The Sheep Revealed

If A Wild Sheep Chase is ever made into a movie, David Lynch has to direct the scene where the main character and his girlfriend go into the Dolphin Hotel. It's so much like the bank scene in the last episode of Twin Peaks. At the very least he should be consulted.

Fan-crew making aside, our lead characters next find some information to move forward on.

His girlfriend's ears are getting no secret messages, but it turns out that the Dolphin Hotel is home to a resource library about sheep, and the owner's eccentric father is the local authority on all things ovine. When the two go up to see him they learn the truth, and we as readers, learn that this sheep is some sort of bizarre spiritual force that has some sort of grand plan for the whole of humanity. As readers, we also no doubt guess that by the end of the book one or the other of the lead characters is going to be possessed by it. Maybe then we'll get a name, which might be pretty good.

Murakami's delivery of the history of Junitaki-cho (where their search has lead our heroes) as a narrative broken up by what the main actor does and observes between his own reading sessions is an excellent bit of first person expression. We're still firmly in this guy's head, even if we aren't quite privy to every last little thought of his. It's also interesting how the Ainu, the native people of Japan, are brought into the story through the relation of Junitaki-cho's history. The way the town's life-long Ainu resident's life is described makes me wonder if perhaps he had been possessed by the sheep-spirit-being.

At any rate, the story progresses and Murakami's power over written images is proven yet again when he compares the look and flight of a moth to a crumpled up piece of paper. Saying that the lead lady of the story looked older after the moth in question flew off of her is also curious, since it brings up ideas of time travel, but Murakami's clearly got enough going on in this book already.