The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
(1994-5) by Haruki Murakami
Wow...I...just...no
words.
Ok,
I do
have words, but how to use them to explain this book? There's the
rub, y'all.
This
is my first Murakami novel, and while I'm not necessarily into
magical realism-ish, surreal-ish kinds of novels, this one had a
(might I say) jaunty
quality, an energy that I always associate with Nabokov's Lolita.
And yet, that seems strange to say, considering the main character
comes across as passive most of the time. It's his attempt to figure
out why his life has spiralled out of normalcy that spurs him to
action.
I've
read a lot of great online discussions of this novel, where people
bring up details that others have missed in order to explain a
variety of mysteries, including: Who was that dude with no face? What
really
happened to Kumiko? What exactly was that strange mark on Toru's
face? That none of these questions have definitive answers is ok,
though, because this novel excels at walking the tightrope between
reality and dreams.
Particularly
interesting were the historical interludes about Japan's occupation
of China during WWII. Strangely enough, I had just finished another
novel that dealt with that very thing (Night
in Shanghai).
So Murakami doesn't just explore the reality/dream duality but also
the porousness of the present/past/future triad. No matter how
unrelated the disappearance of Toru's cat and Japanese soldiers in
Machuria might seem, they are, at least in this novel, nonetheless
connected. And that, my friends, is very
cool indeed.
You
won't be surprised to hear that I'm a fan of the May character, and
the inclusion of an online conversation in a pre-2000s novel piqued
my interest in literary tech references, but that's a post for
another time. Anyway, I'm now hooked on Murakami and have put his
other books on my TBR list. If you haven't read Wind-Up
Bird
yet, go
read it.
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