The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel Reviews

• Love-hate relationship

  
  By A150QZUUQAN21X on 2004-02-05
  I love this book. I hate this book. That would be the best way to describe how I feel about it. I don't think it's possible to explain exactly why I feel this way without revealing certain things about the book, so please be advised that this review contains some SPOILERS.

  This is the second Murakami book I've read (first one being "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and...", which I loved). Without a doubt, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a real page-turner, but unfortunately, this page-turning doesn't really lead anywhere, which is why this is such a disappointment. Questions remain unanswered, characters vanish into thin air, things happen without as much as a hint at explanation.

  Don't get me wrong: I don't expect every question to be answered completely. Sometimes using your imagination works best. I can accept that there is no explanation to things like what "tendency" it was exactly that made Kumiko disappear, what powers Noboru Wataya had, how he used them, or even how Toru got the mark... The general idea is there, and that's enough. It is not described what "work" Nutmeg and Cinnamon do, but we can use our imagination. It is not explained what "netherworld" Toru traveled to from the well, but we can use our imagination. Something to do with subconscious, human nature, the nature of reality and the consequences of our actions. OK, I can live with that. But in the end, simply TOO MUCH is left to our imagination.

  I couldn't help but feel that I was reading about the same people that I read about in Hard-Boiled Wonderland. I suppose I have to read more to say for sure, but at this point I feel that Murakami's characters are very one-dimensional, and they act and speak in strange, irrational ways most of the times. Perhaps part of it is my having a Western mindset, but something tells me that's not it. Toru Okada is described as "everyman", but tell me, what "everyman" normally climbs down an old well to sit in the dark for hours on end? What sixteen-year-old virgins normally lick thirty-year-old men on the cheek without much explanation or reason? What husband usually remains absolutely emotionless after finding out that his wife of six years has misteriously disappeared? Easterner or Westerner, I don't buy this as usual human behavior. And, given that this is a first-person narrative, it's especially odd that the narrator rarely reveals any emotions. Is it done of purpose to keep up guessing, or is it the problem of Murakami's writing's style?

  Brace yourself, the questions are only beginning. How did Toru get the mark and why? Who was the singer with the baseball bat, and why did he attack Toru? How did the cat manage to survive for over a year of missing, and why did it come back after all? What was Leutenant Mamiya's role in all this? What were Malta and Creta Kano's roles in all this? Why did Kumiko change all of a sudden after six years of marriage? What happened to Cinnamon as a child that made him stop speaking, and what was the significance of that bizarre "What happened in the night" chapter? Why wasn't Toru getting May Kasahara's letters? Who wrote the Chronicles stored in Cinnamon's computer and why? Why was Nutmeg's husband murdered in such a vilent and bizarre way? Who was the anonymous woman that kept calling Toru throughout the book? Who were the "holow man" and the whistling waiter? The questions are endless.

  There's a saying about fiction, "If there's a gun sitting in the corner, by the end of the story it must fire". In this case, that isn't true. We keep on hearing about things that seem to bear some great significance - like Malta Kano's red hat, or the tune from The Thieving Magpie. But in the end we realize that those things are there just because it sounds cool. That is the biggest problem I have with the book. There are lots of things in it that could be edited out without having any impact on the book as a whole. The war stories are very well written, I'll give Murakami that. But take Boris the Manskinner, for example - WHY was it even there? What's the point? Take out "Creta Kano's long story", take out May Kasahara's letters, take out Cinnamon's incident when he was a child... None of those things had any point or explained anything. I'm not saying they shouldn't be there - no, I understand that the events of WWII, for instance, are tied in to our time. What I don't understand is why did Murakami had to present so many complelling characters only to have them disappear without a trace as the story unfolded.

  A lot of people say that Murakami is a genius and if you didn't "get" his books then you're simply not smart enough. As an artist, I see this attitude a lot in art as well. Here's the truth: *people often say they "got it" even when they haven't, for fear of appearing stupid.*

  Perhaps I really am not smart enough to "get it". But the truth is, this book made me feel like the story was written one chapter at a time - i.e., that Murakami in fact did not have the foggiest where it was going, and how it would end.

  I take my hat off for Murakami's ambitiousness, imagination and vivid writing style. But to me it remains questionable whether he is truly a genius trying to convey some vastly significant message with his books (which, consequently, only a genius can truly understand, and I don't claim to be one). More often I get this very strong feeling that he is merely a very CLEVER writer who is very skilled at making a bunch of nonsense sound important and significant. Either way, I won't deny that what he does is entertaining. So I'll definitely be reading more of him.
  
  

• Unity Masquerades as a Kaleidoscope

  
  By A3T9QJN4USK8H2 on 2006-09-25
  Another reviewer has mentioned that far from being a scattered collection of independent incidents strung together by the coincidence of the central character's involvement, Murakami's "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" is unified by means of its insistence on the problem of evil and what to do about it. Surely this is moving towards a clear understanding of the novel.
  
  Evil, though, is a such a culturally grounded concept. Is evil sin? Maybe in monotheistic cultures, but I think in Murakami's novelistic universe--and this is a recurring feature of many discussions of Japanese religion, culture, and art--a more insightful way of comprehending evil is as "defilement," and this is the term Jay Rubin uses in his translation time and again. Defilement is what ties every character together: some inner filth that each character is trying to purge in some way. May Kasahara's idea of the physical manifestation of death as an oozy gray thing is the clearest picture we have of that unrelenting ghost that haunts everyone intersecting with Toru Okada's life. It is not regret or guilt. It is not emotional scarring. It is a sickening tangible object poisoning a person's life and threatening to overwhelm it. It must be washed off, or it will destroy whatever it comes in contact with.
  
  Because defilement is such a defining feature of the work, it functions to create two broad sets of characters: the defilers and the defiled, where Kumiko's brother (Noboru Wataya) is the archetype of the defiler and Kumiko herself the archetype of the defiled. Confusion arises and the border between the two sets becomes blurred because the nature of defilement is to spread, and once Kumiko herself becomes defiled, she spreads that to those around her, principally to the central character, her husband Toru.
  
  The third character type is found in Toru, whose beautiful quality is to absorb all the defilement, find a way to stop the spread of it, and then to wash it away, to expunge it in the final defeat of Noboru Wataya. Toru's beautiful quality is not easily won, though. The whole of "Wind-up Bird" tells of the immensely difficult quest for it, an encountering of many different faces of defiler and defiled, a repeated tasting of others' defilements, in order to learn the method of purification.
  
  In a sense, then, "Wind-up Bird" is a classic love triangle, but it has been made archetypal: the defiled is fought over between the defiler and the purifier. Because of its reduction to the archetypal, all defiled characters are functionally the same, and all defilers are functionally the same. Malta Kano and Creta Kano, May Kasahara and Lieutenant Mamiya are all defiled; Noboru Wataya and the Russian intelligence officer, the woman on the phone and the man with the baseball bat are all defilers. Faces shift; functions remain the same. In every story, Toru is fighting for Kumiko, trying to wash out the defilement she is letting herself be destroyed by. In every story, Noboru Wataya is reaching out in every direction, to taint everything with his evil (defiling) intelligence.
  
  Once the flimsy physical borders between these characters are down, the focus of the novel takes on a focused, white-hot intensity. It is almost as if the fire of it is so scorching that Murakami had to cloak it in an array of different facades. Also, by giving so many faces to the defiler and defiled, he insures that the reader will respond to one of them. One of the defilements will connect and lead to self-identification, and in this lies the great humanity of the novel, the thing that makes it so very intriguing for so many readers, the thing that makes it more than just a good yarn.
  
