1Q84 (Vintage International)

Caution: story spoilers in review Okay, I have read a few of the reviews for this book, 1Q84 and find them interesting and thought provoking. While reading this book, I kept thinking, "The style of this author reminds me of another book I read." Yes, "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" was the book that kept creeping into my memory. Until the dots connected, I thought that maybe this was the way all great Japanese literature is written. So what made me love this novel so much? Well first of all, I love unique story lines that push limits. Secondly, stories written by authors outside of the US that portray life outside the US (even mundane life) fascinate me. Third, Murikama's writing style is captivating. Finally, while reading this book, I kept wanting to get back to the book in place of working, socializing, exercising, and essentially trying to live life outside of the novel. Hmmm, I think the term is hyper-focus. I was hyper-focused on this book. Now add that to the fact that the book is still sticking with me as I ponder loose ends of the story and the story in general. Parts of the book kept exiting and appearing in my life at weird times and strange ways. Emails with subject line of "little people" that dealt with marketing aspects of my job. A dog hair ball floating around my house that looked like air chrysalis. While reading this book, I found myself interfacing with people talking cryptically like Fukaeri. I was actually waiting for a NHK worker to knock on my door. LOL Yes, parts of this book drag. As a reader you have the power to scan those pages. Yes this book seems long and I felt as reading it that this book would make a great series/trilogy. After reading this book, I feel the author could follow Tengo and Aomame in the new dimension they are in....surely this is not the original dimension they are from since the Esso tiger was located on the wrong side of the sign. Yes, the author does focus on the mundane--such as cooking specifics, menial conversations and boring day-to-day activities but I found that enlightening about life in Japan on a daily basis. To me how people around the world live their life is fascinating. Yes, the main characters are flat. However I loved this and thought that the author planned this to demonstrate that the average Joe is flat. I wish I could say that if someone invented me in a novel that I would be fascinating and dynamic but in reality the average person is simply just an average person. Boring, with redemptive qualities. Fantasy--I love how the author presented a fantasy situation in another dimension. The little people fascinated me. I wanted to know more about them but the author wasn't going to share everything. I am still not clear about why Komatsu's hair was used in the chrysalis at the end of the book. Is this fodder for the next book? Sex is huge in this book and I feel that it is well-written while pushing limits. Both Aomame and Tengo engaged in what many would call unsafe sex: sex with a married woman and in Aomame's case sex with strange men she picks up. I think this is essential to the plot because they are each comfortable with their sexual choices and it never crosses their minds that what they are doing is inappropriate. Once their characters develop in the book and their final goal to find each other becomes apparent do these two leave their unsafe sexual practices. This book reminded me of an American novel I read long ago and loved, "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin. Out-of-box fantasy that keeps you riveted as you absorb as much as you can as you read leaving you to mourn the end of the book with thoughts and memories that keep returning to remind you of visiting this special place.

Upfront caveats: 1. I did not know who Murakami was prior to selecting this book from Amazon's best of the month list and then reading of his oeuvre. 2. Its surprising that I elected to read it after reading "about" it. My reading preferences trend toward densely detailed non-fiction (think Robert Caro and Doris Goodwin Kearns) or complex, intensely human and often "spiritual" fiction (think Dostoevsky or Marilyn Robinson). I do not generally enjoy science fiction or fantasy works. That said, and to my surprise, I really did enjoy this book. It is not a great "novel" and I am not sure it can even be characterized as a novel, unless its unique style results in a redefinition of the genre. What it is is a great story, thematically thin and deceptively simple in its telling, yet compelling in its hold on the reader. In fact, a better word than compelling would be "propelling". The short chapters made of short paragraphs, that alternate between the destined-to-intersect worlds of the two protagonists, and a third Colombo type investigator, move swiftly and purposefully carrying along the reader like a passenger on a steadily moving train on an express route free of stops or stations to pause or ponder along the way. It doesn't matter that its obvious from the very beginning that the story's denouement will be the union of the two detached and lonesome lovers. In this case, it's