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1Q84: The Complete Trilogy by Haruki…
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1Q84: The Complete Trilogy (edition 2012)

by Haruki Murakami (Author)

Series: 1Q84 (1-3)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
8,852352917 (3.82)3 / 777
An ode to George Orwell's "1984" told in alternating male and female voices relates the stories of Aomame, an assassin for a secret organization who discovers that she has been transported to an alternate reality, and Tengo, a mathematics lecturer and novice writer.
Member:Hemil
Title:1Q84: The Complete Trilogy
Authors:Haruki Murakami (Author)
Info:Vintage (2012), 1328 pages
Collections:Your library
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1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

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» See also 777 mentions

English (337)  Dutch (4)  Spanish (3)  Catalan (2)  Italian (2)  Greek (1)  Chinese, simplified (1)  German (1)  All languages (351)
Showing 1-5 of 337 (next | show all)
I hesitated reading 1Q84 as it is such a tome of a book. Picked it up on a whim, and surprisingly it is quite easy-going, easier than some much thinner books. Like other Murakami books, there's no need to ponder too much. Just go along with the ride and a helluva one it will be. ( )
  siok | Feb 17, 2024 |
Boom goes the dynamite. I finished it! Took me 44 days, but it never was really a slog. At its core, its a basic star crossed lovers, who met as children, moved apart and always thought of each other and wanted to find each other. But its Murakami, it can't be that simple, and it isn't. He's a struggling author who ghost writes a book by a girl who escapes from a religious cult, that's about these mysterious creature who are causing havoc. She's a fitness instructor who is also an assassin who grew up in another religious cult and some how gets transported to an alternate earth, maybe as a result of the mysterious creatures that He was writing about? Yeah its very weird but in a very good way. Even though I think it falls under my theory that once an author gets "too big for his britches", his editor can't keep him contained and large tomes are the result.

The book was originally published as 3 separate books, but when combined to 1157 pages, I think it could have used a bit of trimming. Some of the exposition might not have been entirely necessary. Despite that, I still enjoyed the book a lot, would recommend and Murakami continues to be one of those authors I will always read when given the opportunity.

Book Quote:
And is that why we joined our bodies? Tengo wanted to ask Fuka-Eri. In that wild storm last night. What did that mean? But he did not ask those questions, which might have been inappropriate, and which he knew she never would have answered.

If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation, Tengo's father said somewhere. ( )
  mahsdad | Feb 10, 2024 |
This is a book sorely in need of an editor. It reminds me of the narrative flabbiness of the Harry Potter books after book 3. Once writers become famous, it seems that editors become more timid with their editing. I skipped entire chapters in the second half of the book without losing much in the way of plot. This is a bad sign.

The story itself is a bit flimsy and didn't really interest me. I really enjoy Murakami's writing style ( through his translator), so I powered through as well as I could, but I definitely lost interest by about page 600. The story just felt stalled.

This is my first full-length Murakami novel, which I understand to be a bad place to start, but it was the first title available at the library. Murakami still intrigues me, bit I'd recommend skipping this doorstop of a novel. ( )
  cmayes | Dec 21, 2023 |
DNF @ 17 Percent (7h45/ 46h45)

Not rating because of the relatively earlier DNF.

This was my first Murakami. After seeing his novels constantly dominating any list of the top modern surrealist and magic realism literature lists, I have been so very excited to sink my teeth into his full and lauded library. I had heard that his handling of women wasn't great, so I tried to go in with that in mind--trying to make an effort to be aware of it, but get past it to enjoy the loudly proselytised wonders surely on offer.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that.

I was intrigued and entertained by Murakami's prose and approach from the beginning. There is an tonal aspect that reminded me of the Kazuo Ishiguro artful restraint, particularly of the narrative texture of Klara and the Sun with just the slightest hint of an almost Chuck Palahniuk edge of grim whimsy (grihmsy?). It's funny, I found the airlessness of Klara and the Sun, especially compared to Never Let Me Go and Ishiguro's musical short story collection, too cold and clinical for me to really engage, whereas a similar air in 1Q84 felt stark, but less stilted. This dual human perspectives and their details certainly breathed more life into the prose.

The towards the coming strangeness and how it seems grounded in the story had me excited, but at nearly eight hours in it was starting to feel like unnecessary edging. This is one of my biggest issues with the book, it feels bloated and unedited. The precision and effectiveness of the prose itself simply doesn't reflected in what appear to be extraneous and over long scenes, and dialogue that goes to lengths that might approach reality, feel lugubrious and interminable.

I wanted something to happen.

It is made very clear that the men care too little or too much about the women in their lives, particularly those under their care and authority. The male lead is concentious and caring gentleman, so it's 'OK' if he's a bit of a creep over a teenage girl. Like, this is all I can really say about him, beyond him being a teacher and a writer.

It is made excruciatingly clear that the female protagonist fucks. She has a thing for middle-aged whose hair is starting thin with odd-shaped heads and average to slightly larger penises. Murakami was around 60 when he wrote this. The frank discussion of sex and how uncomfortable it made the men she approached in bars was amusing, but the amount of time spent on her proclivities seems incredibly excessive for establishing that she is single, sexually confident, and likes want she she likes. She's also an assassin (this is a representative amount of text on these subjects). She has a special ice pick weapon and she is trained in the deadly art of kicking people with penises in the balls. She was even training ball-kicking classes until the men were made uncomfortable.