  In the end, Toru is no closer to Kumiko. But he has fully become himself. He has merged with his unshakable purpose. Water flows unhindered in the long-dry well.
  
  

• ORIGINAL AND BIZARRE

  
  By on 2000-06-02
  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle begins with a pot of spaghetti about to boil over as the voluntarily out of work protagonist, Toru Okada parries an anonymous obscene phone call just in time to receive a call from his wife, Kumiko, who orders him to begin a search for the couple's missing cat, Noboru Watanabe, named for her politically important brother. If the above sounds pretty breathless and confusing, you'll be surprised to learn there's a lot, lot more. The lost Noboru Watanabe is simply the device Murakami uses to set this densely-layered, often bizarre book in motion.

  Toru's search for the lost cat introduces him to the novel's other characters, who move in and out of his life and lead him into an ever-enlarging labyrinth. There is the Lolita-like May Kasahara, Toru's neighbor, who regards the thirty year old Toru as "interesting" and calls him Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Even more bizarre, are the two sisters and psychics, Malta and Creta Kano, who invade Toru's dreams as well as his reality. (After having psychic sex with Toru, Creta later appears naked in his bed, and, as to how she got there, she doesn't have a clue.)

  In the meantime, Toru's wife, Kumiko disappears, much to the delight of her politician brother, who detests Toru and vice versa. And, by the way, the politician brother just happened to have raped Creta!

  When Toru learns Kumiko has left him for a man who's better in bed, he's surprisingly surprised, although he shouldn't be and neither should we; signs of her adultery have been rampant.

  With nothing else to do about the matter, Toru lowers himself to the bottom of an empty well, the better to meditate on his unpredictable predicament. But May takes the ladder away and three days later, after Creta has rescued him, Toru emerges with a blue mark on his face, one that gives him special healing powers.

  At this point things really become confused.

  Toru's mark of healing is recognized by Nutmeg Akasako as being similar to the one her father bore. Lt. Mamiya has also entered the story, recounting a fantastic tale of wartime espionage that just happens to involve time spent at the bottom of a well!

  Much in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle develops around the elements of chance, destiny and responsibility. Characters drift in and out of Toru's life, yet each pulls him into his or her own world.

  Some may think this novel tends to digress a bit too much, but that's all a part of Murakami's trademark, for he's well-known to prefer freefalling through his work rather than planning it out carefully. The result, however, is a cumulative effect of bizarre happenings and black comedy, with Toru being the integral link. Although a recurring theme in Murakami's oeuvre is that of childishness, Toru is, at times, both childish in his innocence and cynical in his outlook regarding his fellow man.

  Toru is a protagonist who sees, hears, feels and reacts, rather than does. He attracts a large assortment of unusual characters rather than actively pursuing them. Murakami's prose has a distinctive "Western" feel and, although his characters are Japanese people, living in Japan, they could be anyone, anywhere.

  Those looking for the more traditional Japanese novel should look to other authors instead, most notably Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazai.

  Surreal and sprawling, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a detective story, a history lesson and a satire. It is a big book that unites Murakami's signature themes of alienation, dislocation and nameless fears in the voice of Toru, aka, "Everyman." It's an enormous accomplishment that, believe it or not, all starts with a pot of spaghetti and one lost cat.
  
  

• Sitting in my chair

  
  By A28DRW8HV0BK9Y on 2005-12-30
  Sitting in my chair, I saw a sunny spot on the carpet. I resisted moving for several minutes, and the spot shifted its position slightly.
  
  That's when the slender woman entered my line of vision. She was wearing a yellow plastic raincoat and pink Chuck Taylor high-top sneakers that sounded like Philly Joe Jones doing some inspired brushwork during "Night in Tunisia" (the Verve version, not the Bluenote).
  
  She asked me if I liked her with our without breasts, and I said simply "Yes", remembering that I needed to sautee the chicken breasts for dinner, add a little soy sauce, and vaccuum the carpet.
  
  When I looked up again the woman was gone. I looked back at the sunny spot, but it had started raining outside, and sounded like the rain drumming on the pith helmets of the Manchurian expedition stranded in Hangchow in the bleak autumn of 1939, when many of the soldiers were forced to unwrap their leggings and wring them out for drinking water and nourishment.
  
  (Continue for 600 pages.)
  
  

• Enjoyable Book -- But Abridged in English Translation

  
  By A3INQ0BOJC1W09 on 2006-05-25
  Many of the previous reviews do a great job of discussing this novel, and I will not repeat that discussion here.
  
  But what the previous reviews do not mention is that the American publishers, Knopf, forced Murakami and his translator, Jay Rubin, to significantly abridge the original Japanese text. The casual reader would have no way of knowing this, and, indeed, I only noticed because I was reading alternating chapters of the book in English and Russian translations. Half-way through the novel, entire chapters suddenly started disappearing from the English-language text. Puzzled, I went back to the copyright page of the English-language edition, where, for the first time, I noticed the cryptic notation that the book was not only translated but also "adapted from the Japanese."
  
  How much of the original text was "adapted" away? I don't read Japanese, but, based on a comparison with my Russian-language translation, which appears to be complete (no Russian publisher would commit such a travesty on an award-winning novel), it seems that something like 15-20% of the text has been cut. For those of you who find the English-language text of the "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" choppy, or puzzling, or seemingly incomplete, at least some of the blame lies at the feet of the American publishers who decided, unilaterally, that American readers cannot handle a long book.
  
  Anyway, the upshot is that if you can comfortably do so, try to read the "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" in a non-English translation. Or, if you can't, demand that Jay Rubin's original and complete English-language translation be published.
  
  
• Weird events - fine. No reason for them - not fine.
  By A3PRPMC3N4GCVF on 2004-04-07
  I should start by saying that I usually like bizarre fiction. Well, "Wind-up Bird Chronicle" is certainly that. A "regular Joe" for the main character, surrounded by the weird and inexplicable - psychic sisters named after islands, a healer and her mute son (named after spices), a well with no water in it, and an alternative reality set in a hotel.

  The beginning of the book sucks you in, written in a crisp, modern style, with no high-brow literary waffle. Very quickly you realise that something strange is happening to our "normal" protagonist, Toru Okada. The events don't seem to be connected in any way, but they are portrayed as clues, and you are batting for Toru to figure them out. The random, bizarre happenings make you excited, curious, desperate to read on.

  So then you read on. And on. More strange characters and events get introduced. There are large forays into the Japanese occupation of Manchuria before WWII and gruesome stories of violence there. But still, you think (or rather hope, by now) that this will all be explained. Somehow. But alas, it isn't. And you begin to suspect that many of the things you thought were significant "clues", were actually just there to increase the "weird and quirky" factor.

  At the end, several important people and occurances had just disappeared out of the novel (Malto and Creta Kano?), or were left hanging without explanation or resolve. I don't want the meaning of everything spelled out to me, I'm happy to use my imagination to figure some things out. But this book didn't even leave me with a skeleton on which to build my thoughts at the end. Only one of the themes (good vs. evil - how original) was resolved to my satisfaction.

  Read Murakami's book for an introduction to his style, read it if the words "Japanese" and "bizarre" in combination sound good. But don't expect to finish it feeling contented.
  
