Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Murakami's writing is mesmerizing as always.

When I started reading this book I was more annoyed than anything with Tsukuru and how one incident 16 years ago was still having such an effect on his life----but the farther on I read the more I realized we are all probably one minor incident away from seeing things the way he did.

if Sara doesn't choose me tomorrow, he thought, I may really die. Die in reality, or die figuratively -- there isn't much difference between the two. But this time I definitely will take my last breath. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki will lose any last hint of color and quietly exit the world. All will become a void, the only thing that remains a hard, frozen clump of dirt. He slipped into the bed just before the date changed, and switched off the bedside lamp. How nice it would be to dream of Sara, Tsukuru thought. An erotic dream. Or one that wasn't -- either would be good. If possible, though, a dream that wasn't too sad. A dream in which he could touch her body would be more than he could ask for. It was, after all, just a dream.