This one was a doozy.

Lots of major life themes about primarily, making the choice to “choose life” and all that it entails – the good and the bad; the great people and the worst people who enter our lives and make it better – or turn it upside down.

Ultimately, it’s how we choose to look at life that will help us go on our path.

There’s strong themes here in this book, death, grief, mental illness, pedophilia, social isolation, depression, PTSD, trauma, sex and suicide.

Ultimately, it’s about life and the angst around the main character who goes through his personal demons to transform into adulthood.

My lesson is that ultimately, everyone is grieving in some way. Everyone is suffering their own trauma in some way.

Everyone is dealing with their demons in their own way.

Others cannot move or grow from it – others can by using others for their gain, while others accept it as something that happened in their life but which does not define them.

This book reminded me of Anton Checkhov’s short story, A Nervous Breakdown where I likened the highly empath character of Vasily in it to Murakami’s Naoko. Both characters trying to make sense of the world but at the same time extricating themselves from it because it’s too overwhelming for them to understand the actions of others.