Tsukuru’s other three friends are still alive, but amid an environment of disappointment. That the special something would no longer be able to move me the way it used to.” That what had been remarkable had vanished. As one of her old friends remarks, “It hurt to see that she no longer had that burning something she used to have. Even before she died, however, she had already become a shadow of her former self. Shiro is now dead from an unknown strangler. Years later, Tsukuru reconnects with his friends to realize that he was ostracized from the group because Shiro (White), the beautiful girl pianist, accused him of a brutal rape.

The immediate theme of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is one of decay-not just the deterioration of Tsukuru when he loses his social anchor, but also the endless mundane disappointments held by the adult world. When the four of them rejected me, perhaps the young man named Tsukuru Tazaki really did pass away.” He contemplates suicide, but his loss of self makes that almost redundant: “A sudden thought struck him-maybe I really did die. During his freshman year he returns home to find that his former friends suddenly are refusing to talk to him. Their friendship is intense and loving, perhaps to the point of evoking the occult: “Like an equilateral pentagon, where all sides are the same length, their group’s formation had to be composed of five people exactly-any more or any less wouldn’t do.” Fast-forward to college, when four members of the group, who happen to have names based on colors, stay behind in Nagoya, while Tsukuru, the handsome and intelligent but “colorless” young man, goes off to college in Tokyo. In Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, the hotly anticipated new novel by Haruki Murakami, five teenagers in suburban Nagoya-three boys and two girls-become fast friends over a shared experience volunteering with troubled children. It’s the same old story: one day you have friends, the next day they’re accusing you of being a violent sex offender. _ Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

The colorless life of tsukuru tazaki