Kafka on the Shore

I'd been wanting to read some Murakami for a while now so when I saw a used copy of Kafka on the Shore, I bought it. But having read it, I'm not really sure what to make of this book. Is it profound or is it nonsense?

Kafka Tamura, our 15 year old protagonist, runs away from his oppressive father and ends up at a private library in Takamatsu, run by middle-aged, reserved Miss Saeki with the help of the friendlier Oshima. Given a room to stay in and a job at the library, Kafka is pretty much left to his own devices. Oshima takes him for a trip to a cabin deep in the woods but otherwise he reads, works and lives for the library.

Meanwhile the ageing Nakata, victim of a wartime incident where a class of children on a field trip fell into comas (most short-lived, but Nakata's was longer and left him with no memory or learning) tracks down stray cats for people at which he's very successful because he can talk to them. But someone is kidnapping and killing cats, which leads to a fateful encounter with a man called Johnny Walker.

These two stories, told in alternating chapters eventually sort of meet, but getting to that point involves some strange episodes of what I guess you'd call “magical realism”. An Oedipal curse, lost WW2 soldiers deep in the forest, a magical Opening Stone, making flutes from the souls of cats.....you get the picture.

It was an enjoyable enough read but I can't help thinking that it's less than the some of its parts. I dunno, maybe I'm just missing something?