Haruki Murakami

Superimposes the collapse of a marriage over the investigation into recovered war memories and a man's search for his own identity

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Jay Rubin

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I think we all have thought about this idea more than one time, no one needs us or we can die alone and no one will notice that. I can't precisely put that into words but is so sad and now i can't stop thinking about it. And i hope we all are surrounded by the people who love and need us all the time.

Miyamoto Musashi

No doubt about it: a whole day had gone by. But my one-day absence was probably not having an effect on anybody. Not one human being had noticed that I was gone, likely. I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

Prashanth Srivatsa

Set in Japan, the Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a story of bizarre incidents, characters and their motives, interwoven with menacing flair and humour that is unique to Murakami. A lost cat, a baseball bat, a despotic Russian General and a series of prophecies that seem to unfurl when you least expect them to, it's a magical ride.

Murakami once again arouses a deep sinking dread inside my bones, crescendoing with each page and then leaving me completely hollow by the very end. At times I'll pause in this book every now and then and think to myself, am I actually enjoying myself or am I just forcing myself to trudge through waffle? But I think all the frustrations and confusion and disturbances add up to this incredibly specific experience of existentialist/nihilist terror and hope only elicited by murakami. So yes I eat it up every time

anarh

This is the second Murakami book I've read and it's like the two books I've read are almost the same. Alternating reality with fantasy plays with your mind, many times you wonder what you are reading. His books are strange. Some like it and some don't. I lean towards the ones they don't like. His style is not for me. No distinct connections between plot and characters.

This particular book is unnecessarily long

Konstantina Ag

This is the second Murakami book I've read and it's like the two books I've read are almost the same. Alternating reality with fantasy plays with your mind, many times you wonder what you are reading. His books are strange. Some like it and some don't. I lean towards the ones they don't like. His style is not for me. No distinct connections between plot and characters.

This particular book is unnecessarily long



Frederik De Bosschere

This book has everything you come to expect, and want, from a Murakami novel. There’s ample descriptions of drinking whiskey or beers by the unit, of the ingredients that go into every meal, of very specific records playing, of the shapes and aesthetics of petite women and small neighbourhoods. And of course, a narrative featuring a cat that is missing, characters that feel like ghosts, a world that has a hard time sticking to the singular, and the moon in different (yet always significant) phases. It’s by no means a unique tale within his oeuvre, but it’s the master doing exactly what makes him so uniquely skilled at his craft.

Taylor

When this book is re-translated, I fully intend on re-reading. Something about the prose is just off, not at all representative of what Murakami can be in English. Maybe the second time around I'll understand it better, too.

Anna Brunner

I just. I have to have at least a week to process this. I have no idea what just happened all i understand is that murakami is a genius & wind up bird chronicles is a modern classic

“the book which is associated with it”

Sanat Gersappa

609 pages of pure goodness. A masterpiece and the best book I've read this year.

Cams Campbell

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It follows the story of Mr Okada, a seemingly ordinary fellow at the outset but his life becomes weirder and weirder as the story progresses. My favourite chunks were the stories of Lt Mamiya. It's kind of built up of different people's stories, all of which affect the protagonist and leads to his becoming much more self aware.

It's a somewhat quirky tale that is quite unlike anything I've ever read before. It grabbed a hold of my attention like a thief in the park and kept a hold of it until the end of the story. I normally read fantasy or sci-fi so this is a bit of a step outside the box for me and one that I'm very glad I took. I'm recommending this to pretty much everyone I know and for good reason.

Thanks to Steve Betz for the recommendation!

Emily Morgan

Reading this book was an exercise in discomfort. I was not in a good place at the time, and Murakami's nightmarish dreamscapes seemed only to amplify this pervasive unease. And despite it all, I could not put this book down. It seems ordinary at first, if not a bit mundane, until all of a sudden it's not. Things get very weird very quickly, and you find yourself, along with the main character, spiralling into an incredibly complex maze of missing cats, ominous prophecies and magic wells. The only thing you can do is surrender to the chaos;  “The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down."  

Every chapter seems to introduce a character more eccentric than the last, blending their different narratives into a patchwork tale of a fragmented and ultimately unknowable world. My friend told me not to expect any closure from this book, and she was right. In many ways it leaves you feeling more confused and uncentered than before. Overall, I think my favourite works of fiction this year have been the ones that challenged my entire conception of what a piece of fiction should do. And that's why this book makes the list. 

 “Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it.”

Fraser Simons

10% in twice, I gave up. I rewound and started listening again because I just completely glazed over despite the narrator actually being pretty good.

Alithea

Arun Kale

You can't fight the flow. And you shouldn't try to.

What in the name of all things holy even is this book? I haven't got a clue. I'd like to see what you all think of it.

Murakami, through all of his literary works, has either created his own genre or just made mainstream the "surrealist lit" niche. Some of his works are beautiful, lyrical prose--this being one of them--but, then again, prose style isn't everything. Which this book proves.

It had a steady start.

That's all I can say.

All of the characters were still bewildering even after the pages and pages of backstory we received--the only characters really clear to us at the end were Lieutenant Mamiya and May Kasahara. And that's out of an entire cast of characters whose backstories were basically shoved down our throats every through pages because of their inexplicable need to expound upon their personal background towards our POV and protagonist character, Mr. Okada. I didn't really mind him, I guess. He was sort of a passive influence throughout the book, listening to others' stories and providing his own along with them. Towards the end, though, I actually have no idea what happened. Like, seriously. What.

