This week I'm reaching for the stars- aiming for three books finished here at least. First finished is the book I mentioned in my last post Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
Set in the mid 1980s, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the story of Toru Okada. Okada has recently quit his thankless job as a low level legal clerk, his cat which was a symbol of his relationship with his wife has run away, and his wife, Kumiko, is acting oddly. His brother-in-law, Noburo Wataya, whom he hates connects Okada with the mysterious Malta and Creta Krano, sisters with odd mystic powers, who can supposedly help him find the cat. On Okada's own quest to find the cat, he meets May Kasahara the highly independent 15 year old who lives across the doubly dead ended alley beyond his house. As his life gradually falls apart, Okada continues to meet a revolving door of colourful characters and to tell the tale of others including WWII veterans Lieutenant Mamiya and Mr Honda, Cinnamon Asaka who does not speak, his mother Nutmeg Akasaka, and the mysterious woman who keeps trying to start explicit phone conversations with him. Okada is also dreaming of a darkened and curious hotel room, hearing the noise of a bird that sounds like it is winds up in preparation for spring, and developing the urge to sit in the bottom of dry wells. The main character is very passive and broken but he is at a turning point in his life as the novel transitions and as his life plummets, his brother-in-law who is his antithesis starts to rocket into greater and greater levels of success.
This book is quite fascinating. It is may be very complicated but Murakami is a master of the complexity. He writes fascinating mystery women and the women of this novel are no exception. May Kasahara is the highlight in my opinion as she is a brilliant version of a teenage girl who is simultaneously so certain of herself and so racked with uncertainty- her very odd relationship with Okada is one of the few real platonic friendships that I've ever seen in print between an adult man and a girl in her mid-to-late teens. Okada himself walks blindly and passively through his life, and simply accepts everything that happens to him as if it is the natural order of things, he needs to bizarrity of the other characters to breathe life into him. The trips between different realities, the significance of the wind-up bird, the graphic stories of war, the time spend underground or in wells, the significance of the month of May and the season of spring, and the fact that almost every character (including the cat) changes names at some point in the novel all mean that this novel seems to be asking for uni students to tear it to pieces- I'm already making a mental note that if I ever get to teach a course on speculative fiction that it is front and centre on the book list. It also means that the book is ripe of the reread at some stage. I recommend the book but like Kafka on the Shore this one isn't for the weak stomached, I wasn't as grossed out by the violent sections of this but it will definitely be a bit much for some.
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| The edition I read- you can get it for bargain price of $12.95 |
Next time, Conan Doyle cliches and why they are wrong!
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