Rating: 
Summary: dark, disturbing, delicious!
Review: The genius of Murakami's "Wild Sheep Chase" (like the genius of his other works) is the total believability of his characters and plot. Everyone who reads this work is immediately engrossed and sucked in, and only realizes how truly bizarre the whole thing is when they try to tell someone else about the book. The narrator of "Sheep Chase" begins as something of an Everyman. His mate leaves him, his job pays him well but isn't very satisfying, he is intelligent but little in his life seems to stimulate him to thought. You wouldn't say he is going through life with blinders on, but nor is his life totally examined, either. Life is, more or less, something that is just happening to him. You could probably think of a dozen people you know who would easily fit his character. Still, this is a Murakami novel, after all, and pretty soon he is, in the words of Tolkein, simply swept away, a stranger in a strange land with no idea of how he got there. A perfectly ordinary photo that he uses in a brochure catches the attention of a powerful political figure, "The Boss", who has been inexplicably lying on the verge of death for some years, hanging on as if by some supernatural power. The photo, it's discovered, has a special sheep in it. A type of sheep who's breed does not exist. A minion of The Boss makes him an offer he cannot refuse: find that sheep... He meets up with a young woman who, among other things, is a call girl for an exclusive members-only club, and does ear modeling on the side. Together, they set off to find this elusive sheep-that-doesn't-exist, all the while trailing the narrator's old friend, The Rat, who seems to always be one step ahead of them. Much has been written about Murakami and "Wild Sheep Chase", including that this work is a shining example of the postmodern novel. While this may be the case, potential readers shouldn't shy away from this book simply because they may not know a fig about postmodernism. Unlike other "postmodern novels", which are often thickets of high rhetoric and voluminous nonsense, "Wild Sheep Chase" can be read on a multitude of levels: both as lit crit and as pure, enjoyable fiction. To read it strictly as one or the other is to do a great injustice to this work.
Rating:
Summary: A Contemplative Apocalypse of the Curious
Review: I like to think of there being two very different kinds of novels: ones about characters, and ones about events. Some try to tell a story of something that happened, some try to tell a story about the people that fill up this world. Of these two, the work of Haruki Murakami is definately character driven. The entier point of his books, actualy, tends to be the people in them, looking for eachother, separating and reconnecting, beeing twisted together in the braids of fate. Some people, (esspecialy those who prefer the events-driven novels) may be frustrated with this book, because for much of it, very little in the way of events happen, and when events do happen, they are so strange and outlandish that one is half tempted to ignore them as tall tales fabricated by the characters to pull at our collective legs. Thus, if a reader is of the right mindset, one can discount the plot and events entierely as some bizzaro-world never-never-land hallucinations, and cut straight to the jewels of the book: Murakami's ecstatoc observations about people, places, and things that are normaly so mundane in our life that we just over look them. By brining these banal things under such intense scrutiny he presents a world more fantastic then reality, more concrete than fantasy, and reminescent only of the way you must have looked at things as a child, where a bug in a jar was as fascinating as a plasma screen TV. I will tentatively outright recomend Murakami to anyone, however, I will attach to that recomendation a warning, that you shouldn't be surprised (or take it personaly) if you don't like it. To really appreciate his work on a personal level you have to be cut of the same cloth as a mad scientist, a Buddha, or Humphrey Bogart, although which one - I'm not yet sure. Ultimately, though, I think it is safe to say that a persons opinons on literature are more a reflection of themselves than it is any objective judgement of quality. When I praise a book, that just means it's my kind of book, or I'm it's kind of reader. When I dislike a book, that means the book and I are at odds, not that either of us are bad, but that, like some people, we just don't get along. Murakami is so forcefull and eccentric that it would not surprise me if there are a good number of people who don't get along with his books, but there should be equaly many people of the same ilk as the madness in his books that can admire his unabated and perpetualy unsatiated expressions of an unapologeticaly surreal outlook on life.
Rating: 
Summary: Becoming Murakami
Review: After reading Murakami's stellar Wind Up Bird, Norwegian Wood and Hardboiled Wonderland this book seemed like a logical next step. I had a lot of fun following the writer on this road to nowhere, but feel that this book can best be seen as an important stepping stone to subsequent greatness.
