I remember reading somewhere that Haruki Murakami’s books are among the most-stolen from bookstores. I’m not sure why that is, but there’s no denying that the Japanese author has very devoted fans. Reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was my first experience with him, and left me both sort of getting it and sort of not. It’s a hard story to describe: there’s a guy, Toru Okada, who lives outside of Tokyo with his wife, Kumiko, and their cat (which they’ve named Noboru Wataya, after her disliked brother) has gone missing. Toru has recently left his longtime job in a lawyer’s office, but is unemployed while he tries to figure out what’s next. Kumiko wants him to find the cat, and his searches for it lead him to strike up an acquaintance with a strange teenage girl, May, who lives down the block. That’s when the phone calls start.

First, there’s a woman who says she knows who he is and starts talking dirty to him. But then there’s a psychic, a woman named Malta Kano, who explains that Kumiko has reached out to her to help with locating the cat. Kumiko and her family believe in things like psychics, having previously arranged for Kumiko and Toru to spend time with an old man called Mr. Honda, allegedly for spiritual consultations…but all that actually happens is that he repeatedly tells them about his experiences as a soldier in Manchuria during World War II. Toru meets with Malta Kano, and her sister, Cresta, but before long Kumiko herself disappears. She sends Toru a letter explaining that she’s left him for a coworker with whom she’s been having an affair, but he doesn’t believe this and decides to try to find her, which brings him into contact with even more strange people, including a mother and son who he calls Nutmeg and Cinnamon. And appearing throughout is the sound of a bird, that sounds like something mechanical being wound.

This is a weird book, and I’m not sure I entirely understand it. It’s one of those that you finish and almost want to flip right back to the beginning and start again, to see if it makes any more sense the second time through. I think there will be a second time through, though certainly not now. And there will definitely be more Murakami. If I had to chose a single word to describe it, it would be “dream-like”. The way Murakami uses language and builds the world of the book create a feeling of constant loose connection, almost a structured free association, in which the concept that would tie everything together is just tantalizingly out of reach. It works well, and I found myself turning the pages and getting drawn further and further into it, though I suspected (correctly) that not everything was going to be tied up in a neat bow by the end.

Honestly, though, once I finished it, though I felt like I liked it, I have had a hard time articulating exactly why. It was obtuse, the female characters were largely underdeveloped (though I did love May), and it felt like some storylines were just dropped like hot potatoes. But despite its flaws, it’s strangely compelling. There’s something magical and mysterious about the world as Murakami creates it, and it did get me thinking about some of the deeper themes that were explored, like our obligations to each other as people and the nature of power in relationships. It’s intellectually engaging despite the kind of haziness about it. If you’re ready for something non-traditional, I would recommend this book. ( )

Never in my life have I felt so definitively pranked as when I finished this book.

First off, the book has absolutely no substance. I have no clear idea what I gained by reading it (not even in the abstract), and nothing that happens in the book is meaningful in any way. This is not to say that the sentences are not well constructed or even that other people might not get anything out of it, just that for me this book was just a blank. It felt like it was trying very hard to be a horoscope, so that whoever read it would see exactly what they wanted to see in the extremely vague prose.

Ultimately, it felt almost offensive to me as a reader. It's so self indulgent and Murakami's style in the book seems to exude his confidence in the fact that he could literally write anything and people would gobble it up. For roughly the first half of the book, this style was fine. The book was surreal, but still had some logical storyline and basic sense of continuity. Somewhere around the middle a full year gets skipped and the book goes completely off the rails. Every chapter after that felt completely random, and I sensed that Murakami really wanted me to feel awed by his literary prowess when I was instead just bothered and frustrated by the fact that every sentence created more questions than it answered. It was only really at this point that I realized that the book was never really going to be concluded in any convincing way, and it's possible that that was part of what detracted from my enjoyment of it the most.

Overall, not a book I'd recommend mostly because I don't understand it (and am quite sure it can't actually be understood, since I'd be surprised if Murakami even had any idea what it was "really about"). I found Murakami's style in the more realist setting of Norwegian Wood more convincing and appealing, and if his other books are more like this (which I fear/have heard they are), I will probably stay away.

Also, what's with women in his books randomly getting naked in the moonlight? Definitely a strange recurring pattern. ( )

This was my first Murakami novel. I liked some parts of it a lot. Especially the first half of the story - a fascinating blend of reality and fantasy. What is real, and what is a dream? But I don't think the different elements of the novel came together and formed a coherent story. All the WWII stuff with harrowing stories, the young girl's ramblings, hiding in the well, etc. What's the connection? I liked Creta Kano and her back story, but she suddenly disappeared from the story without explanation. Well, overall, I liked the feeling it created of loneliness and the inability to know what reality is. ( )

Weird as hell but still strangely compelling although I got lost in the twists and turns that link the novel's parallel worlds. ( )

3.5 ( )