Murakami is Incredible

I just finished Haruki Murakami's The Wind Up Bird Chronicles. (#29) This is one of a handful of books that I will never forget. It is beautifully written (and translated) - but the serenity and completeness it conveys is what really overwhelms me. The characters are perfectly developed. To show what I mean, here is a bit from the book...teenager May Kasahara speaking:

"If people lived forever - if they never got any older - if they could just go on living in this world, never dying, always healthy - do you think they'd bother to think hard about things, the way we're doing now? I mean, we think about just about everything, more or less - philosophy, psychology, logic. Religion. Literature. I kinda think, if there were no such thing as death, that complicated thoughts and ideas like that would never come into the world. I mean - "...

"I mean...this is what I think, but...people have to think seriously about what it means for them to be alive here and now because they know they're going to die sometime. Right? Who would think about what it means to be alive if they were just going to go on living forever? Why would they have to bother?"

Anyway, I am in such a Murakami swoon I can't come up with any way to describe my attraction to the book. I think the reason I can't form words about it is my poor words collide with his incredible style and ability that is still vivid in my brain and the collision created a brain freeze. Anyway, that's my excuse.