Dreams on the Bitface

I love Murakami, and I enjoyed Sputnik Sweetheart but I wouldn't say it was his best. The mesh of everyday and surreal sequences are common occurences in all his novels apart from Norwegian Wood which is a sweet book but not particuarly inspiring. A Wind up Bird Chronicle is my favourite but can be hard work,Hard-boiled Wonderland.. could be seen as an SF novel and is very beautiful and poignant at the end (it also has voracious librarians and who could resist that?).A Wild Sheep Chase is a noirish surreal tale but is one of his most accessible. I would say that Murakami was mostly (in that hackneyed term) "magic realism" because lazy critics aren't sure what box to put him in and if they call him that then they don't have be to concerned themselves by what his is actually doing. He's mostly interested in indentity and when considering the structure of his books I find it helpful to remember he's a jazz freak and it's sometimes structured spiralling and sometimes free expression.