  

• Buried in Kanji, Wrapped in Rice Paper
  By A3KVT8TRSI44NU on 2002-07-11
  I should say that half way through The Wind-Up Bird, I read over some reviews to get a feel for what other people think. Unfortunately, many were intent on giving the story away. Quite simply, it is best not to know the story line in advance. This is not a book one could possibly rationalize and understand without having first experienced it. More to the point, such analysis will only detract from the experience of reading the book in the first place.

  Encountering The Wind-Up-Bird Chronicle is like encountering a delicate origami crane for the first time. From the very beginning, you wonder how it got in that shape. You wish to know the secret of its structure. To do so, you must work at it slowly and carefully, undoing each fold with the utmost care and caution in order to discover the pain-staking sequence that led to its beautifully complex and elegant shape. Reading The Wind-Up-Bird is like unfolding a bigger, more-complex crane -- so complex in fact that you might be confused when the entire thing is laid out in front of you, creases spanning the entire page. If you are like me, you might spend weeks or months trying to figure out how to put that crane back together.

  Without giving too much away, allow me to share some of the things that engaged and enwrapped me:

  * The possibility that every experience in our life contains deep and profound philosophical meaning.

  * Discovering the mysterious nature of life and the vagaries of chance fate; realizing that the place we inhabit and the family we are born into are givens that guide us, not things we can ultimately choose.

  * Questioning the extent to which we can fully understand other people -- from the man why walks by us in the street to the significant other who sleeps on the other side of our bed.

  * Realizing the deep and intricate continuity between dreams and waking life. More to the point, discovering how the two realities affect each other and blend together in a seamless fabric called reality.

  * The possibility that our most profound insights about life might only be found in the bottom of a dry well in a deep meditative, trance-like state.

  * Finally, the book made realize that a story is quite possibly the best tool with which to convey historical reality. Sounds strange, I'm sure, but after doing a lot of deep research about Japan's involvement in Manchuria during WWII, Murakami is perhaps in the best possible position to give voice to what is often omitted from non-fiction historical texts, simply because history (which is almost infinite) is never fully uncovered or told by finite, fallible and imperfect historians.

  Hmm, I suppose I should discuss names a bit too. All Japanese names have meaning as written in kanji. Tanaka means 'in the rice field'. Kobayashi means 'small forest'. O'Hara means 'big field'. It wasn't until the entrance of Mr. Ushikawa (bull river) that I remembered this and began to wonder how each character's name was written in the original Japanese version. Indeed, Mr. Ushikawa's speaks openly about the significance of his name at one point. As he says, he sort of grew to fit the name, instead of the name growing to fit him.

  The main character's name is also significant, but more so when he comes to known as "Mr. Wind-Up-Bird." (I'll leave that one to you.) Mr. Wind-Up-Bird and Mr. Ushikawa made me realize that I might be missing some important context, so I decided to research every name that appears in the book. It wasn't hard for a man in my position. After buying a Japanese edition in Tokyo, I spent a good hour talking over the names with a kind English-sensei that just happened to be handy. From this, I was able to flesh out many hidden nuances. One of the character's names, a certain Noboru Wataya, turned out to be of critical significance.

  Noboru Wataya's first name was written in katakana in the Japanese version, but any Japanese reader would know that "noboru" has two corresponding kanji: One means "to rise" and the other means "to climb." The kanji representing "to rise" has the further significance of pictographically representing a rising sun, and thus in Japan it is often referred to "taiyo noboru" -- taiyo meaning sun. Although written without a corresponding kanji, Noboru implies something moving up -- quite possibly sun itself, and thus the very symbol of the Japanese people.

  The last name, Wataya, appears in kanji, and it simply means cotton valley. Not just any valley, though. It has the connotation of a hidden, secret or mystical valley. The image of shrouded Shangri-La comes to mind. While reading the book, it is important remember that Noboru Wataya might be rising or climbing something in both the literal and figurative sense of the term. Is he rising in the social ranks, or perhaps climbing the social ladder? Again, I'll leave that to you. Of particular note, though, is the fact that Wataya is not a common Japanese name. According to my source, it is extremely rare, if anybody of Japanese origin bears the name at all. All of this overlaps very with the myterious and unique character of Noboru Wataya himself, so I was glad to have gotten the scoop.

  I will say no more about the book, because it is simply too complex to unravel in a review like this. If you want to know whether or not the book is for you, try reading into it for a good ten minutes. It is amazing how much you can get from ten short minutes if you really invest your attention. I hope you find this book as intoxicating and rewarding as I did. Feel free to write me and let me know either way. I'm good like that.
  
  

• Do yourself a big favour and take this book to bed with you.
  By on 1999-11-20
  Don't believe all those pretentious "I got there first" beard stroking types who will try to tell you this isn't Murakami's best work. This is possibly the most gorgeous, engrossing, touching and inspiring novel I have ever read, it manages to combine all of the best elements of his previous works into a great throbbing consciouness expanding masterpiece. The subtle beauty of Norwegian Wood, the deranged storytelling of a Wild Sheep Chase and the stark simplicity of the good bits out of Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World are all here adding up to something unique and magical. Added to all this is a central character who not only has a name for once but who is also a truly appealing individual who simply oozes sincerity and integrity throughout. In its own way I believe that this book can stand up against the likes of Thomas Pynchon at his best and where Gravity's Rainbow left me exhausted and depressed at my own feeble ambitions, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle left me elated and inspired. Surely there can be no greater recommendation?
  
  
• Dreams, Double Identities, Dystopias.
  By A3W4GJR5CCADBX on 2002-01-27
  There aren't too many writers who can deal with metaphysical issues in fiction as deftly as Murakami can. A part of the reason is Murakami's style of narrative. His prose is more American than most modern American writers. Murakami is a self-professed admirer of Raymond Carver's laconic prose and he translated Carver's stories in Japan. He also has an affinity for American hard-boiled noir fiction, and the cool, ironic first-person narrative infused with laid back, unassumingly spare prose makes Murakami's stories strangely approachable.

  But more immediately impressionable upon a reader is the sheer agility of his imagination and his fearless courage. Not only does Murakami tackle stories of high improbability, he succeeds with all the virtuosity in the world. In
  "The Wind-Up...", there's a main story of Toru's quest to find his vanished wife, and surrounding the mysterious disappearance are labyrinthine subplots that traverse different eras and parallel worlds. Hats off to Murakami for making the stories somehow believable! There are surreal characters that appear and disappear in Toru's life, such as the prescient Kano sisters who operate through dreams, Nutmeg and her son Cinnamon who deal with the affluent women and help them with strange 'spiritual' ailments, Boris the Manskinner, etc etc...

  The stories of these characters all have to do with a metaphysical search of some kind of 'truth' that is always apparent in Murakami's fiction. For instance, the well that Toru climbs down into serves as a portal that leads to a world where dreams and alternate personalities exist. Murakami does an eerie job of making the 'unreality' seem more real and pertinent than the actual world in the novel. It disconcerts the readers and makes us question the reality of the world that we take for granted.

  It is true that Murakami leaves a lot of plot elements and questions tied up and unanswered, and a lot of characters disappear without a trace. But Murakami's project is not in dispensing solutions, but in calibrating our sights to see, or strain to see what happens at the fringes of reality. It's a testimony to Murakami's mastery that the horrors, lusts, sadness, and yearning in "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" are more palpable and immediate than in any other fiction I've read recently. The characters, especially May Kahasara, the teenage girl, come to life and stay in your memory long after reading. And for all his off-hand, disarming humor and narrative style, Murakami's metaphors cut to the heart with a frightening accuracy and have the power to invoke whatever world he wants to describe with unflinching emotional honesty.

