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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel




  • 034 4  Haruki Murakami's novel , The Wind-up Bird Chronicle , is an exquisite body of passionate storytelling and artful characterization that simultaneously reunites readers with the sights and sounds of their everyday lives and locks them in the grip of the past . Toru Okada is a normal , unemployed , young man living in the suburbs of Tokyo in 1984 . The story begins with Toru listening to the radio while cooking a simple meal of spaghetti . His pasta goes softer than al dente when a woman phones him and asks him for ten minutes of his time so that they can understand each other's feelings . He tells her to call back later . Moments later , his wife Kumiko phones to tell him , first of all , that it is OK with her if he decides to stay unemployed for the time being and , secondly , that she is worried about Noboru Wataya , their big , brown , striped tomcat , who has been missing for over a week . After lunch , Toru puts on his sneakers , steps out into the hot summer sun , and hops over the backyard fence to search for the cat in the dusty alley behind their house . In the first 23 pages , Murakami establishes an intimate constellation of symbols that he sets out to explore in the remaining 584 pages . The result is a rich tapestry colored with the depths of love and life . In the alley we catch glimpses of abandoned backyards , wandering sounds of televisions , and the softness of cool shade . Toru tells us that as a result of the suburban development of the city , the back alley gradually became sealed off on both ends . Empty and abandoned , the alley soon becomes Toru's , and thus the reader's , connection to a mysterious teenage girl and an empty well that takes Toru , quite literally , to a dream world . Ironically , the alley is really a closed space that leads nowhere . The name ` Toru ' translates into ` conduit ' or ` passageway ' . Just as the view from the alley shows us the ` insides ' of people's lives , Toru is our connection to a world of people and events , conscious and unconscious . He is Mr . Wind-up Bird . A narrator that connects the reader to an old war veteran , a prostitute of the mind , a young mute named Cinnamon , and his mother Nutmeg . Murakami traverses space and time to tell stories of forgotten soldiers and mass consumerism . Set in Japan in the mid - 1980s , the stories and personalities woven together in the novel are rooted in the history of Japanese empire in the 1930s and 40s . Much more than a set of facts , Murakami paints history as a living , breathing entity through which he drives his exploration of the Japanese psyche . Murakami draws a powerful link between the emptiness he finds in modern Japanese society and the past that it emerges from . In so doing , he challenges himself and his readers to imagine and to confront the conscious and unconscious historical forces that shape daily life . As a work of fiction , Murakami's novel is invaluable for the interpretive freedom that it gives its readers . Rather than a book that can be read for answers , The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a novel that must be read for its possibilities . In its approaches to the history of Japanese imperialism the novel offers inspiration on the different ways in which the past must be historically imagined . In exploring history , Murakami challenges Japanese national identity . The narrative is Murakami's struggle to confront the contradictions of modern Japan , the story is Toru's struggle to take back his own identity . While Toru confronts the contradictions in his life at the bottom of the well , Murakami confronts the contradictions of modern Japanese identity by composing the oral narratives of Lieutenant Mamiya and Nutmeg and Cinnamon's meta-fictional narratives . History is Murakami's well . Just as the well takes Toru to another world , the narratives that Murakami writes for Mamiya and Nutmeg introduce the reader to a imaginary world that borrows a sense of reality from a historical context that Murakami subtly and carefully invokes . Across the borders of Manchuria Yamamoto is skinned alive while Honda and Mamiya manage to escape back to Hailar only to become forgotten and disgraced in the battle of Nomonhan . Though both characters managed to end up back home in Japan , Honda lost his hearing and Mamiya lost his left hand . Much more than sacrificed appendages , the two characters lost their souls in Manchuria , living the rest of their lives in solitude and emptiness . As haunting as the images were , Murakami sculpted the many stories in the chronicle in such an organic way as to imbue in each an undeniable moral and psychological weight , harmonious in a constellation of sounds , symbols , and meanings . The weight of each narrative is rooted in an underlying memory of Manchukuo-a memory that Murakami writes as alien yet familiar , conscious but unconscious . Just as Rossini's The Thieving Magpie is unconsciously familiar , so too are the images of Japanese soldiers killing Chinese people and the ` modernity ' that we find in the Xinjing zoo . Murakami is working to connect and embrace the contradictions in modern Japanese history in an effort to understand and transcend them . The work challenges and in many ways convinces readers to connect the contradictions and imagine the many meanings in fiction and in history . Haruki Murakami's novel , The Wind-up Bird Chronicle , is a compelling meditation on history and historiography that crosses psychological and national boundaries and penetrates the depths of individual and collective identity . The psychological undercurrents in Japanese history are strong . Murakami's novel is an important window into the depths of those waters .
    • 001 4  Many of the previous reviews do a great job of discussing this novel , and I will not repeat that discussion here . But what the previous reviews do not mention is that the American publishers , Knopf , forced Murakami and his translator , Jay Rubin , to significantly abridge the original Japanese text . The casual reader would have no way of knowing this , and , indeed , I only noticed because I was reading alternating chapters of the book in English and Russian translations . Half-way through the novel , entire chapters suddenly started disappearing from the English-language text . Puzzled , I went back to the copyright page of the English-language edition , where , for the first time , I noticed the cryptic notation that the book was not only translated but also adapted from the Japanese . How much of the original text was adapted away ? I don't read Japanese , but , based on a comparison with my Russian-language translation , which appears to be complete ( no Russian publisher would commit such a travesty on an award-winning novel ) , it seems that something like 15 - 20% of the text has been cut . For those of you who find the English-language text of the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle choppy , or puzzling , or seemingly incomplete , at least some of the blame lies at the feet of the American publishers who decided , unilaterally , that American readers cannot handle a long book . Anyway , the upshot is that if you can comfortably do so , try to read the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in a non-English translation . Or , if you can't , demand that Jay Rubin's original and complete English-language translation be published .
    • 002 4  Another reviewer has mentioned that far from being a scattered collection of independent incidents strung together by the coincidence of the central character's involvement , Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is unified by means of its insistence on the problem of evil and what to do about it . Surely this is moving towards a clear understanding of the novel . Evil , though , is a such a culturally grounded concept . Is evil sin ? Maybe in monotheistic cultures , but I think in Murakami's novelistic universe - - and this is a recurring feature of many discussions of Japanese religion , culture , and art - - a more insightful way of comprehending evil is as defilement , and this is the term Jay Rubin uses in his translation time and again . Defilement is what ties every character together : some inner filth that each character is trying to purge in some way . May Kasahara's idea of the physical manifestation of death as an oozy gray thing is the clearest picture we have of that unrelenting ghost that haunts everyone intersecting with Toru Okada's life . It is not regret or guilt . It is not emotional scarring . It is a sickening tangible object poisoning a person's life and threatening to overwhelm it . It must be washed off , or it will destroy whatever it comes in contact with . Because defilement is such a defining feature of the work , it functions to create two broad sets of characters : the defilers and the defiled , where Kumiko's brother ( Noboru Wataya ) is the archetype of the defiler and Kumiko herself the archetype of the defiled . Confusion arises and the border between the two sets becomes blurred because the nature of defilement is to spread , and once Kumiko herself becomes defiled , she spreads that to those around her , principally to the central character , her husband Toru . The third character type is found in Toru , whose beautiful quality is to absorb all the defilement , find a way to stop the spread of it , and then to wash it away , to expunge it in the final defeat of Noboru Wataya . Toru's beautiful quality is not easily won , though . The whole of Wind-up Bird tells of the immensely difficult quest for it , an encountering of many different faces of defiler and defiled , a repeated tasting of others ' defilements , in order to learn the method of purification . In a sense , then , Wind-up Bird is a classic love triangle , but it has been made archetypal : the defiled is fought over between the defiler and the purifier . Because of its reduction to the archetypal , all defiled characters are functionally the same , and all defilers are functionally the same . Malta Kano and Creta Kano , May Kasahara and Lieutenant Mamiya are all defiled ; Noboru Wataya and the Russian intelligence officer , the woman on the phone and the man with the baseball bat are all defilers . Faces shift ; functions remain the same . In every story , Toru is fighting for Kumiko , trying to wash out the defilement she is letting herself be destroyed by . In every story , Noboru Wataya is reaching out in every direction , to taint everything with his evil ( defiling ) intelligence . Once the flimsy physical borders between these characters are down , the focus of the novel takes on a focused , white-hot intensity . It is almost as if the fire of it is so scorching that Murakami had to cloak it in an array of different facades . Also , by giving so many faces to the defiler and defiled , he insures that the reader will respond to one of them . One of the defilements will connect and lead to self-identification , and in this lies the great humanity of the novel , the thing that makes it so very intriguing for so many readers , the thing that makes it more than just a good yarn . In the end , Toru is no closer to Kumiko . But he has fully become himself . He has merged with his unshakable purpose . Water flows unhindered in the long-dry well .