not the destination, it's the ride. I'll not dwell on the plot elements. If you've read the reviews you know they involve a detour into a parallel world where the main characters' lives are seemingly being controlled at first by human outside forces of cults and ideologies and then by seemingly super-natural ones evidenced by night time visits by Little People and a sky with two moons. Ultimately the story is a love story that involves two loners destined to be united, after, and by, surviving forces of apparent good and evil that turn out to be ambiguously neither. In that sense,it seems, their story is everyman's. Murakami is a great maker of moods. The first chapter had such a wonderfully mysterious quality to it that I was more than a little let down as the more mundane elements of Book One unfolded. I felt then that the book was a lot more "ordinary" than its beginning suggested. But as the story progressed, the air of mystery returned to color the seemingly more mundane events and ultimately to create a rich and sustained sense of other-worldliness. At times, the book seems to border on pulp fiction, particularly when describing the protagonists' kinky or casual sexual encounters and escapades. I suppose the point of these seemingly superfluous curiously unerotic episodes was to depict how actually loveless were the solitary lives of Tengo and Aomeme before their childhood memories of each other were reawakended from the past due to external forces in their newly shared "other" world. In that sense, I suppose, the sex was like exercise and eating, a necessary physical ritual in their respective work a days lives that was scheduled in on a regular basis, but really not anchored to anything permanent or fulfilling in the deliberately then "single" lives of Tengo and Aomeme. Aside from those odd interludes, and maybe even intending, for this purpose, to include them, the author magically mixes the mundane and the fantastic to create a surreal world where the most ordinary things intersect with supernatural ones in the course of single day or even a single paragraph. To me, Murakami (at least in this the only of his works I have read) is less a great novelist, and more a master of the craft of story telling. His style is quite simple, or more likely, his skill is his ability to make it appear simple. For a book of nearly 1000 pages, it was one of the most quickly reading books I've read in recent years. While I have read much criticism in these reviews of the level of repetition, I was not bothered by that. This is not a "subtle" or profound book, and the reader is not asked to ponder what came before and what that may mean in the context of what lies ahead. Its more like a tale you "listen" to on the edge of your bed or by the side of a burning fire (and I think the audio version would be mesmerizing), without stopping to consider its meaning and course and, in that context, the repetition of the facts you learned along the way actually help to create its uniquely propulsive reading quality- no need to stop and look at the map; the author's gps will remind you where you've been and in fact foretell what lies ahead. All you need to do is sit tight and enjoy the ride.

This book is truly unique: the perspective, the characters, the story. It came up on BookBub today for me, but thankfully, I had already bought it and have already read it twice. It's just that good that it bears repeated reading. I think this is my favorite book from a favorite author. Highly recommended. Buckle in, it's quite a ride.

When sitting down to begin reviewing this novel, many conflicting opinions and ideas have flown through my mind. On a technical level, this book almost fails: the translation can be rough, the plot is often slow and tends to drag, and the characters seem unrealistic and detached. If we were going off of that purely basic merit, I'd probably give this book 3 stars, maybe 3 and 1/2 because I consider myself a Murakami fan. But, in the end, I cannot do that, because, against all odds, the whole of this novel is much greater than the sum of its parts. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami is about two people living in Tokyo, 1984. Aomame is a powerful, liberated woman who delivers justice in her own vigilante style. The other, a reticent genius named Tengo Kawana, is involved in a controversial behind-closed-doors deal to ghost write a novel. These plots seem to be totally unrelated, but over the course of the year 1984, Tengo and Aomame's paths cross, and maybe not just for the first time. When you read that summary, however, worry probably comes to your mind. The first seems decently interesting, but doesn't the second one come off as kind of... I don't know, bookish and academic? Unfortunately, yes. And, to be honest, Tengo's story line is probably the backbone of the novel: most of the mysteries stem from that one and a lot of the action occurs involving it. Often times, over the course of the novels 3 long "Books", or sections, the plot seems to drag as the narrative jumps through time to describe even the most minute details. The pace can be deadly. However, as fatal as it feels while