  "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" deals with Toru's loss of everything he had come to believe to be the founded and accepted fact of his life. Through his tale, and his quest to regain his life, the readers will come to realize that there's something much bigger at stake than an individual quest. It's of a nation crippled by the memories of its past(Japan), and for the identity of the mankind as well. A terribly ambitious project for Murakami, and he pulls it off with an aplomb. You'll come away from the reading of this book impressed, and more importantly, deeply moved.
  
  

• Surreal and unusually addictive to read
  By A2MTO8GC1UL8GD on 2000-05-25
  This book was one of the weirdest and finest books I have read. The experiences were a surreal convoluted epic that I wish hadn't ended. The story starts off simply enough about Mr. Okada losing his cat, then his wife, and then finally his own mind. In a bizarre fashion all of the odd characters and situations that Okada finds himself in are all related in some way which is eventually summed together at the end.

  What was most fascinating is the elements of Buddhism, the search for nothingness to really get in touch with one's consciousness. Okada finds the strength and ability to achieve `emptiness' at the bottom of a dark well. In the well, the author puts us in touch with the most bizarre adventures in Okada's consciousness.

  This is the first time I have read a book by a Japanese author. Just as each culture has their own unique style of writing (the Russians with their incredibly complex characters) this Japanese author had a wonderful surreal simplicity to the writing that made you want to never put the book down. I highly recommend the book - it is incredibly easy to read, but so complex in thought. I have every intention of reading more of Murakami!
  
  

• Contemporary literature at it's finest
  By A1MOGEXNCBZE3U on 2000-07-26
  Haruki Murakami writes an excellent book. Often his plots are cleverly twisted, incorporating allegory, social-commentary and political satire: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is no exception to the rule. This convoluted, Kafkaesque epic is perhaps one of the best novels Murakami has ever written. It is a metaphysical portrait of a man searching for identity in a time of social and political crisis: war, sexuality, an election, a man-skinner and a missing cat are the fiery ingredients that make this book so intriguing. Ultimately, Murakami offers a truly unique experience that challenges the reader both intellectually and emotionally: it's a one of a kind novel.

  The plot revolves around the humble Toru Okada, a mild-mannered man whose wife is becoming more distant from him every day. The book opens when he receives an explicit phone call from a woman that seems to know a lot about him... also, his cat has disappeared. These two events (especially the phone call) act as catalysts for Toru to embark on a spiritual, metaphysical journey of self-discovery (I'll concede that that sounds a little cliched) that finds him in the middle of a dangerous political situation. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is an exciting, challenging novel that keeps the reader in suspense right to the very end.

  Murakami writes extremely fluently and his words translate to English seamlessly with the help of translator Jay Rubin. His writing is subtly humorous, allegorical, yet uncomplicated. It is the culmination of his many literary devices that makes The Wind Up Bird Chronicle such a masterwork. Ultimately, this is a novel that delivers a rollicking story and a challenging text: quite a rare find these days, in the almost infinite supply of novels that makes finding a truly excellent book so hard to locate. Brilliant work Mr. Murakami.

  (For further Murakami DEFINITELY read "A Wild Sheep Chase" as well as "Norwegian Wood")
  
  

• Sadly disappointing...
  By on 2002-05-01
  It has been about nine months since I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. After having read Murakami continuously for over a year, that book burned me out and disappointed me, and now it's time to write as objective a review about it as possible. Before buying it, I thought I was "saving the best for last," as I had read every Murakami book available in the U.S. except this one.

  I don't understand why so many readers think this is Murakami's best work. I wish that I could have enjoyed it, but it was a dull, uninspiring, stale read. There is no growth in this book, no energy. No sympathy for any of the characters; no ideas to awaken one; every line is just the same existentialist circus. This book goes nowhere. After having heard so many starry-eyed, enthralled readers talk about Toru Okada's voyage to the underworld(his wife leaves him, and he decides he wants to spend time in a dry well in his backyard), I thought I was in for the eighth wonder. In one word, it was boring.

  I don't know why I thought this. I'm not claiming that it will seem as stale to anyone else, but I just want to warn other readers that --Murakami fans or not--- if they haven't read it, perhaps it is best to go to a library before buying it. Here I will try to give the best reasons I can to say why I didn't enjoy it. I am very familiar with Murakami's work, and perhaps if this had been the first book of his that I read, I would have liked it more. But in any case, the writing was nothing of what I had anticipated.

  Toru Okada is the Murakami "everyman" taken to its most boring extreme. This is the heighth of this very Murakami concept to many, but his character is hardly believable. The story opens while he is cooking spaghetti. He has quit his job in a law firm and is trying to think at the moment, but he gets no thinking done and enjoys staying inside all day, listening to music. He seems to have no reaction, no emotion, no opinion, and his energy and spirit is lost somewhere in space. Toru Okada is pale, stale, flavorless...dry like camphor.

  Perhaps the book would be more effective if it were 400 pages shorter. With a little life breathed back into it, the book's elements, story line, events, all would make for an interesting story, but by the time each major event of the book is complete, though, we've forgotten what it is we are trying to find. We have ceased to care. There's no gravity anymore; we're floating somewhere as dead as Toru Okada. Take Kumiko's disappearance, for example. It takes forever for it to happen, for it to be of importance to the reader.

  In the meantime we meet even more camaphorous characters that further bog down the story. May Kashara (sp? sorry, I don't have the book anymore), the annoying teenager. Toru Okada spends what it seems like 7 or 8 chapters taking little excursions to his backyard to talk to May, who seems to be hiding something. Her leg is bad (Murakami's women characters either 1) have some sort of issue with sexuality and play the piano, 2) spend every day in a café until someone comes to pay the bill and takes her home with them, 3) have inhumanly gorgeous ears and little else, 4)have bad legs and disappear all the time); she limps. She drinks soda. She is obsessed with death and seems to have an obsessive crush on him. He's oblivious to that, of course.

  Okay - all of these things have the capacity of forming a book worth reading, but the problem is that the writing is lifeless, and that even the most amazing ideas (characters going through walls, psychic alter-egos, alternate realities, dangerous and mysterious characters, etc.) all fall through and end up soggy and sickly, like discolored detergent-water on mud.

  Creta Kano? Reviews make her out to be almost supernatural; it doesn't get more enigmatic than this, I thought. But she and her sister are so dull. Murakami was running out of ideas?

  The only part of the book that I can say I enjoyed was when the old army officer tells about his time in Manchuria, where he saw a man being skinned alive. That could be a nice short story.

  I have to be honest. I go to book three, and then threw the book in the fireplace. It just wasn't worth it. It is sadly disappointing, an anemic book. I liked other works by Murakami, though, especially The Elephant Vanishes (a collection of his best short stories), Sputnik Sweetheart, and Norwegian Wood.
  
  

• If this book were a person, I'd marry it.
  By A31AZSL3HNLAYO on 2005-12-02
  Alright. I'm in the bookstore, and I start chatting with the guy who works there about books, movies, music... the whole nine yards. Meanwhile he's leading me in and out of shelves pulling books... including this one. I can't give any critique without using his own description: "If David Lynch wrote a novel, this would be it."
  The story begins with a single question, and it builds... for each question that's answered, several new questions are asked. There's something in the core of what follows that is so purely sick and twisted and beautiful and decadent that it reeks of Blue Velvet, set in modern Japan. A note to the dispossessed: this book is in no concievable way a mass transit novel... as such, it should under no circumstances be read on a bus or train or plane (or in a house or with a mouse...), really avoid reading this around other people, especially strangers, or it'll mess with your mind and you'll go all Robert DeNiro and shoot someone's thumb off. That said, read it. I don't care if you don't have time, make time.
  
