The Secret Library

    The Strange Library is an interesting story with magical realism and eerieness throughout the story. It felt like an attempt by Murakami to write a horror story mixed with the usual topics that he likes to address within his stories. The artistic visuals of the book remind me of a children's book. The visuals are abstract in the version released to the United States while the ones in the Japanese version are cartoonish and child-like. I wanted to talk about the idea that the story is about an abused child comprehending his emotions. I feel that the images from the Japanese version fit that idea better because it makes it feel like a child had put together those drawings in order to sort their emotion on the situation they are going through. 

    The girl that appeared in the story could be an instance of his mother because she isn't really sexualized by the character in the story, which could explain why his mother died at the end of the story because she sacrificed herself for her son. I do feel that the scene in which the starling is in the monster's dog mouth was an actual event that happened in the real-life where his abusive dad allowed his dog to eat the bird in order to punish Boku for not studying or listening to directions properly. And the reason the mother died at the end was that she had already died defending Boku from his father and the dog along with the starling, which would explain why Boku is alone at the end of the story and the fact that his father is not brought up at all. Since the library could be within Boku's mind it could just be sorting his memories and emotions of the event in a way that a child could imagine such a situation. 

- Michael L.