    • 003 4  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle begins with a pot of spaghetti about to boil over as the voluntarily out of work protagonist , Toru Okada parries an anonymous obscene phone call just in time to receive a call from his wife , Kumiko , who orders him to begin a search for the couple's missing cat , Noboru Watanabe , named for her politically important brother . If the above sounds pretty breathless and confusing , you'll be surprised to learn there's a lot , lot more . The lost Noboru Watanabe is simply the device Murakami uses to set this densely-layered , often bizarre book in motion . Toru's search for the lost cat introduces him to the novel's other characters , who move in and out of his life and lead him into an ever-enlarging labyrinth . There is the Lolita-like May Kasahara , Toru's neighbor , who regards the thirty year old Toru as interesting and calls him Mr . Wind-Up Bird . Even more bizarre , are the two sisters and psychics , Malta and Creta Kano , who invade Toru's dreams as well as his reality . ( After having psychic sex with Toru , Creta later appears naked in his bed , and , as to how she got there , she doesn't have a clue . ) In the meantime , Toru's wife , Kumiko disappears , much to the delight of her politician brother , who detests Toru and vice versa . And , by the way , the politician brother just happened to have raped Creta ! When Toru learns Kumiko has left him for a man who's better in bed , he's surprisingly surprised , although he shouldn't be and neither should we ; signs of her adultery have been rampant . With nothing else to do about the matter , Toru lowers himself to the bottom of an empty well , the better to meditate on his unpredictable predicament . But May takes the ladder away and three days later , after Creta has rescued him , Toru emerges with a blue mark on his face , one that gives him special healing powers . At this point things really become confused . Toru's mark of healing is recognized by Nutmeg Akasako as being similar to the one her father bore . Lt . Mamiya has also entered the story , recounting a fantastic tale of wartime espionage that just happens to involve time spent at the bottom of a well ! Much in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle develops around the elements of chance , destiny and responsibility . Characters drift in and out of Toru's life , yet each pulls him into his or her own world . Some may think this novel tends to digress a bit too much , but that's all a part of Murakami's trademark , for he's well-known to prefer freefalling through his work rather than planning it out carefully . The result , however , is a cumulative effect of bizarre happenings and black comedy , with Toru being the integral link . Although a recurring theme in Murakami's oeuvre is that of childishness , Toru is , at times , both childish in his innocence and cynical in his outlook regarding his fellow man . Toru is a protagonist who sees , hears , feels and reacts , rather than does . He attracts a large assortment of unusual characters rather than actively pursuing them . Murakami's prose has a distinctive Western feel and , although his characters are Japanese people , living in Japan , they could be anyone , anywhere . Those looking for the more traditional Japanese novel should look to other authors instead , most notably Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazai . Surreal and sprawling , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a detective story , a history lesson and a satire . It is a big book that unites Murakami's signature themes of alienation , dislocation and nameless fears in the voice of Toru , aka , Everyman . It's an enormous accomplishment that , believe it or not , all starts with a pot of spaghetti and one lost cat .
    • 005 4  This book was one of the weirdest and finest books I have read . The experiences were a surreal convoluted epic that I wish hadn't ended . The story starts off simply enough about Mr . Okada losing his cat , then his wife , and then finally his own mind . In a bizarre fashion all of the odd characters and situations that Okada finds himself in are all related in some way which is eventually summed together at the end . What was most fascinating is the elements of Buddhism , the search for nothingness to really get in touch with one's consciousness . Okada finds the strength and ability to achieve ` emptiness ' at the bottom of a dark well . In the well , the author puts us in touch with the most bizarre adventures in Okada's consciousness . This is the first time I have read a book by a Japanese author . Just as each culture has their own unique style of writing ( the Russians with their incredibly complex characters ) this Japanese author had a wonderful surreal simplicity to the writing that made you want to never put the book down . I highly recommend the book - it is incredibly easy to read , but so complex in thought . I have every intention of reading more of Murakami !
    • 006 4  I guess , full understanding of this book is a hard task for the most of readers . But seems it makes book even more entertaining . Murakami entertains his readers exposing a world of subconsciousness , which is managed by an invisible hand - an invisible energy that we generate . In the book , many characters are subconsciously connected to each other and take actions subconsciously . I guess , it is the reason why Murakami left them unexplained , leaving many readers unsatisfied . The main plot of the book is the resentment between two individualists with good and evil morals : Toru Okada and Naboru Wataya ( or likewise Lieutenant Mamyia and Boris Manskinner ) . Other characters and plots are supportive . The main purpose of Corporal Honda sending empty box to Toru Okada through Lieutenant Mamyia was to connect these two people in similar situation , psychologically fighting with evil . By connecting them , Corporal Honda helps Lieutenant Mamyia relieve his long time suffering , letting him to open his secrets to Toru Okada . It adds Toru's hatred to Naboru Wataya and gives strength to defeat him . From the book I sense Toru Okada is a Lieutenant Mamaya , living in different time . He is similar to the reincarnation of Mamiya ( or other people who suffered in WWII ) , takes actions , to fulfill Mamyia's dream : defeating evil like people and being loved by someone or having sex with woman ( Creta Kano ) in both real and dreamlike world . This book tells that evil and poisonous people , like Naboru Wataya always exist and succeed far . They exist in the context of different situations and the impact of their negative , powerful energy is fatal . Book gives impression that Murakami explodes his own personal hatred to evil like people and dislike to the dominant social psychology ( people's confusion ) through his book . I feel like I see Murakami in different characters of his book . Appearance of teenager girl , May Kasahara makes Toru Okada's character clearer . She is strong and bright individual and helps Toru to shape his own view . Murakami perfectly exposes deeper feelings of different people , in the context of different circumstances . Story about Mongolian man who skins people is shocking , because I'm Mongolian and I never heard this kind of things happened during WWII . I'm not really sure whether it is based in historical fact or it is fiction . Anyway , this did not affect at all my feelings towards Murakami and his books . He is great . Even though the book was excellent , I have to admit that , in most of cases I fell asleep while reading . But it does not mean that the book was bad ; may be I felt the same way as Toru Okada was feeling while sitting in the well .
