Who cares where Murakami is taking us, enjoy the wild and crazy trip! This book should be prescribed at rehab centers as a substitute to those with a psychedelic drug addiction. Not since I discovered Vonnegut a century or two ago have I found an author so fascinatingly weird. Murakami has me hooked and entranced. I ordered six more of his books half way through reading this one. The hell with rehab! I'll keep the Murakami monkey on my back!