I enjoyed the book greatly but I'm having difficulty understanding why. The characters are passive whiners who should just get on with their lives and stop living in the past, there is basically no plot to speak of, and the description of student life in Japan 40 years ago is fascinating but maddeningly brief.

I expect it's one of two things: either Murakami is a good enough writer to overcome the above problems or I was swept away by the sex scenes, which are reoccurring, frank, and sexy.