12:16:11 1Q84, a book review

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, a 944-page print edition hyped as his magnum opus, strikes me more as simply super-sized, if vintage Murakami--with reservations--and still addictively readable as the master storyteller serves up his signature narrative lines with its swing of wry amusement. The pages turn effortlessly for an easy week's read.

1Q84 probably shows Murakami's most seamless integration to date of his two characteristic fiction forms: the conventional romance narrative a la Norwegian Wood and the surreal adventure of The Windup Bird Chronicle in its wilder passages. When the heroine Aomame climbs down from the elevated freeway, abandoning her taxi in a traffic jam, she enters a parallel world: She goes down the rabbit hole.

Aomame enters a world with, yes, two moons, and where she will find a profound clash of epic Manichaean consequence taking place. But first she has an assassination scheduled. She is a female avenger for hire, along the lines of Steig Larsson's Lisbeth Salander. Wife beaters and worse beware!

The other half of the duo that makes for romance in 1Q84 is young aspiring novelist Tengo--a Murakami stand-in we've seen before. The soulmate he yearns for--Aomame--he first saw and once held her hand in grammar school, then fate took her away ... The romance setup mimics the earlier South of the Border, East of the Sun.

[book cover]Doubtless, 1Q84 pays homage to hardboiled American mystery writers of the 1940s who've influenced Murakami. Aomame meets the employing dowager in a greenhouse that recalls Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. Tengo's dad, whose job is collecting State TV subscription fees door-to-door, recalls the unceasing industry of James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce. In 1Q84, his subscription collection continues even when the dad lapses into a coma!

Still, my chief reservation would be Murakami's willingness to bridge such a long narrative by pushing literary fiction closer to genre thriller, trading nuance for jolts. That Aomame and Tengo eventually find each other seems a pachinko machine-like resolution.

Having said that, 1Q84 lacks not for narrative punch and pace. 

When Aomame, alone, meets face-to-face with the head of the novel's McGuffin-ish religious cult and the Leader confesses his existential agony is a meditative corporeal, sexual paralysis, Haruki-san has pulled out the stops: If the story engine was hitting on all cylinders, he's then injecting nitrous oxide for a boost that takes the reader home.

The last two-thirds of 1Q84 are reader-tension heaven.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin, Knopf, New York, 944 pp., ISBN: 978-0307593313.

Read more ...
(click to enlarge image)

The Cat at Light's End

Read Charlie Dickinson's story collection, The Cat at Light's End, as an ebook in these downloadable formats:

.mobi (Kindle)
.epub (most other readers)
.pdf (for PCs)


more posts

7:25:13 Le Havre by Kaurismaki
7:20:13 This Ain't California
6:27:13 The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, a book review
5.29.13 My Linux (Mis)Adventures
5.25.13 Southern Cross the Dog, a book review
5.5.13 Russian Tumbleweed
4:16:13 "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster
3.26.13 Camera-rama
3.25.13 Moore's Law
3:13:13 Grocery Shopping 
2:28:13 Razor Blade in Moonlight
1:27:13 Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design, a book review
1:6:13 Alleys
12:9:12 White Bread, a book review
12:4:12 Update on Old-School Shaving
11:12:12 Ten Great Buys at Dollar Tree
11:6:12 My New Russian Camera
10:29:12 Leaf Day
10:2:12 The Russian Navy in New York?
9:21:12 The Righteous Mind, a book review
9:14:12 Revolution, 1989, a book review
8:23:12 Train Whistles in the Night
8:2:12 Why I've Stockpiled Light Bulbs
7:22:12 Old-School Shaving
7:16:12 Злектроника МК-52, computer de minimus
7:4:12 Ivan's Childhood by Tarkovsky
6:21:12 The Unabomber, a modern Thoreau?
6:12:12 Do the gods exist?
6:7:12 My "Retail Therapy"
5:28:12 On Taxes, We Should Go Green
5:17:12 Portland's Trash
5:6:12 The Toaster Project, a book review
4:24:12 No Seconds
4:12:12 Portland's Runaway Utility Bill
4:8:12 The Repossession, a book review
3:30:12 How I Got Published in Mississippi Review
3:18:12 Rothko
3:9:12 The End of Money, a book review
3:1:12 gutenberg.org
2:18:12 Beauty Plus Pity, a book review
2:5:12 Kirk's Castile Soap
1:29:12 Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer, a book review
1:22:12 Thirst, a book review
1:17:12 My IBM ThinkPad 1999-2012
1:11:12 String Beans
12:22:11 Spiritual TMJ
12:16:11 1Q84, a book review
12:11:11 How Portland Became Portlandia
12:1:11 The Fixie
11:20:11 Camus' Insight
11:13:11 Old & Worthy
11:7:11 Life Is Tragic
10:31:11 A Matter of Death and Life, a book review
10:25:11 Dead Letter, Email Fatigue
10:18:11 Reinventing Collapse, a book review
10:11:11 Rereading Pirsig
10:1:11 The Sisters Brothers, a book review
9:26:11 The Great Stagnation, a book review
9:16:11 Coffee, The Affordable Luxury
9:12:11 The Genius of Value
9:5:11 Death and the Penguin, a book review

home