Sputnik Sweetheart

by Haruki Murakami

Part romance, part detective story, Sputnik Sweetheart tells the story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited love.

K is madly in love with his best friend, Sumire, but her devotion to a writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments. At least, that is, until she meets an older woman to whom she finds herself irresistibly drawn. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece, K is solicited to join the search party—and finds himself drawn back into her world and beset by ominous visions. Subtle and haunting, Sputnik Sweetheart is a profound meditation on human longing.

• ISBN10: 0099516349
• ISBN13: 9780099516347
• Publish Date: 1 January 2099 (first published 1 January 2001)
• Publish Status: Cancelled
• Out of Print: 3 December 2009
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Vintage
• Format: Paperback
• 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.