Since then, I’ve spent all my time trying to understand why she had to leave this world.When I was a child, I had a very sick mother.The opening to Chapter One is particularly affecting: The first three chapters of Where the Sidewalk Ends are narrated by Hōsei, and though he doesn’t put it into words, his voice reflects the deep introspection and melancholy that has turned his life into one long quest for understanding. This childhood trauma has altered the course of Hōsei’s life, turning him into the pessimistic, introspective narrator of the story, and it’s ultimately what leads him to the titular highway where he meets the rest of the book’s supernatural characters.ģ The Road To Self-Discovery The Magician,The Nun,And Rōran On the morning of the twelfth day of school, Hōsei has another of those “life-changing” epiphanies when he walks in on his sister playing with what appears to be a real human skull, and as the story progresses, he comes to realize that what he was seeing was just a prop for her acting classes, and that she’s been secretly performing for her friends since she was eight years old. Living in a Tokyo high-rise with his overbearing mother and sister, Hōsei doesn’t have much to do with his family but instead spends his time drawing, hanging out with friends, and occasionally skipping school to go on a sightseeing trip with his camera. The plot of Where the Sidewalk Ends revolves around a teenager named Hōsei who returns from school one day and finds his apartment building under construction. Murakami writes brilliantly about the shifting perceptions that can occur when you go from an adult to a teen’s perspective and how you can’t help but feel differently about the same things when seen through this prism, especially when it comes to love. Before you start your teenage years, you’re probably not going to understand a lot of what you’re reading anyway, but as soon as you do, you’ll find yourself transported away to a vivid and immersive world of your own creation.
The best age to start reading Where the Sidewalk Ends, as with all of Murakami’s works, is when you’re a teen.
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