The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki MurakamiMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This strange tale starts slowly like a reel of string unspooling languidly - the protagonist simply fritters his life – sitting, loafing, sleeping (and having vivid wet dreams), cooking, eating, dawdling in a street, doing his laundry, ironing his clothes and other such mundane activities. To this monofilament of a life myriad strands get added in the form of enigmatic women and inscrutable, yet ominous, men literally crawling out of the woodwork.
The yarn then gets messy and entangled as the plot quickens and thickens. Events and persons get juxtaposed between the past and present. The Murakamiesque landscape turns into a rollicking read with magical realism abounding the pages.
The author’s obsession with female pinnae and mammaries is par for the course.
Murakami is a virtuoso with words. He is a great one for imbuing life into non-living stuff:
Maybe when people take their eyes off them, inanimate objects become even more inanimate.
The liquid seemed somehow uncomfortable in its tall glass, as if it had nothing better to do than produce its little bubbles.
My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I thought.
When a delusion wants to come, it comes, like a period. And you can’t just meet it at the front door and say, “Sorry I am busy today, try me later.”
I experienced an eerie sensation – like déjà vu – the Great Kingham Mountains in China were part of the story in Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem that I had just finished. The same mountain range again featured in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Magical realism in reality!
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