reading it, looking back from the end of the novel, the slow movement sort of makes sense. Murakami deftly covers all the small, seemingly unimportant things the exact same way he covers the monumental, the magical, and the life changing. The narratorial voice is definitely detached throughout the novel, but it needs to be that way to present some of the more fantastical and surreal elements in such a wholly realistic way. The presentation of these elements is so powerful that it will have you searching the world around you for evidence of its existence. Beautiful. The Translation, however, can be quite *wonky*. I don't know how else to describe it. The book was translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. Jay Rubin has translated a surplus of Murakami's other work, so I'm inclined to believe that it was Mr. Gabriel who dropped the ball a bit. Nothing major, it's just that here and there, sentences get awkward and often fall into the classic "Subject-Verb-Object" style of sentence. This isn't gramatically incorrect or unclear, however, it does make the dialogue sound stilted and the descriptions to sometimes be overblown and almost campy or mock-literary. A note to potential readers: this book is explicit. When I say "explicit", I mean it heavily feautres rape, incest, gratuitous sex, lots of description of genitalia, violence, some mild drug use, and, of course, some language. Wow. That's a long list! But, as a 17 year old male, I'm not too too offended by the inclusion of this. In fact, some scenes had me smiling at the outright gall of Murakami to include what he did in this book, and not only throw it in for the purpose of being racy, or to just develop a theme, but to actually create and strengthen a plot thread. Murakami is one of the only authors I've read that can marry despicable violence with the commonplace beauty of butterflies and kind words. This is a monstrous novel. The first edition, hardcover copy (which I assume most people will be reading until the three-book paperback box set comes out-- which I will be purchasing) is 925 pages long. In my opinion, this story could have been told in 100-200 pages less. During the first "Book", the length really bugged me. But at a certain point during Book 2, right after one of the most climatic and intense scenes in Murakami's opera, I kind of just settled into the story and let it take me where I wanted to go. Patterns emerge, irony and parallelism surface, and everything falls to the beat of the drum. ("Ho, Ho" as the Little People say.) One final thing that I find particularly extra-ordinary about this book is that it not only confused the heck out of me, but then it proceeded to clarify things and generally increase the range of my thought process. This is very deep, philosophical, mind-expanding stuff-- if you let it be. Once you get yourself into this book, truly fold yourself between its sentences and wrap yourself in the blanket of the plot, the deep stuff starts coming to you and you'll be wondering about Cat Towns, Little People, Two Moons, Cults, and everything else in this novel. But at the end of the day, in spite of all the craziness, this novel is a love story about two people searching for each other in today's hectic modern world (errr-- well, the modern world of 1984, but its close enough!). The Theme is vast and expansive, but there is something for everyone to relate to here. In conclusion, I would like to share with you an episode form my life. I have a friend who is also my age and loves to read, and we often discuss modern literature. She, a huge Victorian fan, feels that it's kind of going downhill. I tend to be more modern in my tastes, but for a while, I understood what she was saying. However, 1Q84 has actually started to change my mind on the subject. Murakmi has such a powerful sense of interlinking and parallellism, ironic situations, metaphors, and over-arching allegories. Let yourself get lost in this novel. If you hate it, I'm truly sorry. But try not to focus on the bad stuff... the technical level failures-- anyone can screw those up. Instead, I encourage you to get excited and happy about the good things this book has to offer: the powerful mythos, the advanced literary techniques, and hope for the future of literature as a whole. Murakami for the Nobel Prize! Woooo! (okay, I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.) Like I said earlier: If I was basing this off of the little things in the book, this review would be about 3 stars. But, my personal response to this book has been amazingly positive. Halfway through it, I went out and bought a second copy so I could keep it nice on my shelf for years to come. It's that kind of book-- lasting. And because it fights so hard to do what it wants, because it made me feel amazing while I read it, and because it's highs are so much better than it's lows are worse, I couldn't give this book anything but 5 Stars. A lot of people will dislike this book, but that's okay. Because those who do like it, will like it a lot. Just for the chance to like something as much as I enjoy this novel, I encourage you to try this book. You won't regret it.

