The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Translated and adapted by Jay Rubin with the participation of the author
611 pages
Published in three volumes in 1994 and 1995; English translation published 1997
Read from November 10 to November 16
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
A tremendous collage of subject and scene, part metaphysical mystery, part locked-room horror, part war story, part gulag story, part metatextual satire on the needs of the novel and its main character dragging ancillary characters along in their wake. Recurring motifs on an old life cut short and a new life taking its place; repeated phrasing and overlapping incidents highlighting artifice as a stylistic statement. Murakami boldly grabs fistfuls of threads and twists them in interesting ways, but leaves some dangling short and doesn't tie everything together into a tidy knot at the end, I felt. Not that that's necessary or even desirable in such a convoluted and postmodern storyline, but the ending lacked the fizz and pop of the body of the book. Murakami's one of those authors I constantly hear name-checked, atop all sorts of favorite-authors lists, and this book is certainly ambitious, strange, and absorbing. But the narrator's quest, to save a woman who left him despite her definite assertions of finality and independence, was a bit hokey and dated, much like a pivotal hacking scene in which, adorably, the password is three letters long. I'm intrigued to read more of his books in the future, even if I'm in no hurry to read another 600 page literary novel.
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