With so many previous reviewers' comments on the book's themes of the outsider in a traditionally close knit society, the progression of alienation, and an Odyssey through Japan's history and country side, there is little reason for repetition. I considered this book a fun read for those whose literary Universe revolves around starts like Pynchon and Foster Wallace. To me, the likeliness between this book's search for the mythical sheep and Gravity's Rainbow's quest for the origin of Imipolex G were neither superficial nor coincidental. Had I not read the latter masterpiece and Murakami's later works, I may actually have opted for a full five stars. Yet, Murakami's path down the road of nowhere falls so much short of Pynchon's landmark on any level. Moreover, Haruki himself developed the Odyssey theme way further in the "Bird" that this chase left me with a slightly empty feeling. As such, I think that this book is most interesting in giving the reader a gauge on Murakami's evolution as a writer.
Still, as a funny story on Nihilism it provides a literary counterpart to the Coen's Brothers Big Lebowsky, which -to me- is no bad company at all.
Rating:
Summary: Murakami's Best
Review: I know my favorite Murakami book is the Wind-up Bird Chronicles. I know his most daring book is Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and his most moving book is Norwegian Wood. But, A Wild Sheep Chase is the most creative, well edited, well rounded exercise of Murakami's genius that there is in English. I have become disenchanted with the newer titles: South of the Border, Sputnik Sweetheart and even Kafka on the Shore not because of the content but because of the translator, Philip Gabriel. Alfred Birnbaum and Jay Rubin (the latter my personal favorite) breathe life in their translations rather than just translate it word for word. I read and write Japanese myself and can attest to the fact that Gabriel's texts, while more accurate, lack the Murakami boyish spirit and reckless randomness. Here, Birnbaum pulls out all of the stops paraphrasing double entendres in a natural accurate style giving the very random plot a cohesive feel. Part deadpan absurdity and part absurdist absurdity. Gabriel translations play deadpan absurdity the whole novel. The plot is basically simple. The nameless narrator must find a sheep. It is a sort of metaphysical, supernatural sheep that "enters" people giving them great will and strength. There is a character named the Sheep Man. There is a Sheep Professor who is now "sheepless." having had the sheep "enter" and "leave" him. The narrator's girlfriend is an ear model whose ears somehow augment her otherwise normal appearance to great beauty. The story's absurdity and creativity are handled with great skill. There are fewer non-related sidetrips as in Wind-up Bird Chronicle (of which I love but tend to dilute the pace of the novel a bit). Anyhow, a golden rule, check to see who translated the Murakami book you are about to read. Jay Rubin/Alfred Birnbaum yay, Philip Gabriel boo.
Rating: 
Summary: What's a sheep chase good for?
Review: The writing style to start with felt very ordinary and not extremely imaginative hardly managed to keep my interest in the story line. It takes some time to adjust with it.
And eventually it does, it starts flowing imagination wise. The descriptions become more capturing. But what for. Not being able to explain why chase the sheep, is there any other reason, except for the obvious reason - to write for the pleasure it gives.
It left me feelin cheated. Empty. And not wanting to read this book ever again - I thought maybe I ought to just in case I had missed any page!
Rating:
Summary: I lost this book
Review: I read and then returned this book to my grandmother at her door county home at her request. I searched through her library the next three times I returned trying to retrieve it. The only thing I found was a book on Wisconsin ghost stories. When I went back to find the ghost stories book "A Wild Sheep Chase" was right beside it.
weird
Weird that I tell that story, but this book is a weirdness magnet. Not sure what your take will be but I almost felt posessed at times reading this book. Murikami's delivery gives you the feeling you're reading someone's dreams with it's strange blend of detailed reality and surealism. Truely the most unique book I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Murakami Does Vonnegut, with Ears Unblocked
Review: It's hard not to reach the end of Haruki Murakami's wonderfully entertaining A WILD SHEEP CHASE and not find yourself asking, "What was THAT all about?" Sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad with loss, almost always quirky after the style of Kurt Vonnegut, Murakami's story line pulls you in and keeps you hooked with unexpected twists and turns that leave you as desperate as his nameless main character to learn the ovine truth.
On its face, the book is a combination mystery story, grail quest, and science fiction novel, laced with biting sarcasm. A perfectly regular young advertising executive is approached one day by a mysterious stranger concerning a photograph of sheep grazing in a mountain pasture that the agency used in an insurance company ad. Buried within the herd is one sheep of an unknown breed with a star-shaped birthmark on its back. Unbeknown to the young executive, he has transgressed some unmarked boundary and caught the attention of The Boss, an immensely rich Tokyo businessman and power broker. The mysterious stranger delivers an ultimatum from The Boss: find the sheep in one month and be exceedingly well-rewarded, or be forced into permanent career ruin if he fails. The balance of the book traces the quest of the young executive and his unusual girlfriend to find the sheep and discover its bizarre significance.
