The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I have been avoiding Murakami for the past 6-7 years now, ever since I noticed it becoming so prominently featured in American bookstores for that simple fact alone.  Having finally read one now, I can honestly say that the decision I had been making was a stupid one.

It has been a very long time since I have been so engaged in a book.  I felt sincerely sorry as the pages in my right hand grew fewer in number, but yet propelled to continue further and to let the story continue.  Simply speaking, I loved the experience I had with this book.  So much so, that although I have other books to start ready to go, I may just go to the book store and buy more Murakami novels in order to feed this new passion that has been lit within me.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is surreal in a way that stands out from other stories that might be compared to it.  Murakami is able to manipulate emotion in a way that I have rarely experienced before in reading: there are parts that are incredibly graphic and grotesque, yet simultaneously warmly enveloping.  In the same way, there are other parts that are beautifully poetic yet cause an emotional discomfort that is hard to describe.

Almost all of Murakami's characters are chatty.  This is another unusual way in which the author builds the novel.  We learn the stories of each character from their own words, simply because they all tend to overshare while getting to the point of something completely off-topic.  As far as I'm concerned, I have never experienced a writing style like this before, and as a writer who struggles with dialogue, I admire it.

My only regret is that the story did not end with a clear wrap-up of the countless number of loose threads presented throughout the book.  In the end, Murakami chose not to approach reason, but somehow it did not offend me in the way that other books do when they leave plot holes unfilled. Like the tentacles of the jellyfish that Toru Okada so feared, all of the questions I had built up remained gently swaying in the dark with ominous mystery.  Somehow, though, it just worked.