Sputnik Sweetheart

by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami (Introduction)

A mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes.

Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. Miu is glamorous and successful. Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.

Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.

Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished...

'Confirms Murakami as a master of his craft... Out of this world' Time Out

• ISBN10: 0099448475
• ISBN13: 9780099448471
• Publish Date: 3 October 2002 (first published 1 January 2001)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 30 January 2024
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Vintage
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

‪2019 Popsugar Reading Challenge‬
44. ‪A book with a title that contains “salty,” “sweet,” bitter,” or “spicy‬”

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

— A beautiful ode to longing for something that would never be, and the inevitability of loneliness. I’M CRUSHED

[moraa]

Very short and thought provoking.
Did K and Sumire finally meet up in the end? I would like to believe so. I would also like to believe that Haruki Murakami will tell us a little snipet of where Sumire went, someday maybe.

[Jyc]

★★★★★ // i just know that every time i’ll think about this book, i would get this incredibly sad and nostalgic feeling. probably the most romantic yet heartbreaking Murakami i’ve read. that ending—oh, that ending.