Los protagonistas de esta novela, chicos y chicas en su mayoría jovencísimos, viven cerca de una base norteamericana, consumiendo toda clase de drogas, yendo a conciertos de rock, organizando orgías para los soldados yanquis, todo ello sin aparente pasión ni placer. Con emblemática pasividad, se deslizan hacia la autodestrucción, como resultado no sólo de su situación presente, sino de su futuro bloqueado.

This short novella (126 pages) has been floating around the book reading part of my head for a few years. I am not sure where I first hear about it, but I suspect it's from a list of cult books or novellas that you 'must read'. The synopsis intrigued me as I like books with a bit of an edge and books about the fringes of society. It also turns out that this book can be pretty hard to find for what I would regard as a reasonable price. Fortunately a relative saw it on my wishlist about a year or so ago and bought it for me and it has been teasing me ever since. I reached this odd state of mind where I wanted to read it but I didn't want it to be read yet (if that makes any sense). Eventually this got too much and I decided that it would be my next book come what may.

I don't even know where to start with this review having finished the book, my head is swimming and I feel partially stunned and numb. I guess I should say that, number one - this book has no plot, and number two - it is very graphic. I think it would be wise to warn any potential readers that there is constant drug use, group sex (gay, straight, you name it, even including with a foot) and violence throughout the book. I don't think I have read anything so graphic since I read Justine by Marquis de Sade. I guess I was hoping for something more along the lines of Junky by William S. Burroughs and ended up getting something more akin to Bret Easton Ellis (who's books I hate). The writing is a chaotic mess and it was a book I really had to concentrate on just to get a grasp of what was going on. I was left feeling disappointed once I had finished as I had built the book up to be something which it is not.

However.

The chaos kind of works and i assume being left feeling disorientated is the point. I can't say that I enjoyed the book but I was left feeling as though I had just come out of haze of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll and if that was Murakami's aim, then mission accomplished. This book just wasn't for me but I can appreciate some of the merit within it and I just wouldn't feel right giving it 1/5 and for this reason I give it 2/5. ( )

A hard-shelled insect was knocked off the trunk of a poplar by the wind-blown rain; upside down in flowing water, it tried to swim. I wondered if that beetle had a nest to go back to. Its black body, glistening in the light, could at first be mistaken for a piece of glass. The beetle managed to climb up on a rock and decided which way to go. Perhaps thinking itself safe, it climbed down on a clump of grass, but this was immediately mowed down by a rivulet of flowing rainwater and the insect was swallowed up.

I'll be quite honest with you. There are about twenty pages smack in the middle of this thing about a mescaline trip that are transcendently lyrical and beautiful. I am so tempted to bump up the rating! But that beauty never goes anywhere. If you're going to make me slog through the other hundred pages of puke, ugly drug use, puke, ugly sex (some rape?), puke, two onscreen beatings, puke, divining the meaning of life in the entrails of several smashed bugs, puke, a burning death, puke, and a graphic description of eating a piece of very spoiled chicken resulting in some kind of nervous breakdown, I really need it to end in something more substantial than the blackbird singing in the dead of night. I can listen to the Beatles myself with a lot less vomit going on, is what I'm saying. ( )

This is not a novel in the normal sense. It does not have a beginning, a middle and an end. It just begins and goes on. It is more of a diary of a period in the authors life. The fact that it is pretty much graphic scenes of sex and degradation and not much else is kinda neither here nor there.

It captures the period of nihilistic obsession that can occupy and person or group of people. It is not literary or post-mdern or anything really other than a full account of a person's life for a fixed period of time.

I don't know if it offers a view into Japanese culture or just a youthful subculture. I don’t know if I enjoyed it as I don’t think it falls into the category of a book that can be enjoyed. I am glad I read it. ( )

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Murakami-Bleu-presque-transparent/5313