  
• Again and again and again and again....
  By AC0H9MEP0ITHT on 2003-10-12
  I have chosen The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to review because it exaggerates every Murakami trait. You only have to read one on his novels and you have read them all. I'm not exagerating. It's the same story, same characters, same scenes over and over. I love Murakami's style and I initially enjoyed his symbolism and characters, but he never alters either from book to book. Wow! Just a slight change would be nice, but it is the same main character with a different name disillusioned with his job in an industry that changes only a tiny bit from book to book. Who's tired of the underground well/water symbolism? Who's tired of the music references that add little if any real tone to a scene? And please...in every novel a woman disappears or is killed or in Murakami's world vanishes into a ill-defined nether region. He could have been a great author...sad. And by the way, if you are going to pick one to read make it "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." At least it has that relatively clever "even chapters being the second half of the odd chapter's story" thing going on.
  
  
• Murakami is wearing me down...
  By A235I9QTGKBTR2 on 2006-04-04
  In every writing class I've ever been in, they tell us "Show, don't tell. Show, don't tell." They drill this into our head like it's the Holy Grail of writing techniques. Needless to say, coping with Murakami's writing style is a bit of a problem for me.
  
  Murakami practically shatters the rules that I simply assumed were rules of thumb. Maybe it's my Western mindset, but I have just read through what seems like seven or eight pages of Creta Kano telling me that she is in pain. She has used the word "pain" at least eighty times, I'm sure. Am I particularly cruel in that I don't feel sorry for a character just because he or she tells me that I should? I have ceased to care about her and just end up wondering why all of Murakami's characters seem to be victims of circumstance with little or no control (or apparent desire for control) over their own lives.
  
  This sort of problem is repeated throughout, and I'm a little anxious that I'm only 200 pages into a 600 page endeavor. Characters, desciptions, subplots...everything seems completely meaningless.
  
  It probably doesn't help that I've been taking a class on Murakami since January; I've read five books by him in a few short months, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle being the sixth, and I would definitely not pull this stunt again. The first book I read I thought the style was brilliant. The second time, I could tolerate it, but I was disappointed that it seemed so similar to what I just read. By Murakami Book 3, I was so sick of reading from the point of view of self-centered, socially detached, male Japanese protagonists that it was hard to take any of these books seriously. I am tired of women's ears, wells, missing wives/girlfriends, lengthy descriptions of oriental cuisine, and characters who take supernatural incidents in stride, yet seem fully incapable of dealing with normal, everyday life (i.e. being an only child, reaching puberty, having a job, approaching middle age, etc.). Murakami, please! Explore other avenues!
  
  
  
• capitivating and worth your time
  By A1440LDAQ3OTE7 on 2006-06-13
  for the first half of this book, I literally could not put it down. partly because my life at the time resembled the main character's so closely. the story was at once stark and bewildering, and made me thirsty to see where it would all lead.
  
  where it ended up leading... was something quite else. I found the second half of the book extremely confusing, a little difficult to get through, and in the end I was left wondering if I had understood the book at all. I put it down a little disappointed.
  
  but now, years later, I think back about this book and I am glad it ended the way it did. Murakami doesn't give you any easy answers. while some of the other reviewers complain that some of the sequences seem irrelevant, I think that's really the point. the only logic in this book is the logic of dreams and juxtaposition. there seems to be a theme to the book but nothing enforces a particular interpretation. unlike so many other "non-linear" stories, like Memento, 28 Grams, The Club Dumas and so on, this isn't just a story told backwards or inside out. it's a labyrinth; you can get to the heart of it, but the only way out is the way you came in.
  
  so if you want to read a purposeful, directed story that wraps up it's loose ends and gives you a sense of completion, this book will probably annoy you. but if you have the patience to follow its circuitous road, Murakami's story-telling is hauntingly beautiful and bizarre. the turns and twists of this literary puzzle will give you food for thought for years to come.
  
  
• Full of sound of fury, signifying nothing
  By on 2003-02-10
  The only thing that kept me going past the halfway point of this 600+ page book was the hope that, by the end, the author would somehow tie together the long and eclectic list of characters and story lines. Alas, there was no attempt at all to do so, the result being a collection of seemingly random people, places, and events that bear little if any relation to one another and serve no purpose in the overall story. I was really looking forward to reading this book after reading the good reviews, but after finally finishing it I wish I had pulled a different book off my shelf.
  
  
• Murakami Makes Us Care, Then Leaves Us High And Dry
  By A1IWY8H9NRL9K6 on 2004-01-21
  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was my first Murakami, and through the first half of the book I had every reason to be impressed and excited by its promise of a rewarding and thought-provoking read. Indeed, in the early going I was mesmerized by the multifarious cast of quirky characters and the somewhat kooky plot lines, and additionally, the unbalanced mood and the underlying tension kept me eagerly focused towards the explanations and resolutions which were surely coming. I was willing, if not thrilled to leave the main storyline time after time to read and absorb the lengthy historical chapters, secure in the knowledge that by book's end, the interconnectedness of it all would be made abundantly clear. However, the second half of this book left me far more disappointed than the first had gotten me interested. Let's get this out of the way first so there is no misunderstanding: Murakami is, without a doubt, a gifted and interesting storyteller with a unique voice and an engagingly oblique manner of limning his plot. But his technical skills and economical prose style notwithstanding, he is either the laziest or most arrogant author I've ever come across. After causing us to feel so strongly about the predicaments and machinations of so many characters, and making us wonder about the resolution of and connection between so many story lines, and schooling us in a good dose of Japanese, Manchurian and Mongolese history, and escorting us through a variety of worlds, netherworlds, cyberworlds, dimensions, dreamscapes and cityscapes, we are left dangling in mid-air. Absolutely nothing we are interested in having revealed to us is ever explained or made clear. And 600 pages of unresolved set-ups is no small matter. We have been on the receiving end of long and ponderous expositions, all of which are interwoven with mysterious shadow-plays and subtle implications: What are Noboru Wataya's strange powers? how do Malta and Creta Kano ultimately tie into everything? -and please tell us why we had to hear about that red hat so many times if it didn't end up being important to the story... and what the heck is really happening at the strange sessions where Nutmeg and Cinnamon offer rich women the opportunity of fondling Toru's skull in a dark dressmaking room? where on earth had Mackerel been? was Kumiko the mysterious woman in the netherworld hotel room? and why did May Kasahara run away from home only to start writing Toru an endless stream of letters in which she refers to him as "Mister Wind-Up Bird" every other sentence (o.k., so it's cute...), all this in-between the times she is making men's wigs in the countryside 15 hours a day? and what is the significance of the strange guy with the bat? and why did Toru Okada share the trait of a throbbing blue mark on the face with Nutmeg's zookeeper father? So after 600 pages we don't get any answers to anything, and meanwhile most of the characters whose unresolved predicaments we have been wondering about for quite some time now, have either disappeared from the plot entirely, or been transmogrified into less-palatable versions of themselves. Some simply flit back into the story for a brief moment before the end mercifully comes. We are, shockingly, left without any of the answers we have been so eagerly reading towards, left to fend for ourselves with our own imaginations, abandoned to perform what was essentially the author's main responsibility to his readership. If we are not owed either the answers he has made us wonder about, or at least some reason for having asked the questions in the first place, what are we doing with our noses buried 600 pages deep in this book? In my opinion, the end result of this type of coy, shadowboxing style of writing is pointless storytelling. These are not the type of deeply- conceived characters with fascinating complexities, where it would be interesting and rewarding to ponder the various sorts of ways that life and fate might have affected them had the story resolved this way or that. It is the very situations and the bizarre potentialities of this story which imbue it with interest, and I felt bamboozled after caring enough to wonder what it all meant, only to have Murikami stop the engines in total limbo. Frankly, in this vein, I think Murakami missed his golden opportunity towards the end of the book when Toru Okada is morphed back from the strange hotel room to the bottom of the flooding well. As the well fills with water and our hero is paralyzed from the abject exhaustion of just having traveled through time, space and hotel room walls, we are not sure what will become of him, but we fear the worst. Now comes the brilliantly-named chapter, "The Story Of The Duck People"!!! Holy cow, here was Murakami's chance! As long as our author is leaving it all up to us anyway, I think he should have drowned Toru in the well and made this Duck People chapter describe a bizarre other-dimensional world, which is some kind of weird afterlife place, where everyone from the book ends up as half-duck folk, and where because of this strange new "reality" the whole plot has a chance to be explained and resolved. I'm being serious! Before I knew what this chapter actually was - alas, just a final May Kasahara letter in which she describes the antics of some real-life ducks who live by her wig factory *yawn*, I had some STRONG chills running up and down my spine. The image evoked by those weird words, "The Story Of The Duck People," made me think that Murakami had fooled us until the very last moment, blindsiding us with the unexpected coup de grace, succeeding richly at the precise moment when all seemed hopelessly unresolvable. And such is the fine line which writers walk... In "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," in my opinion Murakami fell off the high wire, and didn't build himself a net sufficient to save himself and his book from a failed try at greatness.
  