I guess I can appreciate what Murakami was trying to do with all of this, but honestly, the only character I really enjoyed hearing from was May Kasahara, and even she got a bit tiresome towards the end.

Love it, hate it, it's still Murakami and worth reading. Three stars. 2.5, maybe.

Yeng Tan

Volkan Yorulmaz

If you are a fan of Murakami, you should read this book as well. But I have a disclaimer, this book is really long. It took more than 1 month for me to complete the reading of this book. I read the digital version and when I see the original version in the book store, I said "wow, that is so long!". And out of this book, let's see what I highlight:

There was a small stand of trees nearby, and from it you could hear the mechanical cry of a bird that sounded as if it were winding a spring. We called it the wind-up bird.

Cats have their own way of living. They’re not stupid. If a cat stopped living where you happened to be, that meant it had decided to go somewhere else. If it got tired and hungry, it would come back.

https://myhighlightz.blogspot.com/202...

Liz Riley

Weird book but captivating once you really get into it. It centers around a man whose wife leaves him, befriends a teenager with health problems, and become strangley connected with an old, vacant house down the street. 



Once you pick it up you won't want to put it down because you want to know what the hell is going on.

Nat Welch

I just couldn't finish this. Too strange.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force—and one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels. In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.

A Novel

Nicholas Hanemann

Dropping this about a quarter of the way through. Might be the narration, but everything seems wholly uninteresting and tedious. There's some curious stuff going on, and it seems like it *might* become substantial, but I'm already five and a half hours in with nothing to show for it. Maybe I'll try to read it somewhere down the road.

Omar Fernandez

This book is not everyone's cup of tea. Instead of summarizing the plot or trying to make sense of it, I'd like to offer some reasons why you may enjoy the book. Then again, you may decide it's not something you'd enjoy, and that would make me very happy since I would have saved you 600+ pages of reading material. Then again, I enjoyed the book. 

This book is one to be treated like a dream. As you read it, you will find an unexpected and thrilling plot that will keep you turning the pages. Such events will all fit in nicely in the world Murakami has created for you. Just like in a dream, however, you will wake up and feel deeply betrayed in retrospect. You see, the book is not one to be understood by linear thinking, which you will inevitably try to do. Some things simply won't make sense. 

What makes the book a page-turner? A rich set of characters with their own unique story. 

Your main is a man trying to make sense of his life. He seems to be thinking deeply, yet doing little else than what he's asked to do. You could say he's drifting through life. He is then faced with one challenge after another as he tries to figure out why his wife vanished. Numerous seemingly unrelated events in his life somehow come together to explain the mystery. Yet the mystery is never quite fully understandable or explained. 

The story puts into words emotions often deeply buried within. It's an exploration of loneliness, love, lust, betrayal, duty, power and corruption. Murakami elicits deeply puzzling and uncomfortable feelings. Although the lack of closure can be unsatisfying, you walk away with a new perspective.

Why may you enjoy this book? It can be a very cathartic experience. 
Why may you not enjoy it? The emotions you explore while reading the book may be foreign or dark, the lack of linear thinking makes you quite uncomfortable, and some things just never quite make sense.

Luke Kanies

Shocked I finished this book.

It seemed like it was three times longer than it needed to be, and so much of it felt like just sitting around moaning.

I'm writing this review a year later, and I distinctly remember my judgement of the book, and a couple of scenes, but the overall book is just swamped by the feeling of confusion that this is so popular.

Jade Flynn

If you as a reader are unable to morph into an alternative version of Alice who doesn’t give a fuck and just rolls with it in Wonderland, you probably won’t like Murakami. This is my fifth novel by him and I’ll definitely be reading a sixth.

Jess

So an overall good reading experience, but I came out of this story with a lot less clarity about what was happening than I'd normally like to. 

I enjoyed Haruki's beautiful writing style, I found it engrossing and penetrating. The atmosphere of the Tokyo suburb lingered during my time away from the novel and evoked a lot of emotion from me. 

I admit that before this reading experience I would become disinterested in a book after finding out that they included magical realism, but I will no longer do that. This book has been a doorway for me to a different form of fiction. 

With that being said, I would personally prefer a bit more of a concrete plot for me to five it a four or five star. (Three stars for me is a "liked it" rating.)

Jeni Enjaian

This is yet another one of those books that people absolutely rave about and I simply don't get. I'll admit though that the writing is beautiful. Murakami definitely has talent.

That being said though, his style is just not for me. It's relatively non-linear without distinct connections between plot points and characters. This happen that make very little sense and there's no connection. I noticed that right off with the random phone call and Okada's lack of a question of "Who on earth is this and why are you calling me?"

As has been noted by others, Okada's "relationship" with May is odd, peculiar and very disturbing. It makes no sense and doesn't actually seem to add anything to the plot. In fact, all of the various plot points make absolutely no sense and do not seem to have anything to do with each other. 

I did not really enjoy this book and cannot recommend it either. Some people may enjoy it but I am not one of those people.

Guin Hartinger

Brevity is the soul of wit. There's a difference between compelling dreamlike imagery that goes somewhere and compelling dreamlike imagery that is a waste of time. There is an unbelievable amount of fat that should have been trimmed from this book. And that is coming from someone whose favorite books are long (LOTR, Once and Future King, etc). Compare this to Salman Rushdie or Robert Holdstock and there is no contest. Those writers use fantasy and magic realism for some purpose. There is just too much in WUB that goes nowhere and just frustrates me as a weak effort to intrigue readers by withholding answers. After 550 pages you should start giving some answers. After that long it's not intriguing, it's a waste of my time.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

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