Take a photo of a barcode or cover
counthannahreadsalot 's review for:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
Everything that I really like about Murakami shines in this work. It asks some very deep questions about existence, the meaning of life, and destiny or fate. I especially liked its examination of world-altering events: how you’re still living in the same world, but it feels different because how could you be in the same world as you were before whatever event happened that fundamentally changed your worldview? It was a very interesting way to examine through plot how when it feels like the world has changed, it is actually us who’ve changed.
The plot is incredibly complex, and I could go on about it at length, but all I’ll say is that it is a book that makes you think about the human condition and the choices we make in life, and it does so in a way that is not incredibly abstract or hard to grasp as a reader.
Of course, Murakami is also up to his usual Murakami shenanigans, with weird sex scenes, minors doing questionable things, and just an all around occasionally deeply disturbing scene. I didn’t mind it as much in this book as I have in others- everything fit into his overall narrative in a way that made sense, and even though it was, of course, bizarre, it actually made sense that it was happening for once. If you can last through the first 100 pages where some weird stuff happens without any explanation, it cools down a lot and also starts to make way more sense.
This would probably be the first book I’d recommend to anyone looking to read a work by Murakami. It may very well be my favorite work by him to date, other than 1Q84, which is much longer and less accessible to a casual reader. It is certainly Murakami at his best.
The plot is incredibly complex, and I could go on about it at length, but all I’ll say is that it is a book that makes you think about the human condition and the choices we make in life, and it does so in a way that is not incredibly abstract or hard to grasp as a reader.
Of course, Murakami is also up to his usual Murakami shenanigans, with weird sex scenes, minors doing questionable things, and just an all around occasionally deeply disturbing scene. I didn’t mind it as much in this book as I have in others- everything fit into his overall narrative in a way that made sense, and even though it was, of course, bizarre, it actually made sense that it was happening for once. If you can last through the first 100 pages where some weird stuff happens without any explanation, it cools down a lot and also starts to make way more sense.
This would probably be the first book I’d recommend to anyone looking to read a work by Murakami. It may very well be my favorite work by him to date, other than 1Q84, which is much longer and less accessible to a casual reader. It is certainly Murakami at his best.