It looked like a mountain after a big forest fire. His baldness looked incomplete he had frizzy white hairs plastered against both sides of his head. The old man was bald and wore thick lenses. Tiny black spots dotted his face like a swarm of flies. “A little old man sat behind a little old desk in the middle of the room. In his typical style, Murakami describes the strange librarian. The woman directs him to the basement and room 107.

The circulation librarian checks in his returned unusual books – How to Build a Submarine and Memoirs of a Shepherd. The ghostly girl delivers gourmet meals to the boy, and another weird character, the “Sheepman” brings donuts for an afternoon snack. The young boy who narrates the story frets about his mother who expects him home for dinner and his pet starling. Together these three attempt to escape this nightmare. The a mysterious, ethereal young girl approaches and offers a means of escape. A friendly jailer visits him and fills in some information, but he encourages the boy to memorize if her ever wants to escape Room 107. The librarian tells him he must memorize all four volumes, or he would suffer unspeakable pains. The boy is locked in a room with four folio sized books about taxation in the ottoman empire – a topic he inquired about for his next borrowings. Then a slightly strange and scary man invites the boy to look at some interesting books he might like in Room 107 in the basement of the library. A child who loves books, returns a few to the local library with the intention of borrowing several others. This unusual volume has flaps which fold over the top and bottom, and it only needs a wax seal to complete the strangeness of this story. Haruki Murakami adds to this genre with The Strange Library. They all take the story on twists and turns around the globe with a quite mysterious ending. The story takes numerous twists and turns over the three volumes which follow, including, Sabine’s Notebook, The Gryphon, and The Golden Mean. This window into the mysterious Sabine made me feel as though I had eavesdropped on a growing romance. Lifting the flap reveals a folded letter. Naturally intrigued, he writes back and thus begins a correspondence every bit as strange, beautiful, and exotic as the first post card. Griffin receives a strange and beautifully decorated post card with an exotic postmark from Sabine.

Show More four books beginning with Griffin and Sabine.

Murakami the strange library