The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: Haruki Murakami

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Mr. Okada,” she said, “I believe that you are entering a new phase of your life in which many different things will occur. The disappearance of your cat is only the beginning.”

Pending a more formal review, below is a song that I pieced together by way of dedication to the book and Paul Bryant's parody.At the insistence of a Goodreads compadre who seems to have deleted his account since I bought this, I decided to plunk down my money and give it a shot. What did I think? I dug it but don't start fitting me for skinny jeans and a distressed faux-vintage t-shirt quite yet. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a very breezy read, surprisingly so since it was translated from Japanese. It tells the story of Toru Okada's disintegrating life, from his quitting his job at the law firm, to the family cat, Noboru Wataya, named after his wife's brother, going missing, to his wife Kumiko disappearing one morning. From there, things get stranger by the minute. Toru gets entangled with a sort of psychic therapist, Malta Kano, and her sister Creta, as well as striking up an unusual friendship with the unusual girl next door, May Kasahara. And that's before the really weird things start happening.

Okada and Kumiko finally communicate, messaging each other through computers, and she tells him that he should forget about her. Okada tells her that he has been trying to find her by looking into the darkness and searching for something he calls More of everything. Kumiko says she does not understand, and they say good-bye.Toru Okada, an average man living in Tokyo, quits his job and becomes a househusband while his wife, Kumiko, works to support them both. At first, Toru enjoys his newfound freedom and is not in any hurry to return to work. One day, Toru’s cat goes missing and he goes out looking for it while Kumiko is at work. While strolling through his neighborhood, he comes across the Miyawaki residence, an abandoned home with a dry well on the property. Across the road from the Miyawaki residence lives a teenager named May Kasahara, who is taking a break from school while she recovers from a motorcycle accident. Toru befriends May, who offers to help him find his missing cat. May is a rebellious and plain-spoken girl who is obsessed with death. Toru enjoys her company, though he does not know what to make of her. Ultimately, he and May fail to find the missing cat. Chapter 17 is not completely removed, instead the excerpt where Toru takes passport photos is removed and the very lengthy conversation Toru has with his uncle about buying real estate is condensed into one English paragraph. [9] Soon after Okada and Malta meet, Malta’s sister, Creta, goes to the Okada house to take a water sample from the tap. After Okada urges her to give him more information about his missing cat, she tells him that she does not know how everything will add up, but that she must tell him about her past. She recounts how, when she was young, she had suffered from physical pain so terrible that she decided to commit suicide at the age of twenty. She crashed her brother’s car into a wall but survived to discover that the pain had gone away. To pay for the damage to the car and the wall, she became a prostitute. Creta then reveals that Okada’s brother-in-law had been a client of hers. Surprised, Okada asks her why her sister Malta said she had been raped by Wataya. Creta leaves Okada’s house as he is fetching her more coffee. Lt.Mamiya is the most obvious as he states his views on the 'curse'. The Manskinner is the one who passes this curse onto Mamiya. Nutmeg and Cinammmon also have this. Cinammon as she has to perform her fittings over and over. Nutmeg has it to a lesser extent. He is portrayed as extremely intelligent and as he only was affected by the curse when he was a child maybe it could only take away his speech. In all its sensitivity, emotional depth and keen understanding of the complications of the human mind The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is a stellar work of literature and a tour de force. I cannot go ahead and say it is Murakami's magnum opus (it is not his longest novel), since I haven't finished with all his translated works and besides he is only 63 and I expect him to keep writing books for as long as it matters, each one better than the last. But I'm forced to admit that of the 5 Murakami books I have had the fortune to read so far, this one stands out as the most gripping, most cerebral yet compassionate commentary on loneliness and human misery.