  
• Great start, disappointing finish
  By A2I19GSTE7QLD2 on 2006-05-31
  While I think that really the book was very good and that the writing was lovely, the characters interesting and the plot gripping, by the time I reached the end I realized that I hated 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle'. But I don't hate it for what's in the book, I hate it for what isn't.
  
  Halfway through the book I was so enthralled by it I went downstairs and told my roomate how wonderful it was and that she had to read it and that it was one of the most fanastic books I had ever read. But all those fantastic stories that start out the book--the Kanos, the rivalry between Noboru Wataya and Toru, the story of Mamiya and his relationship to Mr. Honda--suddenly vanish. The book revives for a while with the similarities between Nutmeg's father and Toru, and Cinnamon's childhood memories of the wind-up bird. But those stories, like every story thread in this novel, disappears with a whimper just when the subplot really started to get interesting. With twenty pages left in the book, I still hung on to one last shred of hope that it would all come together. Alas, I was disappointed.
  
  Perhaps Murakami really is a genius, and I either am not smart enough to fully comprehend what he is saying or am not well-versed enough in Japanese society and history to pick up hints of meaning. Certainly, there's no question that he is a very talented and creative writer. But I wonder if maybe the plot really doesn't ever fit together, and Nutmeg and her father and the battle at Nomonhan and the fall of Hsin-ching are cool little diversions that Murakami liked the sound of but could never quite make fit with Toru's admittedly more mundane and at the same time more surreal life. At many times, I did find the Manchuria stories to be far more interesting, so perhaps I'm biased about these stories not getting more page time. The ending, instead, was about Toru and Kumiko. That story at least was resolved, but the resolution was kind of dumb and didn't do much to explain Noboru Wataya and Kumiko's past motivations. Noboru Wataya had some mysterious evil power! Oooh. But we never know what it was, and so without that final explanation the book's ending becomes just a lot of stuff happening, with no real explanation given for WHY or HOW.
  
  One reviewer said that the english translattion was significantly abridged. That may explain some things and would also be good reason for someone at the publishing company to be shot, or, if you prefer, skinned alive. I still wonder though, if the story would still be left hanging at the end, after 800 pages of rambling subplots, rather than 600.
  
  
• Fights between good and evil
  By A34BRO7U3JA89B on 2007-04-02
  I guess, full understanding of this book is a hard task for the most of readers. But seems it makes book even more entertaining. Murakami entertains his readers exposing a world of subconsciousness, which is managed by an invisible hand - an invisible energy that we generate. In the book, many characters are subconsciously connected to each other and take actions subconsciously. I guess, it is the reason why Murakami left them unexplained, leaving many readers unsatisfied.
  
  The main plot of the book is the resentment between two individualists with good and evil morals: Toru Okada and Naboru Wataya (or likewise Lieutenant Mamyia and Boris Manskinner). Other characters and plots are supportive. The main purpose of Corporal Honda sending empty box to Toru Okada through Lieutenant Mamyia was to connect these two people in similar situation, psychologically fighting with evil. By connecting them, Corporal Honda helps Lieutenant Mamyia relieve his long time suffering, letting him to open his secrets to Toru Okada. It adds Toru's hatred to Naboru Wataya and gives strength to defeat him. From the book I sense Toru Okada is a Lieutenant Mamaya, living in different time. He is similar to the reincarnation of Mamiya (or other people who suffered in WWII), takes actions, to fulfill Mamyia's dream: defeating evil like people and being loved by someone or having sex with woman (Creta Kano) in both real and dreamlike world. This book tells that evil and poisonous people, like Naboru Wataya always exist and succeed far. They exist in the context of different situations and the impact of their negative, powerful energy is fatal. Book gives impression that Murakami explodes his own personal hatred to evil like people and dislike to the dominant social psychology (people's confusion) through his book. I feel like I see Murakami in different characters of his book.
  
  Appearance of teenager girl, May Kasahara makes Toru Okada's character clearer. She is strong and bright individual and helps Toru to shape his own view. Murakami perfectly exposes deeper feelings of different people, in the context of different circumstances.
  
  Story about Mongolian man who skins people is shocking, because I'm Mongolian and I never heard this kind of things happened during WWII. I'm not really sure whether it is based in historical fact or it is fiction. Anyway, this did not affect at all my feelings towards Murakami and his books. He is great.
  
  Even though the book was excellent, I have to admit that, in most of cases I fell asleep while reading. But it does not mean that the book was bad; may be I felt the same way as Toru Okada was feeling while sitting in the well.
  
  
  
• Murakami is a master of prose
  By A1G6SKFL7I1WJL on 2002-03-01
  I read this book whilst travelling in Africa and I vividly remember me sitting late into the night under my mosquito net breathlessly chasing the protagonist ever further into his surrealist labyrinth. The unusual character of the setting - a European reading a book in Western Africa by a Japanese author - simply added to the powerful sense of disorientation. What sticks to my mind two years after reading this book is Murakami's uncanny ability to conjure up images of great physical power. His prose is suggestive to a degree that it literally spills over into the other senses: I cherish the memory of a number of strong aural, visual and tactile impulses related to various episodes in the book. The centrepiece, for me, is Lieutenant Mamiya's epic narrative of his war-time experiences in Manchuria and Mongolia: a dark metaphysical fable where beauty and death mingle in a deeply poignant way.
  I have since read no other of Murakami's books. Glossing over some of their back covers I can't escape the impression that settings, moods and plots seem to vary only a little from book to book. I'd rather stick to the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, then. It'll give me re-reading pleasure for the years to come.
  
