Why I can't stand magical realism

Here's the first paragraph of Salon's review of Haruki Murakami's new novel:

For all the fantastic and farcical happenings in Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore -- amnesia that renders the one who suffers it capable of talking with cats; an evil spirit building a flute of stolen souls, both human and animal; another spirit, this one a benevolent pimp, disguised as Colonel Sanders; a woman whose longing for the lost love of her youth gives rise to a ghost of her younger self; fish and leeches raining from the sky; two Japanese soldiers from World War II standing guard in a forest at the gates to the afterlife -- it's the most ordinary things that attain poetry and weight.

After reading that, I just feel like giving up. What an imagination, I could never dream up something like that.

And yet I like Murakami's work. The books themselves are not intimidating. It's just that description.