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Murakami probably likes his readers to feel slightly unsure when they finish his books. His best work lingers in the mind, its enduringly permutable meanings and associations are a natural extension of the sense of melancholy irresolution that plagues his characters. However, the inscrutability and randomness of some of his fiction can often be more frustrating than pleasing. This is particularly the case with his shorter prose works, of which The Strange Library is a special case.

The book centres on a youngish boy, unnamed in the tradition of Murakami protagonists, who, on a whim, heads to his local library to satisfy a curiosity about Ottoman tax collection, where he is then imprisoned by a malevolent old man. The book is very short, sumptuously illustrated (indeed, the illustrations certainly account for the majority of the book), and written in an innocent and naive style — which would lead the reader to suspect that it is a children’s book. But it has not been marketed as one and Murakami often adopts a sort of ingenuous narrative voice in his writing, particularly in the shorter stories.

Perhaps with its Murakami tropes — a sheep man, an ethereal and beautiful female, a deep and dark space — it could serve as a primer for younger readers. Murakami’s less successful novels tend to fail because they don’t ground their fantasy in a realist mode. Without a wisecracking narrator who faces down the absurd happenings by cooking delicious meals, consuming western culture, and blithely contemplating the unyielding ennui of life under postmodern late capitalism, adult readers will no doubt be left unsatisfied.