1Q84 was my first exposure to the work of Haruki Murakami, and from everything I'm seeing, it may not have been the best starting point; to say that the book is divisive, even among fans, is putting it very mildly, and there are more than a few people who seem to actively despise it even as they love a lot of his other work. I can't speak to all of that; all I can do is explain what a strange experience 1Q84 is as a book - a 1200 page saga where, even now that I'm done, I am not sure I could tell you what it was all "about" or what it all amounted to in the end. 1Q84 sounds deceptively busy when I tell you that it's about a religious cult, an alternate version of the year 1984, ghostly "little people" who emerge into the world in a most unsettling manner, a ghost-written novel that attracts dangerous attention, a notably unattractive private detective who's torn between his clients and himself, an assassin who targets abusive men - oh, and somehow with all of that, it's also a love story between two people who haven't seen each other in decades? But for all of that incident, 1Q84 is surprisingly lax, sprawling out across its length (more than it needs to, I'd say), enjoying the derails and the day-to-day mundanity, musing on the nature of time, our connections to others, sexual desire, relationships, parenting, and religion, but never feeling incredibly pressed or forceful about any of it. The result is a book that's about a lot but also a bit about nothing; it's easy to both get caught up in Murakami's world but also to keep thinking "is this all there is to this book?" (And none of that even touches on the sexual content of the book, which ranges from fine to...very much the opposite of that - I don't really blame the people who are unable to get past his dedication to describing almost all of the female characters' breasts, for example, and that's not really the wildest part.) I found myself returning to it again and again, but I'll be damned if I know what it was all about, even after all that time, and I struggle to know how much to even recommend it. It's compelling, oddly haunting, beautifully written...and it's also overly long, meandering to a fault, maddeningly unclear, and sometimes very off-putting. But for all of that, I found myself immersed in its odd world, in its bonds between its characters, in its melancholy mood, and in its sense of the slightly surreal and beautiful in the world.

I can't explain how much I love this book. When I ordered it, I glanced at the reviews (I wasn't concerned about liking the book--I love Murakami and expected great things from him) and came across an unfortunate review that stated the book was, somehow, too repetitive. I found that this tainted my reading of 1Q48 a bit, but not so much that I didn't tear through the mammoth work in just a month. I read relatively slowly, so roughly 1000 pages in a month is great speed for me--which, in and of itself is a testament to the superb quality of Murakami's writing. Regardless, the issue of 1Q48 being repetitive can, I believe, be attributed almost completely to the fact that it was released in three different books over a long period of time in Japan. Certain basics of plot, characters, and details need to be repeated at least somewhat in order to let new readers understand. I don't imagine the book would be very good if you skipped book 1 or 2, but nonetheless.. In short, I have read almost all of Haruki Murakami's translated works, and 1Q84 is a wonderful addition, truly deserving of the hype and attention it got. As I rolled into the last 100 pages, though, my main concern was simply this: what am I going to read that is THIS good after I get done with 1Q84? I guess I could re-read the Wind-Up Bird Chronicles! If you are a Murakami fan, this book will live up to every expectation you have of the man. He is a modern literary giant and genius supreme. As always, I find Murakami to be straddling the borders between something like pulp fiction and something like timeless literature (exactly what we need in our world today, I think), and this book definitely takes us that direction. Moreover, it is an interesting look at Japan in 1984, and the temporal and cultural details are an enjoyable trip to the near-past in a country many of us don't have first hand experience in or about that time. A brilliant novel, enough to keep the most avid reader of fantastic realism involved for, well, a long time! It's huge! But don't be discouraged if you're a first time reader. It's well worth it. If you are interested in a, perhaps, SMALLER Murakami masterpiece to start with, I highly recommend "Wild Sheep Chase." On a more technical note, I found a few strange discrepancies in the work's translations that I'm not sure if they were intentional or not. It's not really a big issue, but some words will be translated in one book, and then given to us in romanized Japanese the next! "Barley Head" the bar is often later referred to as "Mugiatama," which I doubt the average English-speaking reader would get. Intentional? I don't know. When's his next book coming out? I'm gonna need another fix soon!