    • 007 4  There aren't too many writers who can deal with metaphysical issues in fiction as deftly as Murakami can . A part of the reason is Murakami's style of narrative . His prose is more American than most modern American writers . Murakami is a self-professed admirer of Raymond Carver's laconic prose and he translated Carver's stories in Japan . He also has an affinity for American hard-boiled noir fiction , and the cool , ironic first-person narrative infused with laid back , unassumingly spare prose makes Murakami's stories strangely approachable . But more immediately impressionable upon a reader is the sheer agility of his imagination and his fearless courage . Not only does Murakami tackle stories of high improbability , he succeeds with all the virtuosity in the world . In The Wind-Up . . . , there's a main story of Toru's quest to find his vanished wife , and surrounding the mysterious disappearance are labyrinthine subplots that traverse different eras and parallel worlds . Hats off to Murakami for making the stories somehow believable ! There are surreal characters that appear and disappear in Toru's life , such as the prescient Kano sisters who operate through dreams , Nutmeg and her son Cinnamon who deal with the affluent women and help them with strange ' spiritual ' ailments , Boris the Manskinner , etc etc . . . The stories of these characters all have to do with a metaphysical search of some kind of ' truth ' that is always apparent in Murakami's fiction . For instance , the well that Toru climbs down into serves as a portal that leads to a world where dreams and alternate personalities exist . Murakami does an eerie job of making the ' unreality ' seem more real and pertinent than the actual world in the novel . It disconcerts the readers and makes us question the reality of the world that we take for granted . It is true that Murakami leaves a lot of plot elements and questions tied up and unanswered , and a lot of characters disappear without a trace . But Murakami's project is not in dispensing solutions , but in calibrating our sights to see , or strain to see what happens at the fringes of reality . It's a testimony to Murakami's mastery that the horrors , lusts , sadness , and yearning in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles are more palpable and immediate than in any other fiction I've read recently . The characters , especially May Kahasara , the teenage girl , come to life and stay in your memory long after reading . And for all his off-hand , disarming humor and narrative style , Murakami's metaphors cut to the heart with a frightening accuracy and have the power to invoke whatever world he wants to describe with unflinching emotional honesty . The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles deals with Toru's loss of everything he had come to believe to be the founded and accepted fact of his life . Through his tale , and his quest to regain his life , the readers will come to realize that there's something much bigger at stake than an individual quest . It's of a nation crippled by the memories of its past ( Japan ) , and for the identity of the mankind as well . A terribly ambitious project for Murakami , and he pulls it off with an aplomb . You'll come away from the reading of this book impressed , and more importantly , deeply moved .
    • 008 4  Haruki Murakami writes an excellent book . Often his plots are cleverly twisted , incorporating allegory , social-commentary and political satire : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is no exception to the rule . This convoluted , Kafkaesque epic is perhaps one of the best novels Murakami has ever written . It is a metaphysical portrait of a man searching for identity in a time of social and political crisis : war , sexuality , an election , a man-skinner and a missing cat are the fiery ingredients that make this book so intriguing . Ultimately , Murakami offers a truly unique experience that challenges the reader both intellectually and emotionally : it's a one of a kind novel . The plot revolves around the humble Toru Okada , a mild-mannered man whose wife is becoming more distant from him every day . The book opens when he receives an explicit phone call from a woman that seems to know a lot about him . . . also , his cat has disappeared . These two events ( especially the phone call ) act as catalysts for Toru to embark on a spiritual , metaphysical journey of self-discovery ( I'll concede that that sounds a little cliched ) that finds him in the middle of a dangerous political situation . The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is an exciting , challenging novel that keeps the reader in suspense right to the very end . Murakami writes extremely fluently and his words translate to English seamlessly with the help of translator Jay Rubin . His writing is subtly humorous , allegorical , yet uncomplicated . It is the culmination of his many literary devices that makes The Wind Up Bird Chronicle such a masterwork . Ultimately , this is a novel that delivers a rollicking story and a challenging text : quite a rare find these days , in the almost infinite supply of novels that makes finding a truly excellent book so hard to locate . Brilliant work Mr . Murakami . ( For further Murakami DEFINITELY read A Wild Sheep Chase as well as Norwegian Wood )
    • 009 4  This book was highly recommended to me by a friend of mine , so one day I picked it up and began to read . I was propelled into a journey that was both mundane and surreal in the same threads . The story started slowly , and yet it was at once fascinating . Even before I was done with the book , I was recommending it to others . Then , one of them asked me : What is the book about ? Honestly , the first few times I thought about it , I really couldn't come up with an answer . Why ? Simply because the writing is so intricately real and so poetic , the main character ( the story is told in the first person ) traverses through one dilemma after another without breaking for reflection . To answer the story with a simple answer such as the book is about a man who enjoys walking would do a horrible injustice . The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is about a man who is desperately trying to accept the fact that not everything ( and in fact , possibly nothing ) in the world is concrete . He searches in vain for facts or simple explanations to solve the mysteries of his life , but time and time again he ends up with more questions than he does answers . His journey does not ever take him far from home in the physical sense , but often he finds himself in dark corners of his own mind . . . corners that at first he fears , but later realizes they hold the very answers he's been looking for . Read this book . It is simply amazing .
    • 012 4  Imagine you're doing a jigsaw puzzle . At the beginning you're excited to see where it leads . Then you concentrate intensely on solving it . Then you get frustrated because you're making no progress . Finally , you realize that the puzzle has no solution - it's impossible to solve . If this situation would annoy you , you probably won't enjoy this novel . If you enjoy the process of learning that the puzzle has no solution , read this novel . I'm in the former camp . Murakami has a tremendous imagination and is a great writer . He is able to convey a sense of unease without telling the reader exactly why s / he should feel uneasy . This book is engrossing , and it kept me interested . But there are too many unresolved questions . More accurately , there are virtually no * resolved * questions . I don't need a plot that gets wrapped up with a nice bow , but I do expect a novel to move from one place to another . Either this novel didn't , or I'm too dumb to understand it . I don't want to be too harsh because I admire this novel's originality ; I've never read anything like it . But ultimately I found it frustrating , so I can't recommend it .
    • 013 4  for the first half of this book , I literally could not put it down . partly because my life at the time resembled the main character's so closely . the story was at once stark and bewildering , and made me thirsty to see where it would all lead . where it ended up leading . . . was something quite else . I found the second half of the book extremely confusing , a little difficult to get through , and in the end I was left wondering if I had understood the book at all . I put it down a little disappointed . but now , years later , I think back about this book and I am glad it ended the way it did . Murakami doesn't give you any easy answers . while some of the other reviewers complain that some of the sequences seem irrelevant , I think that's really the point . the only logic in this book is the logic of dreams and juxtaposition . there seems to be a theme to the book but nothing enforces a particular interpretation . unlike so many other non-linear stories , like Memento , 28 Grams , The Club Dumas and so on , this isn't just a story told backwards or inside out . it's a labyrinth ; you can get to the heart of it , but the only way out is the way you came in . so if you want to read a purposeful , directed story that wraps up it's loose ends and gives you a sense of completion , this book will probably annoy you . but if you have the patience to follow its circuitous road , Murakami's story-telling is hauntingly beautiful and bizarre . the turns and twists of this literary puzzle will give you food for thought for years to come .
    • 014 4  Don't believe all those pretentious I got there first beard stroking types who will try to tell you this isn't Murakami's best work . This is possibly the most gorgeous , engrossing , touching and inspiring novel I have ever read , it manages to combine all of the best elements of his previous works into a great throbbing consciouness expanding masterpiece . The subtle beauty of Norwegian Wood , the deranged storytelling of a Wild Sheep Chase and the stark simplicity of the good bits out of Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World are all here adding up to something unique and magical . Added to all this is a central character who not only has a name for once but who is also a truly appealing individual who simply oozes sincerity and integrity throughout . In its own way I believe that this book can stand up against the likes of Thomas Pynchon at his best and where Gravity's Rainbow left me exhausted and depressed at my own feeble ambitions , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle left me elated and inspired . Surely there can be no greater recommendation ?
