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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel

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Customer Reviews
Rating:

- Dreamy, surreal, fascinating
It is impossible to try and summarize the story, the genre, or even the characters. Murakami poses many questions, and while no answers are clear, the journey and exploration is wild, fascinating, and rich in detail. The story keeps growing and becoming more complex, and yet never loses its way. It is a lot to consume, but ultimately very satisfying.

Rating:

- metaphysical modern fiction
Maurakami is a genius. One of the most prolific writers today, combining the text within text of music, art, and pop culture.

Rating:

- Magnum Opus
The Bird is HM's fattest novel in terms of sheer size, but also in complexity and strangeness. It also has much more 'real' life in it than most of his other fiction, definitely more 'history'. None other of HM's books deals with war so explicitly and in such graphic detail. The other story lines, apart from war memories, cover the present day disappearances of cat and wife (the Amazon description above is wrong, the main character has not lost his job, he has given it up, which is not an unimportant trait of his character) and the oddities of assorted female characters, some with Mediterranean island names, i.e. Malta and Creta. Also the family history and current shenanigans of a very strange politician with sinister habits and motives. The narrator, 'Mr.Wind-Up Bird', has a problem to leave a trace in the world, his assertiveness level is low, his vision of himself is lacking in conviction. He searches for it in deep wells. Figures. The world was not made for him.
Japan is an island, by the way, literally (or rather several of those). HM writes about it from a perspective with one leg outside. He is unusually international. That may help to explain his international success (as does his brillance), but it also explains some of his problems in the home market. I am not able to follow the Japanese public, of course, but I heard through 3rd parties that HM is not without headwind at home. I assume that must be largely caused by his international appeal and habits.
Fascinating. Unfortunately I have now read all that is available in English by HM. The next one comes out in May 07 only. Should I learn Japanese in the meantime?
One remark on literary relatives. The usual references to Kafka are a bit tiring and not really to the point. Similarly, the relationship with so-called magical realism is quite limited. One could with equal justification mention Nabokov an ancestor. I think the most interesting similarity is the one with David Lynch's movies. Has that been explored by somebody?

Rating:

- the journey and not the destination
I found this book to be wholly and completely engaging. While it's true that Murakami does leave many, in fact, dozens of questions unanswered, I believe the beauty of his book is in the journey and not the destination of the story. Toru is clearly overwhelmed by the ambiguity of both his situation and the people he meets. He searches for something "concrete" that he can wrap his head around. But he learns, as do we, that one can't always understand what's happening, or why it is. Sometimes you just have to go along, and hope for the best. It becomes a matter of faith.

Rating:

- Astonishing book (with one caveat)
Murakami takes us into a slightly skewed mirror image of the real world - familiar, yet vaguely disturbing. What begins as a tale of an unemployed husband, a lost cat and a dissatisfied wife transports the reader to the most unexpected places. Murakami projects emotions onto inanimate objects in order to take us deeper into the psyche of Toru Okada, the bemused protagonist.

One word of warning. There is a scene in this book which is so gory, stomach-turning and disturbing (in the Lieutenant Mamiya chapter) that the reader might find it difficult to a) keep his lunch down, b) sleep for a week, or c) both. Honestly, I wish I had never read this particular scene - I don't feel that ever horrible detail was absolutely essential to the story.

That said, it is a testament to the vivid realism of Murakami's storytelling that I couldn't sleep after reading the war story. His powers of description and observation are astounding.

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