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

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Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

86 reviews

gkanderson's review against another edition

4.5

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

tycutler's review against another edition

3.0

mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Having never read Murakami, I feel that this book touches every critique I’ve heard from others that have read Murakami’s books. Sexism, excessive gore and violence, and overwrought excess scenes. For the good, anyone interested in surrealist, dreamlike mysteries this is a deep dive into these themes. Murakami weaves Twin Peaks-esque mystical surrealism and his complex, flawed, and confused narrator to create a novel that feels meaningful and profound yet superficial and easy to consume, much in the same way a dream feels just after you wake up. Ultimately, I have never read a book quite like this and am happy to have finished it but would not recommend it to a reader unless they’re interested in the specific qualities I’ve mentioned here.

Content Warnings

elisabeth23's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

sanollogy's review against another edition

4.5

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

oh well. what a trip this book has been. oh dear.
took me like 10 days to process it and finally leave a review. i’m not even really a review person, but i felt like i had to take my time with this one.

long story short: derealization fever dream. (that’s what i’ve been calling it ever since i picked it up!)

the novel’s split into 3 parts, and for the first two, i wasn’t reading for the plot. not at all.
i was reading for the feeling it gave me — this hazy, tranquil state. not walking between the lines with ur eyes, just floating through the fog, trying to catch whatever words drifted close enough.
that mood was constantly interrupted by sexual scenes. nothing irks me more than descriptions of intercourse through that pervy male gaze. it was too much. i almost quit the book because of it, ngl.

but then part 3 hit me. somewhere around chapter 45, i had a real eureka moment. suddenly it all clicked — the characters, their stories, the meaning woven into the layers. it struck me hard.
and just as quickly, i realized why i stuck around: maybe because i was feeling it too.

gut-wrenching, terrifying grief. the freezing-over that happens after. all of it, represented in these details.

kumiko is the meaningful thing u lose. noboru wataya is the person (or circumstances) u blame it all on. may kasahara is the logical part of ur brain that talks back. the other characters? they're the stages of grief.
the well is where u go when u'r thinking about your trauma. the isolation, the suffocating feeling, the sense of almost dying. u don’t even know why you dive so deep — but u do. every time. voluntarily. funny, isn’t it?
the cat is fleeting happiness. comes and goes whenever it wants. never stays.

my favorite symbol is

the blue mark on toru’s cheek.

i loved how all the characters and storylines touched it — whether it felt important or not.

when you go into the well, u isolate yourself through ur own choices. but trauma goes even deeper than that: u carry it with u like a flaw on ur face. and that isolates u, even when u didn’t choose it. makes u feel out of place.
people notice. they point it out. they get weird about it. they don’t know what to say. it’s tragic — u were normal just yesterday. maybe it’s the lack of words that makes them pull away. and yeah, i get it. not everyone wants to look directly at someone in that kind of strange, altered state.

and when i started seeing grief through the book’s symbolism, the war storyline made sudden sense.
what better metaphor is there for loss, for the unbearable weight of grief? even if you survive, war kills off your spiritual self.
toru didn’t live through war, but he saw himself in the veteran. that’s the point — they were connected by the same kind of suffering.

it’s really not the greatest book i’ve ever read. and yet i stared into the void for at least an hour after finishing it.
i kept returning to this review section, bumping my rating up. 3.25, then 3.5. 3.75. i’m giving it a 4.25 now.
a lot of thoughts.

Content Warnings

theradegg's review against another edition

1.25

challenging dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

silkm0ths's review against another edition

3.5

dark funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

really felt like a chronicle... loved episodes of this story and sections but didn't really come together but maybe that's the point... also he is quite sexist tbh... think it is worth reading though

Content Warnings

baraksgraph's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-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: Complicated

Content Warnings

ksakurais's review against another edition

4.0

challenging mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

When you dream, everything feels very real yet surreal; your surroundings seamlessly change from one place to the next, people’s faces appear in unfamiliar places, and all sorts of bizarre things can occur, but to your brain it feels so “real” that you just process it as normal.
Murakami (and this is not a negative trait!) is very good at capturing the feeling of a dream. This book is surrealist, illogical, and somewhat nonsensical to some and I can see how one might lose patience with this writing style, but I largely found it fascinating and greatly enjoyable.

Content Warnings

pretzemilia's review against another edition

4.75

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

mimithefroggy's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective relaxing sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I honestly don’t know how to rate this. Orginially i wanted to do 3.5 stars because of the amount of nudity and sexual activity in the book, but then I raised it to 4.25 since it ended off nicely. The whole book felt like a never-ending dream and this is the first book I’ve read that had that type of style.

It took me a long time to realize that the whole meaning of the book was based on Noburu Wataya. He’s the one that caused all the problems for Toru. Haruki Murakami did a great job with the anticipation, and only around page 400/500 did i really notice that it was about Noburu Wataya.

Content Warnings

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