A second guide, Tsukuru’s girlfriend Sara, has no color in her name, but she is definitely color-coordinated. When she prods him about his early life, Tsukuru hesitantly relays the scarring story of the loss of his four friends. She senses he will not be whole until he confronts the submerged questions of his past, which seem to be coursing toward the future. As wounds develop a protective crust, the soul flows dangerously beneath them. Sara sometimes seems more therapist than love interest, but he is deeply drawn to her. He expresses love, she fondness. But her driving curiosity spurs him to action. It is not the acuteness of suffering but desire that propels him. With Sara’s assistance he systematically finds his friends, located as close as his boyhood home of Nagoya and as far afield as Finland. To tackle the unresolved takes tremendous courage. He boldly seeks out each finger of the once harmonious hand, inadvertently unveiling its terrible secret.

On a first reading, “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” seems kin to Murakami’s more minimalist novels “Sputnik Sweetheart” or “Norwegian Wood,” but it does not really fall into that category. Nor is it written with the energetic vibe of “Pinball, 1973” or in the multidimensional vein of his masterpiece, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.” Here and there realism is tinged with the parallel worlds of “1Q84,” particularly through dreams. The novel contains a fragility that can be found in “Kafka on the Shore,” with its infinite regard for music. Hardly a soul writes of the listening and playing of music with such insight and tenderness. We are given a soundtrack: Liszt’s “Le Mal du Pays,” from “Years of Pilgrimage.” A favored interpreter: Lazar Berman. A favored way to listen: vinyl on a turntable.

This is a book for both the new and experienced reader. It has a strange casualness, as if it unfolded as Murakami wrote it; at times, it seems like a prequel to a whole other narrative. The feel is uneven, the dialogue somewhat stilted, either by design or flawed in translation. Yet there are moments of epiphany gracefully expressed, especially in regard to how people affect one another. “One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone,” Tsukuru comes to understand. “They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss.” The book reveals another side of Murakami, one not so easy to pin down. Incurably restive, ambiguous and valiantly struggling toward a new level of maturation. A shedding of Murakami skin. It is not “Blonde on Blonde,” it is “Blood on the Tracks.”

What will become of Tsukuru Tazaki? Will love fill an empty vessel? Will it form a prismatic heart? We can hold on to the possibility that Murakami will one day let us peer through the window of his extraordinarily interconnected mind to view Tsukuru’s continuing interior journey. But there are no guaranteed happy endings, no finite answers. There is a cold-case crime to consider, hovering death wishes, burdens that need to be cast and old garments unraveled. Stamina is required in the maintaining of hope, the desire to set it all down.

The writer sits at his desk and makes us a story. A story not knowing where it is going, not knowing itself to be magic. Closure is an illusion, the winking of the eye of a storm. Nothing is completely resolved in life, nothing is perfect. The important thing is to keep living because only by living can you see what happens next.