1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)
Haruki Murakami
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector. A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s — 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.
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0I tried very hard to finish this book. I was so close- 80% of the way through! the 1300 page book won, however.
It's probably unfair to Haruki Murakami that this is the only novel of his that I've read. My takeaways:
1. Repetitive: Tengo and Aomame are the two main characters that the book switches back and forth between. There were so many times Murakami beat into the reader's head that Tengo is brilliant at math. Just a brilliant mind, have I mentioned's he's brilliant? And that teaching gives him a sense of calm and escape, etc. etc. And that Tengo just isn't attracted to younger woman. They simply do not attract him. Repeat repeat repeat. Similarly, Murakami tries to overemphasize Aomame's character as a minimalist, strict, brutalist person who likes working out, with just so many over the top descriptions of how extreme and brutal her approach to working out and food prep is. There are so many "character traits" repeated so often that I found myself skimming through paragraphs of description to get to the next plot movement. When Book 3 gave us a look behind the Ushikawa character, I shouted with relief! Finally a different character with different traits I could read about. I didn't realize how painful the repetitive character development (lack thereof) was until Ushikawa's pov.
2. Unnecessarily slow plot: Very few things actually happened in this book when you look at it. The book, the disappearance, the assassination, and the hiding. Murakami pulls you through each development very slowly, and there's this feeling of suspense. He drops little details that make you feel worried or scared, that aren't followed through with. Like the crow. And the fact the nurse "reminds Tengo of a friendly person he knows, but he can't remember", etc. I give him credit for building suspense, but totally subtract all credit because of how many words it takes him to do this, and how little he follows through.
3. Weird sexualization of characters, constantly: The number of times Tengo observes the soft curve of a woman's breast is grating. No matter the situation. Was horrifying. Every character felt surreal and like a caricature. Fuka Eri's breast. The nurse's breast. The other nurse's breast. Tengo's former elementary teacher's breast. This sexualization feels like something a male writer would insert, but maybe instead of blaming the author's gender, I can just attribute it to his inability to create real characters of depth in this novel. Breasts are a good crutch I suppose if you want to communicate quickly to the reader that "this person is just a passing character, no need to pay attention!"
The world Murakami builds slowly does feel surreal and fantasy like, and unique in its existence. But it doesn't have real rules. And as a result, I can't make sense of it and I can't believe in it.
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