Bogormen

Title: The Strange Library
Author: Haruki Murakami
Genre: No clue...
Rating: 2/5
# pages: 77
Date read: April, 2015

'All I did was go to the library to borrow some books'.

On his way home from school, the young narrator of The Strange Library finds himself wondering how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire. He pops into the local library to see if it has a book on the subject. This is his first mistake.

Led to a special 'reading room' in a maze under the library by a strange old man, he finds himself imprisoned with only a sheep man, who makes excellent donuts, and a girl, who can talk with her hands, for company. His mother will be worrying why he hasn't returned in time for dinner and the old man seems to have an appetite for eating small boy's brains. How will he escape?


Really, really weird book. And not good weird - it mostly just seemed weird for the sake of being weird, which didn't work for me.

So why still two stars? A couple of reasons.

First of all, I read the illustrated version, and loved the illustrations. I'm always pleased when books dare to play around with the media (authors like Jasper Fforde and Walter Moers are brilliant at this), and this did so rather nicely.

Secondly, when I came to review this book on GoodReads, I read an interpretation of the ending, which put the rest of the book in perspective to me, and kinda made it work. It's a major spoiler though, so I'll hid it behind this cut.
( Don't click if you don't want to know ).