Japan's Haruki Murakami writes a surreal novel for the intellectual reader with a touch of fantasy. This is not a completely lucid story, nor byzantine, so I would say it's semiabstract. Haruki may be the leader of a new genre. It's almost like he didn't write the novel for the hoi polloi, but for the artsy reader. Not that I'm a artsy reader! The story is basically strong, but leaves a lot of unanswered questions in the book's last 25 pages, after already reading 900 previously. I was a little disappointed with that scenario, since I became very interested in many of the characters and wanted closure one way or the other. Maybe I'm wrong and there will be a second book to answer my linguistic inquiries. But overall, I found the novel uniquely absorbing with strong character development. The story is set in Japan, mostly in the Tokyo area during the year 1984. Our heroine, Aomame ( Ah-oh-mah-meh ), who has the strange vocation of a sport's trainer and as a part time assassin is dropped off by a taxi on a traffic jammed expressway. She climbs down the elevated expressway via a strange stairway to a lower level. Once on the ground, her world is about to change. On her way to a assassination, she notices slight differences in policemen's uniforms and pistols. Later Aomame notices that she missed news events and the big one: Our moon suddenly has a companion! It's a smaller green moon! She realizes that she has entered a somewhat altered world. Our heroine calls it 1Q84 ( the Q for question ). Our hero in the novel is Tengo Kawana, a teacher and a nascent author, who as a ten year old went to school with Aomame. He rewrites a novel for a mysterious seventeen year old named Fuka-Eri. The book Air Chrysalis becomes a bestseller, but causes major problems with the religious group Sakigake. The group hires a Mr. Ushikawa ( a vile, but enjoyable character ) to dissuade Tengo from further involvement in the book. He refuses and this sets off a strife between Sakigake, Tengo and Fuka-Eri. Aomame gets enveloped in this trouble with Sakigake via a assignment from a arcane dowager and her bodyguard Mr. Tamaru. How all this comes together is a monumental accomplishment by the author. Other characters worth mentioning are Leader, Buzzcut, Ponytail and Professor Ebisuno. Character creation seems to be a strong suit of Haruki Murakami. I can't remember when I liked so many characters in a novel, I would probably have to go back to Charles Dickens's 'David Copperfield' ! So as you can tell, I liked the novel a lot, but was also disappointed with the closure of some of the characters. Do I think this novel deserves a exsibilation or a standing ovation? I think somewhere in between is the best answer. I'm taking in to consideration that this book was translated from Japanese to English by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, who I'm sure did a yeoman's job. Also a big factor is that in Japan this book was a trilogy. I think if you are a literary geek, you must read at least one Haruki Murakami novel and this one is a good option!

From the other reviews I've read, it seems like a consensus is that this not Murakami's best work. Because this is my first time reading something of his, I can't compare it to what he has written, but I can say that 1Q84 grabbed me, pulled me in, and wouldn't let go. Background: I've lived in Japan for a couple of years and know the language, and I feel the translators did an excellent job conveying this as it was written in the original Japanese. The feeling of the words, the pacing, even the puns [1984 in Japanese is ichi ku (hence the Q) hachi yon] are faithfully reproduced in the English text, though I do feel that without this additional background I've had, I could see it falling flat. It also helped me that so many of the places - Azabu, Koenji, Shinjuku, Shibuya, and Sangenjaya - were all places that I'm intimately familiar with, having biked those streets time and time again while I lived there. The story: You aren't in need of a recap, or even an initial summary, there are lots of those. However, with this book it does take its time to get where its going. It's not a book that will be rushed. Instead, the deliberate pacing draws our two heroes together in a slowly tightening circle. If you're expecting a quick cross country trip on I-40, you'll be disappointed. If you're expecting a scenic, rich, leisurely journey along Route 66, you'll be richly rewarded. This is close to 1000 pages of the best that Japan offers, and it is well worth the read. Stories within stories and repetition: One of the hallmarks of 1Q84 is that it has several sub stories that Murakami wrote and inserted in the text. Sometimes they're mentioned in bits and spurts, other times you get what is (essentially) the whole story. Both these works are integral to the protagonists' world views. Throughout the text, there is an ongoing repetition of several instances involving both protagonists. While some may feel that they are unnecessary padding, I feel that they are essential to understanding the characters and what their pasts and motivations are, without adding additional exposition. They're vague enough to allow the reader their view, but concrete enough that Murakami gives us a direction to travel. Loose ends: I've seen some complain about loose ends in the novel, and while there certainly are some - I would love to see what happened with the dowager and Tamura - I feel that it wraps up in a very satisfying manner and in such a way that there are no "loose ends" in the core of the story.