Have you ever met someone who left a profound impression on your life?

Do you sometimes find yourself wondering what has become of that person's life?

For me, “South of the Border, West of the Sun” is a book about encounters. About how each individual is irreplaceable.

I love this book so much

The book is told in the first person. The narrator is Hajime, a man who was the only child in the school, besides a girl named Shimamoto.

At that time in Japan (1960s), it was very rare to have only children and they were viewed strangely.

This common characteristic - being only children - brought Hajime and Shimamoto together as friends.

Shimamoto was born with polio, so she was lame in one leg and walked by dragging it. She had no friends at school, which brought her and Hajime even closer together.

Their friendship began when they were teenagers. Every afternoon Hajime would go to Shimamoto's house to listen to jazz and rock records and talk about life, the future, the world...

The Beatles' explosion, the jazz craze in Japan, the cold war on the planet and the hormones of two teenagers.

They never had a romantic relationship. When Shimamoto was about 15 or 16 years old, he moved to another city and Hajime couldn't visit her.

Life went on, he dated another girl (and was a jerk to her), went to college, got married, had two daughters and opened a jazz bar.

He opened two branches of the bar. Hajime's father-in-law was a big businessman in the construction industry and helped his son-in-law a lot.

Even so, over the years, Hajime would always think, “What happened to Shimamoto?”

Until one day Hajime appears on the cover of a magazine because of his bar that became famous.

One night, while working at the bar, a beautiful woman walks in alone. Hajime looks at her.

It's Shimamoto, more than 20 years later.

Hajime's life is turned upside down. He can't stop thinking about her anymore. They keep meeting at the bar, and she tells him what happened in her life.

At the same time, he thinks about leaving the life he has - his wife, the bar, his family, etc.

Hajime becomes obsessed with Shimamoto, while also remembering a girlfriend he had in middle school, shortly before he graduated from high school.

He had done her a lot of harm and wanted to know how she was.

Spoiler: she was in terrible shape even after so many years.

The fact that his ex-girlfriend is in such a bad way makes Hajime blame himself.

How much can our actions perpetuate themselves in other people's lives? How responsible are we for the harm people cause us?

This book is amazing.

Murakami managed to write a story about how we become obsessed with small things and are able to abandon security in search of a past that only existed in our imagination.

I highly recommend it. It's a short and very deep book