    • 015 4  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , by Haruki Murakami , is like waking out of a hazy dream . Your not sure what you are reading , why , or if you are really reading at all . It is the type of book that defies explanation , or at least simple explanation . It is in no way a simple book . I will not bother retelling the entire story , Murakami does it better . It is a story about change though . Are we really who we think we are type change . The book has the ability to make you question yourself by telling the story of Toru , a man that is searching . The book carries you all the way through to the end in this magnificent half dreaming / half waking state . Toru emulates this same state at several points in the book . The reader often will question if what he / she read was real or imaginary . This is not my favorite Murakami book , which would be Norwegian Wood . But , the book is very good and stirring . Murakami has a writing style that doesn't suite all readers and some people detest every word he puts on the page . I would encourage picking up one of his books and finding out which person you may be . This book is not recommended for youngsters due to some graphic content .
    • 016 4  Murakami takes us into a slightly skewed mirror image of the real world - familiar , yet vaguely disturbing . What begins as a tale of an unemployed husband , a lost cat and a dissatisfied wife transports the reader to the most unexpected places . Murakami projects emotions onto inanimate objects in order to take us deeper into the psyche of Toru Okada , the bemused protagonist . One word of warning . There is a scene in this book which is so gory , stomach-turning and disturbing ( in the Lieutenant Mamiya chapter ) that the reader might find it difficult to a ) keep his lunch down , b ) sleep for a week , or c ) both . Honestly , I wish I had never read this particular scene - I don't feel that ever horrible detail was absolutely essential to the story . That said , it is a testament to the vivid realism of Murakami's storytelling that I couldn't sleep after reading the war story . His powers of description and observation are astounding .
    • 017 4  While I think that really the book was very good and that the writing was lovely , the characters interesting and the plot gripping , by the time I reached the end I realized that I hated ' The Wind-up Bird Chronicle ' . But I don't hate it for what's in the book , I hate it for what isn't . Halfway through the book I was so enthralled by it I went downstairs and told my roomate how wonderful it was and that she had to read it and that it was one of the most fanastic books I had ever read . But all those fantastic stories that start out the book - - the Kanos , the rivalry between Noboru Wataya and Toru , the story of Mamiya and his relationship to Mr . Honda - - suddenly vanish . The book revives for a while with the similarities between Nutmeg's father and Toru , and Cinnamon's childhood memories of the wind-up bird . But those stories , like every story thread in this novel , disappears with a whimper just when the subplot really started to get interesting . With twenty pages left in the book , I still hung on to one last shred of hope that it would all come together . Alas , I was disappointed . Perhaps Murakami really is a genius , and I either am not smart enough to fully comprehend what he is saying or am not well-versed enough in Japanese society and history to pick up hints of meaning . Certainly , there's no question that he is a very talented and creative writer . But I wonder if maybe the plot really doesn't ever fit together , and Nutmeg and her father and the battle at Nomonhan and the fall of Hsin-ching are cool little diversions that Murakami liked the sound of but could never quite make fit with Toru's admittedly more mundane and at the same time more surreal life . At many times , I did find the Manchuria stories to be far more interesting , so perhaps I'm biased about these stories not getting more page time . The ending , instead , was about Toru and Kumiko . That story at least was resolved , but the resolution was kind of dumb and didn't do much to explain Noboru Wataya and Kumiko's past motivations . Noboru Wataya had some mysterious evil power ! Oooh . But we never know what it was , and so without that final explanation the book's ending becomes just a lot of stuff happening , with no real explanation given for WHY or HOW . One reviewer said that the english translattion was significantly abridged . That may explain some things and would also be good reason for someone at the publishing company to be shot , or , if you prefer , skinned alive . I still wonder though , if the story would still be left hanging at the end , after 800 pages of rambling subplots , rather than 600 .
    • 018 4  I love all of Haruki Murakami's books and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is my second favorite ( Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is first ) . No one is better than Murakami when it comes to writing about Everyman and I think that is one of the keys to his enormous popularity . Even if you don't particularly care for his deadpan style , I don't think there's a person alive who can't identify , in some way , with the characters in his books . The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is no doubt Murakami's densest book to date and , if you're new to this author's works , I would recommend starting with something else first . . . perhaps South of the Border , West of the Sun or A Wild Sheep Chase . The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle begins when its out-of-work , down-on-his-luck protagonist , Okada ( this book's Everyman ) , lets a pot of spaghetti boil over , foils an obscene phone call , then takes a legitimate call from his wife , Kumiko , who asks him to look for their lost cat , Norboru Wataya . Norboru Wataya is named after Kumiko's politician brother and I really haven't figured out if that means Kumiko likes her brother or dislikes him . Murakami's signature themes are alienation and loneliness and he makes great use of them in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . No matter how much Okada tries to fit in , he seems to be nothing more than a tourist in the landscape of life ; characters drift in and out of his world as he searches for his own identity and a read sense of self . The problem is , each of the characters Okada encounters is searching for something as well and each pulls Okada into his own dreamlike world , confusing the issues ( and Okada ) even further . The characters that come to life in the pages of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle are as bizarre as any Murakami has ever created . There is May Kasahara , Okada's sixteen year old Lolita type neighbor ; Creta and Malta Kano , two psychics ; and Lieutenant Mamiya , a man who tells a fascinating tale of wartime espionage , a tale that may hold the key to the heart of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . Lt . Mamiya is a man who has spent time at the bottom of a well , and spending time at the bottom of a well is an experience that will eventually change Okada's life and confer upon him a strange , metaphysical openness . Murakami juxtaposes the bizarre and the mundane better than any author I have ever read and he does so in such a way as to render the bizarre totally acceptable , and , yes , sometimes even mundane . His books usually don't have meaning , but then life doesn't always have meaning , say Murakami's characters . If it's meaning you're looking for , you'd better look elsewhere . Murakami writes in a curious deadpan tone that is reminiscent of the very best detective stories and his books are , to some degree , detective stories themselves . They could take place anywhere ; there is nothing in them to identify them as uniquely Japanese . If you're looking for classical Japanese literature , Kawabata , Abe or Mishima would be a far better choice . Murakami is totally modern in flavor . Although this book , at first glance , may seem to be light it is anything but . And , just as life fails to answer all our questions , so does Murakami . Although this book is dense and complex , it leaves a lot unaccounted for . There are some things , Murakami seems to be telling us , that simply don't have answers . Or perhaps they simply don't require them .
    • 019 4  Maybe I should be hard on this book because it was somewhat abstract and I finished it with questions I still wanted answered , but I just can't be . The fact is that I had too much fun taking the journey to be upset that I wasn't exactly sure where I'd been . The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is just as strange as its title would suggest . It is the story of a young , unemployed , married man whose wife leaves him unexpectedly and mysteriously . His questions about her disappearance and his inability to get satisfactory answers lead him down a strange and surreal path that a man with more attachments might not take . Along the way he meets several people who act as his guides without ever disclosing to him the full meaning and purpose of his quest . He needs them and they - somehow - need him . In the end , I think that Murakami strikes a perfect balance between providing just enough answers to your questions and leaving just enough to the imagination so that you can connect a lot of dots on your own and you really spend time thinking about the book when you aren't reading it and when you finish . I think that's the mark of a really good story .
