A review by jentang
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

5.0

This is, without a doubt, my favorite of Murakami's works that I've read to date. This book is true to the core of Murakami's stylistic essence, and yet it possesses almost none of the self sabotage usually exhibited within his works that causes me to grit my teeth; what little it does have falls away in the grand scheme of the haunting, blurred-borders world contained within this novel. The pure imaginative skill it took to weave together so many parallel characters, each with their own mystique, into one connected sphere with origins from decades past is fantastic to even just imagine. I can't help but gush over this book - it reminds me of a completed version of Kafka's "The Castle", of which I have been mourning the missing ending since I read it in the summer of 2022. Anywho, Murakami's mystery permeated my reality ever so naturally and subtly; how could it not, with the (typically) indirect poised questions on the powers of fate and self on every page? This deeply gripping existential fodder is passed along to readers through women who are more powerful and purposeful than they are sex objects and men who have well established identities not tied to the opposite sex - this excited me greatly, given Murakami's reputation. I found myself identifying heavily with Kumiko, and was delighted that she never met crippling destruction to her character's spirit at Murakami's hand despite being the most probable woman to do so in the novel. I'm not sure how Murakami understands how a young woman might be impacted by long-term, self-imposed isolation within the mind and a damaged sense of self derived from complex family dynamics, down to the way she behaves in her relationships and what love she might have for cats, but I suppose it's in the same way that Woody Allen seems to understand his younger lovers in his films. On top of the neat exploration into control and chance that it already is, this book is (I'm assuming) also a political and historical commentary on Japan's state of affairs. It is my deep regret that I have no historical knowledge or interest, disallowing me from speaking further on this matter, but I was not any the less dissuaded from gobbling up even the paragraphs focusing strictly on setting historical context for a scene with ties to Japan's presence in Manchuria, which must say something on its own. I truly wish I could dissect this book from start to finish, or even summarize some of Murakami's techniques and most unique elements of creative flair, but it's genuinely so unique that doing so would be an impossible feat for me. In a much less showy way of imploring you to read this: the book started with

cooking spaghetti

, and ended with

the moon and duckpeople

. I'm not sure a book has ever spoken to me on such a personal level more.