In the Miso Soup

Not bad, kinda overrated.

I love Ryu Murakami's writing style and the surreality and dreaminess it evokes, but I feel his commentary and cultural critiques are kinda juvenile and shallow. Maybe because of the evolution of the discourse in the past 24 years since its publication, but also maybe because it's just actually shallow. (William Gibson and Paul Verhoeven had deeper reads a decade earlier)

The final 20ish pages are great and the afterglow almost makes me want to bump it to 4 stars, but then I remember how weirdly misogynistic a bunch of it feels and want to knock it down to 2.