    • 020 4  I was directed to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by two friends . After hearing so much about them I picked up the novel expecting to be instantly blown away . Instead I was lured into a captivating and engaging story . Murakami has an amazing talent of writing descriptively , and not overwhelmingly . He paints clear pictures , and introduces entertaining and interesting characters . This novel is full of unique characters and profound insights that are played off as little moments . The novel follows a man named Toru Okada who's life becomes increasingly complicated after his wife and his cat leave him . The reason I kept reading the novel was because of these strange occurrences , but they were written in a most ordinary way . The character knew they were odd , the reader did also , but the writing gave no indication of oddities . This is what I enjoyed , the mystical that was present in these ordinary situations , and because of or perhaps due to the ordinary surroundings the mystical seemed ordinary . My favorite character was May Kashara , a young girl who was the neighbor of Toru who after a short introduction when Toru spoke about a bird who sounded as though he had a wind-up spring , called him Mr . Wind-Up Bird . My favorite scenes were the war scenes ( although they are very brutal and violent , my imagination went crazy and I was appreciative of the medium of writing where I was in control , instead of a film ) and the water well scenes , which were cleverly executed and described . There was a part where Toru promised himself he wouldn't look at his watch and then all he could think about was the watch and the time , and it was described to a T and I was amazed at how well Murakami described the human animal . Murukami's characters are likeable , and each of them are different and well-developed . As the novel continues past strange phone calls to baseball bats and water wells , it became harder for me to concentrate on my life . I simply wanted to read the book until its finish . When I reached the last hundred pages of the book , I took my time . I didn't want to say goodbye to May Kashara or Toru Okada , the characters were so vivid and sweet that I didn't want to finish the novel . I did , however , and the end did not leave me short-changed , but instead was just as an end should be . Not too much and not too little . I would have to say that all in all , Murakami has an incredible skill for balance . He never gives too much or too less , and the novel progresses wonderfully . I would recommend this novel to everyone . But try it for yourself ! Pick up a copy ! Another book I need to recommend - - very much on my mind since I purchased a used copy off Amazon is The Losers ' Club : Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez , an exceptional , highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about .
    • 022 4  Wind Up Bird is wild , astonishing , undisciplined and brilliant . Murakami , who once managed a jazz club , has written the novelistic equivalent of a Dizzy Gillespie composition . Toru Okada , a very average guy , quits his job as a paralegal . In short order , his cat disappears and his wife Kumiko walks out on him . Toru wanders between his Tokyo house , the yard of his teenage neighbor May and an abandoned manse with a haunted history . Out of Toru's circumscribed ramblings emerges a novel about fate , love , evil , individual responsibility and historical accountability . Toru meets an old soldier who recounts atrocities he witnessed in Manchuria , Mongolia and Siberia during World War II . Like W.G . Sebald's Natural History of Destruction , Lieutenant Mamiya's story shows us the suffering of those who perpetrated imperialistic evil . Even though it's not central to Toru's predicament , Mamiya's story is told at great length and gruesome detail , as though Murakami is bearing witness to a horror most Japanese are more than willing to forget . Then we have Malta and Creta Kano , two psychic sisters who invade Toru's mind and his erotic fantasies . Toru also throws in with Nutmeg and her son Cinnamon , two alternative healers . Kumiko's brother Noburu is a professor turned pundit turned politician who personifies an invasive , soul-destroying defilement . Unlike the specificity of the wartime atrocities , Noburu's evil is vague and formless , but it seems to drift over Toru and the other characters like a cloud of Sarin gas . Although there are compelling set pieces in this novel ( Boris the Manskinner , Creta Kano's psychic prostitution ) the plot elements don't cohere . Several key story lines get dropped or peter out . In particular , why Kumiko left when she did , what went on between her and her brother , and the specific type of psychological breakdown it led to remain frustratingly vague . After asking us to take a 600 plus page journey , Murakami should provide a few more answers and a few less inchoate psychological descriptions . Murakami is chasing down something important here , which is the necessity of standing up to evil and the powerful social forces that make it difficult to do so . These social forces permeate individual minds and break down ego strength . Each main character struggles to find the inner resources they need to surmount shame ( a much stronger emotion in Japanese culture than western cultures ) and to take their proper place in the world . I'd give Wind Up Bird five stars for ambition and three for execution ; it's too loose , too long and ultimately too vague in describing its characters ' responses to defilement . There's certainly enough brilliance sprinkled throughout to make it worth reading , but be prepared to forgo catharsis .
    • 026 4  I first read this book in the summer of 1999 and it felt as if someone had taken my brain apart and put it back together again . I literally wasn't able to read anything else for several weeks after finishing it as I couldn't get it off my mind . I've gone through it 4 times since then and am constantly amazed at how readable it is even when I know what is coming . There is always something that I see for he first time or reinterpret in a new and interesting way . In a way , it makes me think of what it must be like to watch someone else's dreams . Others will have written about the plot , so I will leave that alone . Something the ( potential ) reader should note is that the book in Japanese is actually 3 seperate books that were published several years apart from each other . I have read that Murakami actually aimed to end the book at the end of the 2nd volume ( Book 2 of the English version ) , but that interest from readers compelled him to write the 3rd book . In that sense the final section sometimes feels as if he is trying just a touch too hard to tie up all the loose ends he created . This is a minor complaint , however , as I find the end of the book to be quite satisfying . I do wonder what ever happens to May Kasahara , though . Something I did years ago that is still sort of interesting for me was to think about who I would cast in a movie version of the book , if I had the chance . I stuck with Japanese actors and actresses for authenticity . Hopefully some of these names will be familiar to some readers . Feel free to let me know what you think of my choices ! Toru : Takao Osawa May Kasahara : Ryoko Hirosue ( circa 1999 - 2000 ) or the current Masami Nagasawa Kumiko : Takako Matsu Noboru Wataya : Takanori Jinnai Malta Kanno : Takako Tokiwa Creta Kanno : Yuko Takeuchi Mr . Honda : Beat Takeshi Nutmeg : Yuriko Ishida Cinnamon : Hiroshi Abe
    • 027 4  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is somewhat confusing for sure , but there are reasons for this . The main reason is that this book was seriously chopped up by editors in Japan , fearing that it was too long to be a hit there . Then when it was translated into English , it was further chopped up to make it digestable to the average American reader who knows nothing about Japanese culture . So what we are left with is a seriously truncated version of the original story , sans elements that could help us account for some of these very loose ends . The other reason it might be confusing to the average person is that there are a lot of metaphysical concepts , and a lot of Buddhist concepts . The WBC is a very Buddhist book . There is a lot that can be missed if the reader is not familiar with these elements of Japanese and Asian culture . The historical elements , like the Manchurian campaign of WWII , as well as references to Nanking , might also be overlooked or written off by people unfamiliar with these things . Some education is required to really appreciate this book . That being said , there is plenty to enjoy whether or not you miss out on the Buddhist musings and cultural and historical references . The prose is lively and engaging , filled with excellent references to Eastern and Western culture both . The characters are bizarre and colorful , sometimes nonsensical , always interesting . The story itself is magic realism at its best , capable of being viewed from many angles , all at once if necessary . Basically if Borges were Japanese , this is what he'd write .
