Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle has a lot of mystery in its unique story, and I really enjoyed the character May. I struggled with the descriptions of gore and violence and found those parts of the book tedious to get through.

I was weary of the relationship between May and Mr. Okada in the beginning but (to my relief) found it to be very platonic and endearing.

Content Warnings

apollonium's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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mmatti300's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book was very good, and I am consistently blown away by the eloquence that can remain in translations. However, there are certain aspects of murakami that I am not sure I’ll ever be comfortable with. This novel wavered between being aggressively horrific, touching, charming, and utterly confusing. I found myself getting bored at parts, accidentally skipping whole paragraphs because I could not being myself to care. Yet in other parts, I was hooked constantly waiting for the next sucker punch of a line. While there is not the strange obsession with ejaculation common in some of his other works, there are elements in which “men writing women” shines through, particularly in discussing menstruation. I don’t know if I’ll be able to remember much of this book in 1 month but I am glad I picked this up and gave murakami another shot.

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traciereads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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xoxo_gossipgirl's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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maurits's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Again another enchanting Murakami novel, but he went a little overboard on the vagueness this time.

Content Warnings

esmithumland's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I loved the inter-leaving stories in this book, and the mysteries were deeply intriguing. I liked that they were simultaneously explored while remaining largely unresolved. But I didn't care for the gratuitous death and gore (although I could somewhat see that contributing to the story), the weird pedophila, or the fact that while half of the characters are women their only point is to revolve around and relate to the men.

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