mmatti300 's review for:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
3.5
adventurous dark hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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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