    • 028 4  My favorite book of all times . If you like authers like Dostoyevski or Albert Camus but haven't read Murakami's arguably best book you're in for a treat ! His style of writing is just extraordinary cool ! Super simplistic - almost naive - but at the same time very very delicate . It's a very strange book , almost psychedelic , but to me it was the most absorbing read ever . Japanese culture values things like delicacy , minimalism , and elegance , which explains Murakami's huge succes there . In his universe a cat doesn't just run away . There's more going on . . . or is there ? Several features repeats in Murakami's books . Young girls too clever for their age . Middle aged guys that drink Cutty Sark whiskey , listen to Amarican jazz music and who has a peculiar liking for girls ears . . . . Without describing every leaf of each tree , Murakami makes you feel that you are present right there in the middle of a boring Japanese suburb , where not normal things begin to happen . All the time you have a weird sense that something really really serious is going on in the background . It's kind of a detective novel but then again not . It's definately not the classic detective novel , where all loose ends are tied nicely together in the end . You're getting bombarded with strange clues , that makes your imagination run wild , and there are no guarentees that they actually have anything to do with the plot . You catch yourself accepting the rationality of a man sitting for days at the bottom of a dried out well with a baseball bat , while he looks at the stars that passes over his head . . . . Waiting ! Waiting to break through to god knows what . . . .
    • 029 4  I was directed to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by two friends . After hearing so much about them I picked up the novel expecting to be instantly blown away . Instead I was lured into a captivating and engaging story . Murakami has an amazing talent of writing descriptively , and not overwhelmingly . He paints clear pictures , and introduces entertaining and interesting characters . This novel is full of unique characters and profound insights that are played off as little moments . The novel follows a man named Toru Okada who's life becomes increasingly complicated after his wife and his cat leave him . The reason I kept reading the novel was because of these strange occurrences , but they were written in a most ordinary way . The character knew they were odd , the reader did also , but the writing gave no indication of oddities . This is what I enjoyed , the mystical that was present in these ordinary situations , and because of or perhaps due to the ordinary surroundings the mystical seemed ordinary . My favorite character was May Kashara , a young girl who was the neighbor of Toru who after a short introduction when Toru spoke about a bird who sounded as though he had a wind-up spring , called him Mr . Wind-Up Bird . My favorite scenes were the war scenes ( although they are very brutal and violent , my imagination went crazy and I was appreciative of the medium of writing where I was in control , instead of a film ) and the water well scenes , which were cleverly executed and described . There was a part where Toru promised himself he wouldn't look at his watch and then all he could think about was the watch and the time , and it was described to a T and I was amazed at how well Murakami described the human animal . Murukami's characters are likeable , and each of them are different and well-developed . As the novel continues past strange phone calls to baseball bats and water wells , it became harder for me to concentrate on my life . I simply wanted to read the book until its finish . When I reached the last hundred pages of the book , I took my time . I didn't want to say goodbye to May Kashara or Toru Okada , the characters were so vivid and sweet that I didn't want to finish the novel . I did , however , and the end did not leave me short-changed , but instead was just as an end should be . Not too much and not too little . I would have to say that all in all , Murakami has an incredible skill for balance . He never gives too much or too less , and the novel progresses wonderfully . I would recommend this novel to everyone . Check it out ! Another quick recommendation is a novel I stumbled while browsing Amazon - - it's called The Losers ' Club by Richard Perez . But that's a whole different review .
    • 031 4  I can't ever remember reading a book that , on the one hand , describes so well the inanimate things , and yet , on the other hand , provides so little information about the characters themselves . Six hundred pages of I don't know how I feel or There is no way I can explain it . Toru Okada's ( the main character ) lacks a spine because his attitude toward life is one of surrender - - he's generally reactive , not proactive . We know virtually nothing about his wife , Kumiko , even though she is central to the story . We never find out why her brother , Noboru Wataya , is such a nasty SOB . We wonder what drives Malta and Creta Kano , who simply disappear from the story . May Kasahara , Toru's 16 - year-old neighbor , is like a dog that chases its tail - - she'll still be a flake when she's 50 years old . Nutmeg and Cinnamon Akasaka - - oops , same thing - - 100 questions about who they are , but only a couple of answers . Leaving a little something to the reader's imagination advances a story ; leaving huge holes for the reader to fill in makes for a story that never reaches a destination . It's kind of like the comment : if you don't know where you're going , you'll end up somewhere else . And that's how I feel about this book . I understand that there is a battle between the defilers and the defilees . But I have no idea how the hostility began or how / if it was definitively resolved . The stories told by Lieutenant Mamiya are the best part of the book . In a word , they are fantastic . I had hoped for a strong ending that would clean up this mess . Oh well , wishful thinking .
    • 033 4  I read this book whilst travelling in Africa and I vividly remember me sitting late into the night under my mosquito net breathlessly chasing the protagonist ever further into his surrealist labyrinth . The unusual character of the setting - a European reading a book in Western Africa by a Japanese author - simply added to the powerful sense of disorientation . What sticks to my mind two years after reading this book is Murakami's uncanny ability to conjure up images of great physical power . His prose is suggestive to a degree that it literally spills over into the other senses : I cherish the memory of a number of strong aural , visual and tactile impulses related to various episodes in the book . The centrepiece , for me , is Lieutenant Mamiya's epic narrative of his war-time experiences in Manchuria and Mongolia : a dark metaphysical fable where beauty and death mingle in a deeply poignant way . I have since read no other of Murakami's books . Glossing over some of their back covers I can't escape the impression that settings , moods and plots seem to vary only a little from book to book . I'd rather stick to the Wind-up Bird Chronicle , then . It'll give me re-reading pleasure for the years to come .
    • 035 4  The opening chapters of this book brought the same feeling to me as the original film of Point Blank . Why ? Well , despite their superficial differences both works exist in that world of listless summers , dry concrete , abandoned houses and dusty derelict gardens , and journey through the heart of the modern city ( Tokyo / Los Angeles ) , yet a city that seems strangely empty . Echoes of J.G . Ballard here too . Toru Okada , the novel's hero , an aimless happily unemployed everyman , has little in common with Lee Marvin's relentless single-track hitman however . Only wanting to drift , cook pasta and love his wife , the collapse of all these simple domestic pleasures , prefigured by the loss of their cat , pitches him into a wierd underworld of ill-fated war heroes , psychic healers dressed in 60s fashions , a corrupt politician who happens to be his hated brother-in-law , a strange cynical teenage girl ( a kind of anti-Lolita ) and more . These characters inhabit an impossible dreamspace , swirling under the surface of the sluggish Tokyo summer heat . Okada's happy mundane world becomes filled with threat and dangers glimpsed out of the corner of an eye , but is also opened up to directions that had never before seemed possible , as this space begins to infiltrate and merge with his own reality . The Wind-up Bird Chronicle features bizarre and memorable characters and , so far as can be determined in translation , a dense realist descriptive style . Its tales of love misplaced and hopeless coincidence echo those of the great Italian writer Italo Calvino , and the sprawling muinutely detailed journeys of George Perec . In his treatment of the fear and uncertainty underneath the superficial order of Japanese society , and an acknowledgement of the long shadow cast by Japanese militarism in the first half of the Twentieth Century , Murakami has much in common with Kobo Abe . He has clearly influenced younder writers like Banana Yoshimoto in his obsessions with new age eccentriciy . As also mentioned , there are hints of Ballard and Nabokov too . This is all very well , and all very brilliant , until about two thirds of the way through when a major change in the feel of the book occurs and Murakami appears to lose control of the plot ( such as it is ) and the book ceases to be deep and intriguing and starts to be aimless and baffling . If only Murakami had managed to sustain the book to the end this would have been a masterpiece . As it is , it is still well worth reading , and an exceptional display of imaginative and magical writing .
