i haven't been this conflicted and frustrated with a read in a really, really long time. it was so frustrating to see an author who's clearly capable of stringing a decent story and sentence together just shoot himself in the foot over and over again with these awfully written, gratuitous sex scenes and unbearably stilted and creepy dialogue. i understand that that may be part of the "point" in this novel's case, but its hard to jive with it when so much of it reads like bad porn (plus, supposedly, this isn't something unique to this novel, but murakami's work as a whole). i mean, c'mon, comparing a woman's boobs with that of a "little girl's" during a sex scene that your novel literally concludes on? are you kidding me? i dont mind sex scenes, but can you at least write them with a bit of class? don't shoehorn them in on every other page? writing a scene where a 30 year old is sexually assaulted by 13 year old, but flub it so bad to the point where it sounds like weird porn narrated by a pedophile? what are we doing here? most of the characters feel like flat caricatures, midori's whole personality is porn and sex; that's all she talks about, it's like shes a hazbin hotel character -- not in a way that feels purposeful or thought provoking, just creepy and worst of all, boring. i'm all for books or sexual elements that make me feel uncomfortable or weird, especially if they're written well -- im reading and enjoying GR and lolita for christ's sake -- but here i feel as though it's done without intent, and worse, purely for the sake of the male gaze. i implore anyone who gives this novel's shitty writing a pass under the guise of it being "transgressive" to read transgressive books that are actually well written and, most importantly, not so drab.