The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel | Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel | Haruki Murakami | Think for yourself

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The Wind-Up Bird C...

	The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel Haruki Murakami Vintage, 1998 - 624 pages average customer review:based on 289 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.

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Excellent read

Excellent book. Very surreal writing. Murakami is probably my favorite author and this may be his best work.

Think for yourself

This is Murakami's masterpiece, it's everything they say, hypnotic, surreal, thought-provoking, mysterious and highly entertaining. I have a theory that the folks that realize Murakami's talent but still didn't give a good review are the type who want everything explained and resolved in easily understood and satisfying ways. I think that some people feel unsatisfied if an author doesn't come up with pat explanations for everything. I think that takes away from the fun of thinking and contemplating the mysteries presented for yourself, and is less realistic. As Alan Moore writes through the character of Hollis Mason in his great graphic novel, "Watchmen" "Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really get's resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that." I think people can enjoy great modern authors like Murakami if they don't think it's his job or purpose as a writer to explain everything to them. Rather if he gets you to think and wonder about the nature of life and reality while entertaining you at the same time, he should be thanked for doing a great job.

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Weird but engaging

Toru Okada, the protagonist, loses his job, his cat, and his wife and goes looking for all three. His search introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters. Strange occurances abound. In the end, this book has too many loose ends (perhaps because the English translation is abridged) and wanders into the weird too often. I do, however, continue to think about the book after finishing it.

Chronicle of the Lost

In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami deftly juggles the disintegration of a Japanese couples' marriage, Japan's modern wartime history, and a cast of characters that defies conventional description. His writing is entrancing, with a dreamlike pace that underlies the ominous sense of foreboding that fills every page, its mysteries will keep you reading well into the wee hours of the night, curious to find out what lurks on the next page.

It begins with Toru Okada, a recently unemployed Japanese lawyer who, at his wife's urging, goes off in search of their missing cat and winds up finding (and losing) much more.

Throughout his search, Mr.Okada encounters a number of unusual characters including a young girl, psychics, a prostitute, a war veteran and a politician. Each of these characters bear many scars (psychological or otherwise) and they all play a part in forcing Mr. Okada to deal with questions regarding his relationship with his wife, reality and his country's wartime history. Readers with delicate sensibilities and stomachs are warned, there are very graphic depictions of sex and violence throughout.

At times I was reminded of Alice in Wonderland, where the pursuit of an animal opens a Pandora's Box of unforeseen events, some of which may or may not have to do with the protagonists' loss of sanity.

There's a lot going on here and Murakami masterfully keeps it from becoming a tangled mess. Questions of love, sex, fate, loss and isolation are a constant in what can be seen as a comment on modern Japanese society.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an engaging, thought-provoking and mysterious read from a remarkable imagination, I highly recommend this book.

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