    • 036 4  I've read all of Murakami's works available in English and this his best work ever - - which is saying something as he is a truly gifted writer who possesses a vivid imagination , a unique , compelling writing style who delivers consistently first rate fiction on a regular basis . At heart this is a book about the societal schizophrenia that characterizes modern day Japan-a country that revels in it's ancient history and heritage but cannot admit or cope with it's 20th century history and shame , that basks in economic success and power while enduring political decay and corruption , that is obsessed with its racial homogeneity while steadfastly denying the attendant alienation and anomie that is engendered by the forces of conformity and sublimation of personality the obsession creates . Murakami's genius is his ability to express and convey this reality through , on the one hand , the most ordinary and mundane protagonists imaginable and allegorical illusions derived from the most mundane of surroundings . In this case the former is Toru Okada , the sort of fellow who perpetually seems to be involved in the contemplation of his existence while , say , cooking spaghetti . Toru doesn't get around much even though he's trying to find his lost wife , his lost cat-basically , his lost life . He nevertheless does get around enough to meet an unusual cast of characters , each of whom represents an aspect of Japanese society-whether it be disaffect war veterans , alienated teenagers or powerful-and powerfully corrupt-politicians . In fact most of Toru's travels are to and through so-called alley , blocked at both ends , That serves as a microcosm of Japan itself and is littered with other ordinary allegorical detritus - - the statue of a bird looking sadly unable to fly , and the unidentified wind-up bird that creaks invisibly in a nearby tree , the a dry well Toru spends so much time meditating in , a house abandoned because of a series of tragedies and so on . This may not sound like it adds up to much of a story , but , in fact , it's a cauldron of stories-a mystery , a surrealistic fable , a deadpan comedy , a military history , and a love story-all of which work on their own and all of which blend into the whole . This is not an easy book to read-yet it's impossible to put down . What more can you ask of a novel but thoughtful literary entrapment ? You get it here in droves .
    • 037 4  With over 200 Amazon reviews , and much critical material available on the web ( see www.complete-review.com / authors / murakamh.html for example ) it is difficult to say something about Murakami that hasn't been better said elsewhere . The Wind-up Bird Chronicle , like all Murakami's books , is very absorbing , flows like a long , complicated dream , a good mystery or science fiction novel . The fact that the world inhabited by Murakami's characters is , like the characters themselves , somewhat peculiar adds to the interest . The World War Two scenes are very vivid , almost cinematic . Murakami himself says they are fictitious and imaginative , but based on research . The plot , while intriguing , doesn't make much sense and isn't resolved very well . The fact that the English translation leaves out large chunks of the Japanese original may account for part of the problem , but plot , so far as I can tell , is not a big issue for Japanese writers in general . And Murakami , in spite of his familiarity with and use of Western culture , is very Japanese . Highly recommended for anyone interested in great modern literature .
    • 038 4  I was directed to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by two friends . After hearing so much about them I picked up the novel expecting to be instantly blown away . Instead I was lured into a captivating and engaging story . Murakami has an amazing talent of writing descriptively , and not overwhelmingly . He paints clear pictures , and introduces entertaining and interesting characters . This novel is full of unique characters and profound insights that are played off as little moments . The novel follows a man named Toru Okada who's life becomes increasingly complicated after his wife and his cat leave him . The reason I kept reading the novel was because of these strange occurrences , but they were written in a most ordinary way . The character knew they were odd , the reader did also , but the writing gave no indication of oddities . This is what I enjoyed , the mystical that was present in these ordinary situations , and because of or perhaps due to the ordinary surroundings the mystical seemed ordinary . My favorite character was May Kashara , a young girl who was the neighbor of Toru who after a short introduction when Toru spoke about a bird who sounded as though he had a wind-up spring , called him Mr . Wind-Up Bird . My favorite scenes were the war scenes ( although they are very brutal and violent , my imagination went crazy and I was appreciative of the medium of writing where I was in control , instead of a film ) and the water well scenes , which were cleverly executed and described . There was a part where Toru promised himself he wouldn't look at his watch and then all he could think about was the watch and the time , and it was described to a T and I was amazed at how well Murakami described the human animal . Murukami's characters are likeable , and each of them are different and well-developed . As the novel continues past strange phone calls to baseball bats and water wells , it became harder for me to concentrate on my life . I simply wanted to read the book until its finish . When I reached the last hundred pages of the book , I took my time . I didn't want to say goodbye to May Kashara or Toru Okada , the characters were so vivid and sweet that I didn't want to finish the novel . I did , however , and the end did not leave me short-changed , but instead was just as an end should be . Not too much and not too little . I would have to say that all in all , Murakami has an incredible skill for balance . He never gives too much or too less , and the novel progresses wonderfully . I would recommend this novel to everyone . But try it for yourself ! Pick up a copy ! Another book I need to recommend - - completely unrelated to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , but very much on my mind since I purchased a used copy off Amazon is The Losers ' Club : Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez , an exceptional , highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about .
    • 039 4  a confession : I do not know much ( anything ) about Japanese literature and I cannot speak japanese . The Wind-Up Burd Chronicle was apparently much longer in the original Japanese version , and I wish the entire thing had been translated . After several pages of this novel , I wondered why I was reading it . I was not engaged and it seemed like the heavy book , paperback though it was , might fall from my hands . But then something happened : I entered Mr . Murakami's world and had a hard time comimg back out . It is difficult ( impossible ) to categorize this novel . Murakami can write about simple events in an intoxicating way . It is too earthbound to be a fantasy , and yet it is a fantastic , surreal journey . Some of the scenes in Mongolia during the war were among the best historical writing I have ever read . And there are some very powerful erotic passages also . Try fantasy , science fiction , mystery , add irony , add water and shake well . There is also something very musical about the Wind-up Bird Chronicle . Read it and you will probably agree with me . It is very powerful and evocative work and I regretted that it came to an end . Maybe I should learn Japanese . . .
    • 040 4  There seems to be somewhat of a cult around Haruki Murakumi whom I haven't heard about before . By chance I came across this book that pretty much surprised me . Wind-Up-Bird chronicle is an unusual book which writing style one has to get used to . The mysterious and attractive element of the book is not due to the Japanese culture in which the plot is unravelling . It is more due to the way of coping with a crisis that is a typically modern first world crisis which has yet a Japanese touch . As much as Japanese would like to assume western culture he can not ignore his roots without which he also won't manage his crisis . Thus the book may help answering the question : What can we learn from the Japanese ? At first sight the answer to this question seems to be : Waiting . In Mr.Wind-up-Bird , what for us appears to be a waste of time is an activity that ultimately brings the solution . It is not waiting for an event that is already fixed but waiting for something that is completely open as for the time of the event and its content . It is not the latter that is important but the waiting as such . When performed with devotion events start to take place that were unpredictable in their quality to change the course of events . Thus waiting has not the quality of killing time . One could formulate a paradox law : The less I do the more I will achieve . The plot of the book leaves everything open until the very end of the book . Just this ambiguity needs getting used to but by causing suspense it also makes the reader keep on reading . There are several levels on which events take place . These levels relate to each other but it is not clear how . It is not a harmonious relation-ship . The hero of the book must face a situation in which his wife suddenly and apparently without reason leaves him . Since he is unemployed there is plenty of time that he can spend in order to find a way out of this crisis . The situation is so hopeless because his wife's whereabouts are unknown and doesn't want to communicate with him . Our hero has to enter a path that confronts him with many strange people that all help him moving on . The path leads into an unknown realm : the inner world of the mind that relates both to the present reality and events of the past . While on this path one of these people gives him the name Mr.Wind-up-Bird . Accounts of the past confront the reader with a world that usually is not so familiar : the Japanese wars with China and Russia in the 20th century . These often traumatic events influenced several generations in Japan . Mr.Wind-up-Bird gets to know the time of these wars and also a spiritually transcendent world . By learning to orientate himself in these realms he can face the challenges and trials that he meets in order to find a way out of his crisis . Over the course of more than 600 pages Murakumi manages to entertain the reader with accounts that are quite difficult to digest . If the reader is willing to do so he not only learns about the Japanese culture but also how this culture mysteriously relates to him .