The disparity in the above descriptions is also representative of the physical detail we get about the protagonists and characters that share their gender. Men are dudes who might have some clothes and a bit of a face. Women are ravishing creatures with detailed breasts and agonising detail who draw the eye of the men and narrator in to focus on lascivious details, when they aren't thinking about how good the morning after some food good dick feels inside--I described this crassly on purpose, but it doesn't approach the way Murakami describes it.

Look, I'm not a prude. I'm a woman who appreciates other women, and I'm certainly not adverse to a sex scene or smut. What I don't like is clinical sex-less sex and creepy, voyeuristic description characters and narrators who aren't being played that way, and a gaze and description that is purely there for the cis fellas.

Ultimately, I was putting up with how agonisingly slow it was going, but the fact that it was being padded out with what is, frankly, pervy old man shit, was more than I could take, so I had to stop. To an extent that's on me for not being able to get past it, but I shouldn't fucking have to be honest.

I'm rather devastated and had to pull myself out of an autistic meltdown because I've been so excited and heard so much praise and I hate being left out and feeling like a wokescold. I want to be clear, I think that this stuff is shitty and maybe even go so far as to use the P-word, but I don't think there's anything wrong with reading and enjoying this book if you can get past that. I certainly don't want to take this conversation to social media or even think about the C-word. I just think it sucks and I'm disappointed and I'm actually pissed off with my own ambivalence about whether or not I want to know anything more about magic goats, tiny people and religious communist insurrectionists or whatever this book might actually be about another ten or so hours in.

*Disappointed.GIF*
1 vote RatGrrrl | Dec 20, 2023 |
Unraveled slowly, but beautifully. Well-worth the many pages. Although told in third-person, the point of view shifts between three different characters. Yet, Murakami narrates as if hanging over the character's head. It was lovely and charming. The story itself was mysterious and metaphysical yet straight-forward and simple. I've finished the book, but I'm not sure if I entire understand it all. I'm still thinking about it, which is a mark of a good novel. ( )
  mimo | Dec 18, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 337 (next | show all)
Murakami name-drops George Orwell's laugh-riot 1984 several times. Both books deal with the concept of manipulated realities. And while Murakami's book is more than three times as long, it's also more fun to read.
added by WeeklyAlibi | editWeekly Alibi, John Bear (Jan 26, 2012)
 
As always, the experience is a bit like watching a Hollywood-influenced Japanese movie in a version that’s been dubbed by American actors. This time, sad to say, it also reminded me of stretches of the second season of Twin Peaks: familiar characters do familiar things, with the expected measure of weirdness, but David Lynch has squabbled with the network and left the show.
 
I finished 1Q84 feeling that its spiritual project was heroic and beautiful, that its central conflict involved a pitched battle between realism and unrealism (while being scrupulously fair to both sides), and that, in our own somewhat unreal times, younger readers, unlike me, would have no trouble at all believing in the existence of Little People and replicants. What they may have trouble with is the novel’s absolute faith in the transformative power of love.
 
One of the many longueurs in Haruki Murakami’s stupefying new novel, “1Q84,” sends the book’s heroine, a slender assassin named Aomame, into hiding. To sustain her through this period of isolation she is given an apartment, groceries and the entirety of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.”

For pity’s sake, if you have that kind of spare time, follow her lead. Aomame has the chance to read a book that is long and demanding but well worth the effort. The very thought of Aomame’s situation will pain anyone stuck in the quicksand of “1Q84.” You, sucker, will wade through nearly 1,000 uneventful pages while discovering a Tokyo that has two moons and is controlled by creatures that emerge from the mouth of a dead goat. These creatures are called Little People. They are supposed to be very wise, even though the smartest thing they ever say is “Ho ho.”
 
1Q84 is psychologically unconvincing and morally unsavory, full of lacunas and loose ends, stuffed to the gills with everything but the kitchen sink and a coherent story. By every standard metric, it is gravely flawed. But, I admit, standard metrics are difficult to apply to Murakami. It's tempting to write that out of five stars, I'd give this book two moons.
 

» Add other authors (21 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Haruki Murakamiprimary authorall editionscalculated
Dean, SuzanneCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Gabriel, PhilipTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Hiroto, AllisonNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Holm, MetteTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Rubin, JayTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
It's a Barnum and Bailey world,
just as phoney as it can be,
But it wouldn't be make-believe
if you believed in me

"It's Only a Paper Moon,"
~~ Billy Rose and E. Y. "Yip" Harburg
Dedication
First words
The taxi's radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast.
Quotations
I'm taking you straight to bald heaven, nonstop.
Don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.
Please remember: things are not what they seem.
Sit back, relax and enjoy the smell of evil
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
This is those works (sets, single-volume editions) containing the complete text of 1Q84. Please do not combine with any single volumes from multi-book versions.
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Wikipedia in English (2)

An ode to George Orwell's "1984" told in alternating male and female voices relates the stories of Aomame, an assassin for a secret organization who discovers that she has been transported to an alternate reality, and Tengo, a mathematics lecturer and novice writer.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary
Assassin, cult, love,
two moons over Tokyo.
"Not all wounds gush blood".
(Jenni_Canuck)

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