly that there’s always some character right from the get go that is this BIG classical music aficionado. It might seem to be a weird thing to key on, but it just bores me to encounter it over and over, right from the start.
I always regarded it as him using Write What You Know as a way to counteract the intimidating blankness of a new project’s first page. The default setting for him to start off a story, in a quiet house in a quiet neighborhood, never too many people around. And Go!
It never bothered me, in fact I think the books sucked me in faster thanks to the default setting. It’s easy to get used to, I can always identify well enough with the main character.
Kafka did, but after that I’ve had trouble getting over that default setting time and time again. I still have Sputnik from the library, so I might push ahead and see if it lures me in, but I’m still annoyed by the repetitive use of the same motifs.
You can always try. It’s good that it’s almost immediately noticeable so you can quit the book as soon as the annoyance starts creeping in, without losing too much time on it. :)