In the Miso Soup

This was a great book. Never read anything by this author before, and it was a great read. It did have some very gory part, hard to get through and almost did not, but it was a short and necessary part of the story and the ending wow, just made for some interesting feelings about Frank!! Good prose, interesting look at the sex city life of Japan too.

This short tale of a young tour guide & a tourist who is actually a serial killer was such an uncomfortable and creepy read. In The Miso Soup is about loneliness, about wanting fulfillment and not knowing how to get it. It's about people wanting to fit in a world where people don't care & don't notice things around them. There's a pretty sizeable cast of characters, but the majority of this is spent with Kenji (the tour guide) & Frank (the odd & mysterious tourist). There are some slow parts of the book (mostly Frank's recollections of his childhood, which I struggled to get through), some really dark sections (the whole 'massacre' in the bar), but mostly the book moves along at a steady pace. I loved the open-ended conclusion, and the fact that there are no easy answers at the end. If you liked this one, I'd recommend also giving Audition by Ryu Murakami a try.

A relatively short fiction story that slowly gets more and more disturbing until it accelerates into mayhem at zero to sixty in two pages flat. If you know about Ryu Murakami or have seen the movie Audition, then you should know what you're getting into.

Chilling, philosophical, suspenseful, sardonic, and very assured writing. Murakami has produced a blackly comic satire on the ironies and foibles of contemporary society.

This book is strange. Let's get that out of the way right at the top. The publisher's description promises a sort of neo-noir examination of Tokyo's sex industry combined with a suspenseful tale about strange behavior and a serial killer. Does the book deliver? Yes and no. Without any significant spoilers, I can say that the book is divided into three chapters and the first chapter follows the script I expected after reading the back cover. The second and third chapters, without giving anything away, take a left turn and end up exploring rather different territory than I was expecting. While unexpected, though, they still made for enjoyable reading.If I were to sum the book up, I would say it's equal parts suspenseful (particularly in the first chapter), tense (particularly in the second chapter), and thoughtful (particularly in the third chapter). Watching the narrator shift from one such emotion to the next makes for fascinating reading.But...Ultimately, the suspense doesn't last the length of the novel, yet it is not relieved by satisfactory explanations. Instead, it's replaced by a lingering sense of the bizarre. Entirely natural characters have unexplained and almost supernatural abilities. Reactions to events seem muted, sometimes to the point that they're almost undetectable. The reader is left with a feeling of having enjoyed the journey but completely confused by the destination.Clearly, Murakami is a hightly skilled author, and this American reader found it fascinating to tour an underside of Toyko that we don't often read about in the travel guides. That having been said, the novel's climax just didn't do it for me. I don't mind recommending this book, but don't expect to be entirely satisfied as you turn the last page.

The book starts pretty slow; not too much blood and guts as you would first suspect. But as you get further into the story the more uncomfortable it gets to read. At one point I didn't want to finish (in a good way). Really disturbing, the suspense at first seems to lead got nowhere but it really makes you connect with the Protagonists anxiety. Not for the faint of heart - it describes some sexual violence and of course gore.Overall I enjoyed the book - BUT I probably wouldn't recommend to any of my friends bc they might look at me differently lol!

Well, to explain how I came upon this book, I read it for a college course on Japanese literature, specifically in the horror genre so I did not pick up the book on my own but I do not regret reading it at all. The pacing of the book is very well done in my opinion- I was able to read it all in one sitting without hardly feeling like I wanted to come to a stop. The translated narrator's voice was effective and the English diction still allowed the eerie mood to start with a great foundation right at the beginning of the piece. The imagery was powerful, in sometimes disturbing ways which not only kept the suspense but allowed for the building to the climax. I do not want to give any details away for the sake of the well written flow that gives the reader each detail slowly and methodically to lead to the shocking scene about halfway or so into the book so I will keep my details somewhat vague. I will say as a warning, this book does deal with the red light district of Tokyo and sexual services and does have graphic scenes of violence and gore. My only complaint about the book would be the cover of this version, which I think is in poor taste for the content. Other covers have a more reasonable cover but that is not on the piece itself. The ending of the novel is thoughtful and depends on the reader for the interpretation which goes well with the themes. If you are looking for a horror novel based in reality and you do not mind gore, then this is a great choice for an international horror novel which deals with themes such as foreigners in another country, sex, people's ability to connect to one another and murder.

I read this in like... a day somehow. It's a pretty quick read. I would say that it starts stronger than it finishes - and I'm not sure I understood all the subtext or meaning behind everything that happened, but I liked it. It inspired me to go on to read Piercing which I did not like.

Chegou muito rápido e o livro está em ótimas condições. Recomendo ☺️

Muy buena novela en una edición de bolsillo de tamaño perfecto.

This book is a very intense and disturbing read. Very graphic in parts and the rest just makes you feel uneasy. It takes you on a journey through the seedy underbelly of Tokyo and into some completely unhinged and unexpected territory, it was totally gripping and I finished it in a single sitting. I have read a few of ryu murakami’s books and this one is by far my favourite, i highly reccomend this book.

Titre

Finished this book fairly quickly, when it got disturbing I felt like I couldn't stop reading! The atmosphere is very well described and I think I was able to immerse myself fairly well with this book. Its my first time reading this authors book, but now I am convinced I should give a look to other works as well.