  
• What am I missing
  By A2L1JGWNNHJVR3 on 2002-04-02
  I am sorry but this book is one of the worst I have read. What am I missing? Everyone seems to love it except for myself. I had the book sitting on my shelf for a couple of years, wondering why I bought it. Then I looked at reviews and thought "This must be good." So I started to read, kept reading, and still hated it. Please, someone tell me what I am missing?
  
  
• Questions Without Answers
  By on 2002-05-24
  I love all of Haruki Murakami's books and "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is my second favorite ("Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" is first). No one is better than Murakami when it comes to writing about "Everyman" and I think that is one of the keys to his enormous popularity. Even if you don't particularly care for his deadpan style, I don't think there's a person alive who can't identify, in some way, with the characters in his books.

  "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is no doubt Murakami's densest book to date and, if you're new to this author's works, I would recommend starting with something else first...perhaps "South of the Border, West of the Sun" or "A Wild Sheep Chase."

  "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" begins when its out-of-work, down-on-his-luck protagonist, Okada (this book's "Everyman"), lets a pot of spaghetti boil over, foils an obscene phone call, then takes a legitimate call from his wife, Kumiko, who asks him to look for their lost cat, Norboru Wataya. Norboru Wataya is named after Kumiko's politician brother and I really haven't figured out if that means Kumiko likes her brother or dislikes him.

  Murakami's signature themes are alienation and loneliness and he makes great use of them in "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle." No matter how much Okada tries to "fit in," he seems to be nothing more than a tourist in the landscape of life; characters drift in and out of his world as he searches for his own identity and a read sense of self. The problem is, each of the characters Okada encounters is searching for something as well and each pulls Okada into his own dreamlike world, confusing the issues (and Okada) even further.

  The characters that come to life in the pages of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" are as bizarre as any Murakami has ever created. There is May Kasahara, Okada's sixteen year old "Lolita" type neighbor; Creta and Malta Kano, two psychics; and Lieutenant Mamiya, a man who tells a fascinating tale of wartime espionage, a tale that may hold the key to the heart of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle." Lt. Mamiya is a man who has spent time at the bottom of a well, and spending time at the bottom of a well is an experience that will eventually change Okada's life and confer upon him a strange, metaphysical openness.

  Murakami juxtaposes the bizarre and the mundane better than any author I have ever read and he does so in such a way as to render the bizarre totally acceptable, and, yes, sometimes even mundane. His books usually don't have meaning, but then life doesn't always have meaning, say Murakami's characters. If it's meaning you're looking for, you'd better look elsewhere.

  Murakami writes in a curious deadpan tone that is reminiscent of the very best detective stories and his books are, to some degree, detective stories themselves. They could take place anywhere; there is nothing in them to identify them as uniquely Japanese. If you're looking for classical Japanese literature, Kawabata, Abe or Mishima would be a far better choice. Murakami is totally modern in flavor.

  Although this book, at first glance, may seem to be light it is anything but. And, just as life fails to answer all our questions, so does Murakami. Although this book is dense and complex, it leaves a lot unaccounted for. There are some things, Murakami seems to be telling us, that simply don't have answers. Or perhaps they simply don't require them.
  
  

• Eastern mindset meets Western philosophy
  By A2NPKHJ4CVIIKG on 2002-09-19
  Wow. Just...wow. I finished this novel about 10 minutes ago and I'm only now able to put it down and enter the real world again. This is one of the best novels, if not THE best, I have ever had the pleasure to read. Many people here say it, and they are all right: Murakami is a genius. Everything about this work was perfect or near perfect. It has amazing insights into the problems of existance that are as profound as any philosophical text, yet it doesn't (as so many so-called Postmodern novels do) sacrafice plot to do this. Rather, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle has, quite possibly, the best plot in any contemporary novel. No one except a psychic schizophrenic could predict what will happen next. And yet is all fits together beautifully. It reads as a literary representaion of the chaotic order of current philosophical thought. Amazing, amazing book. I haven't encountered an author who shocked me this much since Nabokov and Lolita. I know I'm rambling right now, but I can't help it. READ THIS BOOK. It will change every perspective you have on life. I know it did mine.
  
  
• A question and an answer
  By A3TJIM7UF0CMZQ on 2006-12-13
  This book was highly recommended to me by a friend of mine, so one day I picked it up and began to read. I was propelled into a journey that was both mundane and surreal in the same threads. The story started slowly, and yet it was at once fascinating.
  
  Even before I was done with the book, I was recommending it to others. Then, one of them asked me: "What is the book about?" Honestly, the first few times I thought about it, I really couldn't come up with an answer. Why? Simply because the writing is so intricately real and so poetic, the main character (the story is told in the first person) traverses through one dilemma after another without breaking for reflection. To answer the story with a simple answer such as "the book is about a man who enjoys walking" would do a horrible injustice.
  
  The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is about a man who is desperately trying to accept the fact that not everything (and in fact, possibly nothing) in the world is concrete. He searches in vain for facts or simple explanations to solve the mysteries of his life, but time and time again he ends up with more questions than he does answers. His journey does not ever take him far from home in the physical sense, but often he finds himself in dark corners of his own mind... corners that at first he fears, but later realizes they hold the very answers he's been looking for.
  
  Read this book. It is simply amazing.
  
  
• A Good Idea That Just Doesn't Cut It
  By AOW12CUPF1Q0R on 2001-06-25
  This was the second book I had read by Murakami, the first being "A Wild Sheep Chase", which I loved. As such it seemed natural to pick up something else by him, and so one day I encountered this work. Having considered "A Wild Sheep Chase" to be a fun, entertaining and in some ways thoughtful -- if not too thoughtful -- novel, I was expecting another story in a similar vein.

  However, I found myself walking away from this thinking it was something of a waste of time. The disappointment was not the result of having found it to be too different from what I had liked in the other book; in fact, there were several similarities between them (both involve complex searches for things and people as the key plot, for example). Yet this missed the mark.

  First of all, I would point out that I found this to be an overly long novel. There is something to be said for brevity: not that an author must abide by that as a rule, but too many turns can lead to several hundred pages of confusing side stories. Looking back, several of the side stories were completely irrelevant, and I would consider them to be better off as seperate, non-related short stories. Since they are connected, however, we are left with a narrative that is jumbled, awkward and very confusing. Occasionally being jumbled can be a good thing, but for a novel this long it tends to take away from the story. (For those who are interested, this was also a problem I had with Banana Yoshimoto's "Amrita", whose earlier works I had also found to be very impressive -- interesting to note, isn't it?)

  Secondly, the story tends to focus on things that I feel are more meant to shock or impress the reader rather than really add to the story. There are several descriptions and scenes throughout the book of graphic sex and violence, for example, that I just didn't feel worked well with the story. There is no problem with sex and violence where sex and violence is necessary, but I got the distinct impression while reading this that their graphic descriptions were more made for the shock benefit than from a deep necessity in the plot. This also takes away from any thoughtful points within the story because it draws attention away from things which would be considered more important or relevant. This goes for other aspects of the story: certain characters seem to be there more for the idea of what they are rather than their actual help in bringing the story out.

  Overall, my lasting impression of the book was that the story itself was an interesting one, which deserved a far better presentation than the one given to it within this book. Murakami's skill is shown within the skeleton of the story, and within his actual writing (and compliments must be given to the translator in kind), but overall the story becomes confused and overburdened with too many conflicting ideas that take away from the storyline. However, I do say stick with Murakami; I decided to take another chance with him myself, and read "Norwegian Wood", and that more than made up for any problems within this book.
  
