“Murakami is like a magician who explains what he’s doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers . . . But while anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it's the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves.” —The New York Times Book Review
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.
A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.
I'm splitting the difference here. It was slow, it was long I don't really what the point of some of it was, her chapters felt like they were written by a man who didn't actually know what the internal monologue of a woman is like. 2 stars.
But then it genuinely is beautiful. I thought I would put the book down three times and then I just kept going and finished it in a couple of days. So despite the length it was written in such a way that you could just lose yourself in mildly strange world and pleasing characters. 4 stars.
So split the difference. 3 stars.
It's a love story and a slice of weird life. And if you go in with that notion, and maybe a week of rainy evenings without much else to do...it's good.
Although I was genuinely delighted when a character that I recognized showed back up... didn't see that coming. Made me wonder if I was missing something.
Reading updates
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12 December, 2022:
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12 December, 2022:
Reviewed