With A WILD SHEEP CHASE, Murakami has constructed a bizarre novel populated by an alcoholic business partner, a godlike mysterious stranger dressed in black, a girlfriend with uncanny sixth sense and ears that turn her into an irresistible beauty when exposed, a philosophizing chauffeur, a borderline psychotic Sheep Professor, and a man who lives in the woods and dresses like a sheep. All of the characters are nameless, at most given nicknames like The Boss, The Rat, J, and Sheep Man. Only the hero's aged and unnamed cat is bestowed with a name, Kipper, in the course of the story.
Fabulous imagery and clever prose riffs abound in Murakami's world. Consider the following small sampling:
-- "Far off, someone was practicing piano. It sounded like tripping down an up escalator."
-- "The elevator shook like a large dog with lung disease."
-- "Occasionally, someone coughed with a dry rasp that sounded like a mummy tapped on the head with a pair of tongs."
-- "The yellow glow of the light bulbs drifted about the room like pollen."
-- "The house kept its own time, like the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the living room. People who happened by raised the weights, and as long as the weights were wound, the clock continued ticking away. But with people gone and the weights unattended, whole chunks of time were left to collect in deposits of faded life on the floor."
So what is the book really all about? Perhaps it's a commentary about economic and emotional gain and loss in our lives, or maybe it's a parable about the existence of free will and how much more difficult it is to exercise than we think (and how less often we really do it than we believe). Or possibly, it's a novel about individuality and mediocrity in Japanese society. Then again, it could be a protest against a powerful and homogenizing globalization that threatens to turn us all into nameless, unindividuated sheep. Of course, it could just be a silly, pseudo science fiction story without any meaning. Whatever - res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.
A WILD SHEEP CHASE is a great read, fun and funny, full of memorable characters and pungent commentary about modern life. This is Murakami with a twist. Step up to the bar and take an unforgettable drink. And don't forget to write down God's phone number and give him a call.
Rating:
Summary: A fun, fresh, and sexy romp through the mind of a freak...
Review: ...and I use the term freak in the most reverent of ways. I also use it to describe the author; because while the main character is a freak in his own right, he's one of an entirely different caliber.
A Wild Sheep Chase takes us to Tokyo Japan 'round 1980 and dumps us into the sharp but entirely unexercised, and increasingly apathetic mind of our 30 year old (male) main character. Funny, I just checked the book because I couldn't remember his name. I couldn't find it. I may be wrong, but I don't know if the author gives him one.
Anyway...
Newly divorced, incessantly smoking, and always musing in very interesting ways about largely uninteresting things, I found myself pulled into this novel immediately. "We" soon find ourselves embroiled in an epic and supernatural mystery with only a half-tank of gas. When tasked by an uber-powerful businessman to find a certain certain one-of-a-kind sheep or face financial ruin (if not death), our adventurer shruggingly agrees, and half-heartedly pursues.
The slurring pace of this book, filled with philosophical musings, "David Lynch like" weirdos, and a spattering of phenomenon, was a rare treat for me.
Murakami is a wonderfully gifted creative writer. His prose (even though translated) is at once elegantly crafted and playful. I recommend this book highly.
Christian Hunter
Santa Barbara, California
Rating:
Summary: Poor Story
Review: I previously read 'The Wind Up Bird Chronicles' which I thought was great. So I knew what to expect with the 'Sheep Chase' but I was terriblly disappointed. The writing seemed amateurish throughout most of the novel. The 'Sheep Chase' has characters that seemed to just drop out of the book suddenly for no plausible reason (The Girl with the Ears). And the strange power of her ears is never fully explained or even demonstrated in the book. The first chapter of the novel doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the rest of the story. Several of the characters seem to do things that are 'out of character'. For example, the mysterious 'Boss' Assistant' who is so powerful and rich (with a host of servants) and demanding agrees to take care of the protagonist's cat. This just seemed somewhat peculiar. Also, the 'Sheep Man' is one of the most unconvincing characters I've ever run into in a book - even one of this type. Overall this is definitely not one of Murakami's best.
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