  

• A world class writers masterpiece.
  By A2B21POKQ3N09H on 2002-02-05
  I've read all of Murakami's works available in English and this his best work ever--which is saying something as he is a truly gifted writer who possesses a vivid imagination, a unique, compelling writing style who delivers consistently first rate fiction on a regular basis.

  At heart this is a book about the societal schizophrenia that characterizes modern day Japan-a country that revels in it's ancient history and heritage but cannot admit or cope with it's 20th century history and shame, that basks in economic success and power while enduring political decay and corruption, that is obsessed with its racial homogeneity while steadfastly denying the attendant alienation and anomie that is engendered by the forces of conformity and sublimation of personality the obsession creates.

  Murakami's genius is his ability to express and convey this reality through, on the one hand, the most ordinary and mundane protagonists imaginable and allegorical illusions derived from the most mundane of surroundings. In this case the former is Toru Okada, the sort of fellow who perpetually seems to be involved in the contemplation of his existence while, say, cooking spaghetti.

  Toru doesn't get around much even though he's trying to find his lost wife, his lost cat-basically, his lost life. He nevertheless does get around enough to meet an unusual cast of characters, each of whom represents an aspect of Japanese society-whether it be disaffect war veterans, alienated teenagers or powerful-and powerfully corrupt-politicians. In fact most of Toru's travels are to and through so-called alley, blocked at both ends, That serves as a microcosm of Japan itself and is littered with other ordinary allegorical detritus--the statue of a bird looking sadly unable to fly, and the unidentified wind-up bird that creaks invisibly in a nearby tree, the a dry well Toru spends so much time meditating in, a house abandoned because of a series of tragedies and so on.

  This may not sound like it adds up to much of a story, but, in fact, it's a cauldron of stories-a mystery, a surrealistic fable, a deadpan comedy, a military history, and a love story-all of which work on their own and all of which blend into the whole.

  This is not an easy book to read-yet it's impossible to put down. What more can you ask of a novel but thoughtful literary entrapment? You get it here in droves.
  
  

• Mixed bag
  By A1NK2ZLGCHWVJ on 2005-01-05
  Imagine you're doing a jigsaw puzzle. At the beginning you're excited to see where it leads. Then you concentrate intensely on solving it. Then you get frustrated because you're making no progress. Finally, you realize that the puzzle has no solution - it's impossible to solve.
  
  If this situation would annoy you, you probably won't enjoy this novel. If you enjoy the process of learning that the puzzle has no solution, read this novel. I'm in the former camp.
  
  Murakami has a tremendous imagination and is a great writer. He is able to convey a sense of unease without telling the reader exactly why s/he should feel uneasy. This book is engrossing, and it kept me interested.
  
  But there are too many unresolved questions. More accurately, there are virtually no *resolved* questions. I don't need a plot that gets wrapped up with a nice bow, but I do expect a novel to move from one place to another. Either this novel didn't, or I'm too dumb to understand it.
  
  I don't want to be too harsh because I admire this novel's originality; I've never read anything like it. But ultimately I found it frustrating, so I can't recommend it.
  
  
• an explanation
  By AL81ORL3H7D5D on 2005-06-29
  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is somewhat confusing for sure, but there are reasons for this. The main reason is that this book was seriously chopped up by editors in Japan, fearing that it was too long to be a hit there. Then when it was translated into English, it was further chopped up to make it digestable to the "average" American reader who knows nothing about Japanese culture. So what we are left with is a seriously truncated version of the original story, sans elements that could help us account for some of these very loose ends. The other reason it might be confusing to the average person is that there are a lot of metaphysical concepts, and a lot of Buddhist concepts. The WBC is a very Buddhist book. There is a lot that can be missed if the reader is not familiar with these elements of Japanese and Asian culture. The historical elements, like the Manchurian campaign of WWII, as well as references to Nanking, might also be overlooked or written off by people unfamiliar with these things. Some education is required to really appreciate this book.
  
  That being said, there is plenty to enjoy whether or not you miss out on the Buddhist musings and cultural and historical references. The prose is lively and engaging, filled with excellent references to Eastern and Western culture both. The characters are bizarre and colorful, sometimes nonsensical, always interesting. The story itself is magic realism at its best, capable of being viewed from many angles, all at once if necessary.
  
  Basically if Borges were Japanese, this is what he'd write.
  
  
• Like Watching A Fender Bender In Slow Motion
  By A2LVRCA4MU3TC3 on 2005-10-18
  This novel is very weird. It breaks several rules. The main character is extremely passive and seems to drift from one event to another, without direction or passion. The usual rule is that the best stories are based on highly motivated and even obsessive characters. This "hero" is a limp dishrag.
  
  Haruki is very wordy. He often says the same thing two or three times in different words. The book feels inflated. It's at least one-third longer than it would need to be.
  
  The narrative lacks a sense of place. Although it is set in Tokyo, we don't see it or hear or smell it. We don't learn anything about the city or way it is laid or out or how it would feel to be there. The focus is on the main guy and his day-to-day life. Although it is set in Tokyo, there is no sense that this is a romantic or exotic place.
  
  Weird things happen. A strange woman calls wanting phone sex. But the hero hangs up on her. The cat disappears. Our hero meets a teenage girl who seems on her own and perhaps capable of anything. I kept waiting for something sexual to happen. Our hero has sex dreams about a woman who was a prostitute and seems to have no relationship to his life. An aged war veteran comes to tell a fascinating story about a mission behind enemy lines in Outer Mongolia. Yet these story threads don't seem related to each other.
  
  The structure is like a tree, with branches going off every which way and putting down roots willy-nilly. There is no such thing as a through-line. What does the main character want? Who knows? He doesn't. Who cares? He doesn't. Perhaps he wants to find the cat, but he doesn't look very hard or think about it very much. Ditto when his wife doesn't come home. It affects him, but he doesn't do anything about it.
  
  I get bored and put the book down and pick it up later and find it interesting again. Most of the time, it barely holds my interest. So far, I've found it most enjoyable to read when I also have a baseball game on TV, with the sound up, so my mind is occupied with two slow, boring things at once.
  
  Yet, everything is here, in a way. It's a panorama of modern Japanese culture, with a vapid and predatory TV personality, abused women, adultery, WWII veterans, a loveless marriage, and unconsumated trysts.
  
  I don't know what to make of it, and I'm 200 pages in. It's a 600-page book, so it must've been 1000 pages in ms.
  
  I don't understand its popularity. Haruki is the most celebrated novelist in Japan, the book jacket tells me. People, both critics and ordinary readers, love it on Amazon.com. And its sales rank is fairly high. But I don't get it.
  
  The book gets more interesting, or I got more interested, after his wife leaves him for another man. At least he starts taking action. He pours some expensive cologne down the sink. He climbs down into a well. He thinks about his life.
  
  For awhile, I get pretty well hooked. I think the earlier passages were boring because the hero was so passive and he didn't suspect anything was going on with his wife. He was stuck in denial and in limbo and so were we. It's a mistake, I think, to put the reader into the same boring emotional state of mind as the hero. In a way it's a book about boredom. But it's also boring. The medium is the message. It is very tedious to read.
  
  I finally get tired and quit, about half-way through. Ran out of baseball games.
  
  
  

• Kafka on the Shore
• Norwegian Wood
• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International)
• A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel
• After Dark (Vintage International)