1Q84 (edition 2011)

People always say that reading a Murakami book takes a lot of time and at the end of it all you are still confused. Its true - no other author so mimics the actual effect of life on the psyche. And even if you are confused, you are sated. If, as a reader, you really want everything explained, I'd go for Agatha Christie instead. Murakami will never lay it all out for you. ( )

I've decided that's it's one thing if you invest a short bit of time in a book and you end up not liking it. It's altogether another thing when you invest several months and nearly 47 hours of listening and you end up with going huh?

I really liked the set up and I was intrigued by the first part of the book. Then it really slowed down, and by the time of the stakeout I was thinking to myself--this is what they always say stakeouts are like--long drawn-out affairs with nothing interesting happening.

I kept hoping that something would happen at the end to clear everything up, but it never did. Someone should have fired Chekhov's gun. ( )

Was it riveting? No. It was oddly pleasant however, like a dream while taking an afternoon nap. I really enjoyed Murakami's writing style and characterizations much more than the story itself. I will look to his earlier works to see what everyone raves about. This could not possibly be his best work. ( )

I think it's funny when I see bad reviews for this book, because some people think its so awful. I loved it. It was weird, long, repetitive, true. I didn't see anything wrong with that though. I just skipped parts that dragged, and loved the rest of it. I thought and talked about it for weeks after with friends and family. My favorite part was the photo on the back cover ;) ( )

All books are one book: the rubber plant in both this and Blue Castle. All books would be even more one book but that the detail has to be in common between the current book and another not more than two or three back. Also, Aomame likes hers but Valancy doesn't like the one she's responsible for.

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I should maybe wait a few days for the venom to subside. Nah. I really liked Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and Norwegian Wood. Now I'm afraid to approach Wild Sheep Chase. It wasn't high up the queue but now I've got to reset my Haruki Murakami meter and remember World and Wood more than this.

It started well and I am not afraid of a 1000-page book. Very early on, this passage warned me: "There was something about the [cab] driver's way of speaking that bothered her, as though he were leaving something important unsaid" (6). Okay, I thought, I'll pay attention to things unsaid. I was pleased to find out, without a spoiler, why the Q: the Japanese word for "nine" sounds like the phonetic letter Q, so 1Q84 should suggest a world (or time) slightly askew. That made sense. The characters showed up and established themselves and action built up and the book progressed well for its first few hundred pages. I figured "If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person" (192) was important if smarmy. "That's what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories" (293) is more my speed, and "What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past" (308).

By page 509, though, I had become impatient. "If she's so important to you, why have you never looked for her until today?" Good question, and one that lacks a decent answer, then or ever.

The detail began to annoy me because none of it led anywhere or contributed to anything. I'll always give the benefit of the doubt to a metaphor about a pebble in a shoe (526) because of Godspell's "By Your Side" (in which the pebble is called Dare) and Human League's Dare with the song "Open Your Heart." Sadly, the descriptions and sidelines began to feel like sand in my shoe, weighing me down. Unless you're making it yourself or your jacket restricts your ability to climb a tree or the color of your shirt illustrates your personality, for me to know your every stitch of clothing is unnecessary. I understood the translator's need to restate some foods for non-Japanese readers, but the foods of breakfast and the ingredients of dinner don't matter.

You can't have this much emphasis on a cabbie -- his music, his telling Aomame to watch for things out of whack -- and then give even a minor character a husband who drives a cab (809) and have that not mean anything. Unless, of course, you're packing your book with meaningless detail and putting a ballpoint pen in the minor character's hair at almost every mention.

Another couple of hundred pages and I had lost all patience. "Somehow, through a gap in the thunder and rain, the darkness and the murder, a special kind of passageway opened, through some logic I can't understand" (712). You're not the only one who can't understand the logic, lady.

Now I began to nitpick about grammar: was it this sloppy in the original? Clouds "scudded swiftly" (774) -- is it possibly to scud slowly? Do the Japanese have some way to meddle with as and like? There were more sentences in which Winston tasted good like a cigarette should than I could stomach. But hm, the time setting of 1984, the character Winston in 1984, my trying to explain the like/as confusion with a slogan from the '50s ... By golly, that does make a lot of sense!*

Someone recommends reading In Search of Lost Time. Because in 1Q84 you've lost 1984, get it? See? Here's a hammer, see? You're sure you get it? Although Murakami tells the reader exactly what layers a character is wearing and tells the reader that the character is wearing all these layers because it's cold out, he doesn't explain the recommender's joke about madeleines maybe having "a positive effect on the flow of time" (974). Maybe it's fair for Murakami to assume that his Western readers will get the reference, and even for his Japanese ones, but I think it's elitist.

Now I was impatient. Not only food detail but redundancy: "Then he went to a soba noodle shop and ordered a bowl of soba noodles with tempura" (763). "Ushikawa considered going to the discount electrical goods store in front of the station and buying an electric space heater or electric blanket" (769).

This bit did make me laugh: "Most of the daytime programs appealed to housewives and elderly listeners. The people who appeared on the programs told jokes that fell flat, pointlessly burst out laughing, gave their moronic, hackneyed opinions, and played music so awful you felt like covering your ears. Periodically they gave blaring sales pitches for products no one could possibly want" (764).
I couldn't decide if this passage suited this book or "Car Talk" better.

Murakami set this 2010 book in 1984 I think only because of 1984. No internet for research, no mobile phones for more direct communication, newspapers still viable, but it could have as easily been set up to the mid 1990s and he still could have worked the 9/Q pun into any of those years. Whatever. What makes no sense is an apartment building with only one door, no backdoor, no fire exit, and apartments without peepholes in their front doors. Not that I know anything about residential safety code in Japan now or 30 years ago.

Several elements are left hanging [spoiler alert]:

• Fuka-Eri and Aomame are clearly the same person or the two parts of a whole as the Little People explain. That's how Tengo could impregnate Aomame. Does Fuka-Eri exist in the normal world?


• What happened to Kyoko Yasuda?


• How did Fuka-Eri know Ushikawa was surveilling?


• If Aomame and Tengo go up the stairway into 1984 and leave 1Q84 behind them, is Aomame still pregnant?

* This is from Bloom County when Milo and Opus go to spring Bill from a cult. A member explains the religion to Opus, who in his loveably open-minded way responds, "By golly, that does make a lot of sens-- " whereupon Milo hisses at him from the bushes to snap out of it. That, OMFB, is what I learned in college. (That strip ran when I was in high school but I read the books at UConn. A lot.) ( )