    • 041 4  At the heart of the wind-up bird chronicle is the story of a man's search for his missing wife . Yet that is just a beginning as Toru Okada ( and reader ) is thrown into a psychological , metaphysical and even anthropological journey where the boundary between reality and fantasy adopts the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty . Reading The Wind-up bird chronicle is like being thrown from wall to wall in your own living room . There are so many zany characters and loose ends as to keep you wondering for weeks afterwards . Haruki Murakami displays a wonderful blend of western dualistic pre-occupation and eastern Zen-ist simplicity . Despite his whole world changing around him , Toru Okada remains focussed on his task and took everything in his strides . The wind-up bird is beautifully written ( especially the Zoo killing episode ) and it is one of my favourite books of all time .
    • 042 4  I could go on and on and on about this book . I read it over a year ago in one night lying awake sleeping on a friend's floor in Reykjavik , Iceland . ( I was a proud Seattle resident back then . ) I have read a plethora of contemporary Japanese literature , and a lot of it takes on the surreal , disconnected , and often crazy tone of Murakami's work , but Murakami is the master . I bought this book in Iceland , where books are a million times more expensive as in America , so that says something . When I wander the bookstores of Iceland now that I live here , I contemplate buying other books of his ( on impulse ) , but it is more of a value to order books via Amazon from here . . . but I digress . I mean to say that Haruki Murakami's work is worth the money you pay for it . As one of the reviewers on the book jacket stated , the book takes a baseball bat to your brain . And it does . As other reviewers / readers have said , you will not even notice the length of this book . It flies past with momentum . Today , a year later , I am still thinking about it . Toru Okada seems to be wandering through his life , and instead of him making things happen , usually things happen to him . The plot of the story and various analyses of it are well documented here in these reviews . I won't be repetitive . I will simply say that this is a FINE work ( by fine I do not mean the lacklustre how are you ? I'm fine . . . sort of definition . )
    • 043 4  The best part of Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chrnoicles is that at its core , it's a love story . Boy loses girl ; boy wants girl back ; boy goes after girl . It's the last part that's the doozy : Can you imagine going down a well to get your wife back ? Or sitting on a bench day after day because your uncle thought it was a good idea and would sort of clear your head ? Or dealing with mediums named Malta and Creta , Cinnamon and Nutmeg ? Don't let me fool you , though . The book holds up remarkably , thanks to Murakami's powerhouse storytelling and and that we never lose the protagonist's main reason for doing it all : for the love of his life . It's delightfully simple and complicated at once , a paradoxical condition that should be very familiar for previous readers of Murakami . I was reminded of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as I read this book . Both works are about lost love and a split between reality and imagination . Chronicle , though , has a much darker side ; the Manchurian passages are harrowing accounts of humanity gone badly wrong . If you are a New Yorker reader , you may have already seen parts of the book ( The Zoo Attack and Another Way to Die ) . In short , you can't go wrong reading Chronicle - - it's a fine addition to the growing list of Murakami's literary triumphs .
    • 044 4  Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a wonderfully written , complex and confusing tapestry of bizarre characters and cryptic metaphors . Perhaps I'm not quite smart enough to piece together everything Murakami is trying to say in this epic volume ( it would take hours of outlining and highlighting for me to decrypt this book fully ) , but that's okay because I'm not writing this to spoil the book anyways . And while I can't claim to know everything the author was trying to say , there is plenty in the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that everyone should be able to take something from it . Despite the fact that as the book starts it gives no hint as to where it's going , I was immediately engrossed by Murakami's characters and writing style . I had no idea what direction the book was taking and none of the events seemed to be leading toward anything substantial , but I didn't care and read on anyways . The author's style is simple but elegant , the dialogue very straightforward and strange , and each characters unique and . . . well also strange . I'm sure some of the strangeness comes from the fact that Japanese can't possibly be translated into English precisely , but it's also apparent that Haruki Murakami has his own unique and rather odd writing voice . At face value , the premise of this book is really simple : the main character , Toru Okada , is searching for the cat that belongs to him and his wife Kumiko . As he searches for it , he meets strange characters that help him on the way . Soon , his wife disappears as well and he ends up on a search for her instead . So if you take it all literally , the book is about Toru meeting a variety of characters as he's looking for his cat and his wife . Wind-up Bird isn't a book to be taken at face value , however , which is why the book is 600 pages and not much shorter . As I read on , I realized that it was hard to determine how much of this book is meant to be taken literally and how much was figurative for something else Murakami was trying to say entirely . Upon finishing it , a lot of these puzzle pieces seemed to fit together , and yet a lot more seemed to have no place at all . I suppose I'll have to lend this book to some people who are smarter than myself who can help me analyze it more thoroughly . One thing that was consistent throughout the book was the plethora of enjoyable allies ( and in one or two cases , enemies ) that Toru Okada meets . These characters , to name a few , comprise of a psychic prostitute and her psychic sister , a marriage councilor / war veteran who may also be psychic , another war veteran friend of his who's lived an entirely lonely and empty life since returning from war , a fashion designer / healer and her mute son , a neighboring teenager who seems to understand the human condition , an evil brother in law , and many more . . . The only characters who seem to be normal in this whole mess are Kumiko and Toru himself . This however is where I think the book is most deceiving . As he meets these seemingly random characters , it seems that each one represents a different aspect of his wife , himself and their marriage . The psychic prostitute Creta Kano seems to represent his wife physically and sexually , Lt Mayima who lives an empty life since coming back from war in Mongolia seems to represent what Toru is afraid of becoming should he lose his wife , Noboru Wataya ( both Kumiko's brother and the cat they named after him ) seem to represent the rift in their marriage ; their cat left just before Kumiko did and Kumiko's brother was always opposed to their marriage . . . Most characters seemed to be a facet of Toru's life . One character I can't quite find a place for in this scheme is May Kasahara , Toru's eccentric teenage neighbor . May is easily my favorite character and her dialogues with Toru were the book's most entertaining passages to me . If anything , she seemed to ask all the questions and bring up all the topics that Toru normally wouldn't have thought of or brought up himself , so perhaps she represents some suppressed portion of his psyche and imagination . I had my pencil handy when I read those sections so I could underline some of the hilarious and genius things that May's character said . Throughout Wind-Up bird there are certain themes that Murakami keeps coming back to . Loneliness might be the most prevalent theme throughout the book . Toru is afraid of being without his wife and the character Lt . Mayima's life of loneliness seems to be a foreshadowing to Toru if his life doesn't change . Understanding is another theme here . Murakami references on numerous occasions that no matter how well you think you know someone , they will always truly be a stranger , and yet he also conveys that you hardly need to know someone for anytime at all to know everything important about them . Fate and destiny plays a role here as well , which isn't surprising considering the number of psychic characters there are giving premonitions . Dreams are also a major piece of the puzzle that is this book , in how they are interpreted and differentiating between them and reality . And of one aspect of the book that continued to surface was the wind-up bird itself , which shows up at random intervals , revealing it's strange creaking call to various characters and yet is never truly seen . There are still many questions I have after finishing it , such as : what purpose did the wind-up bird serve and why did it appear when it did ? What exactly happened to Toru in the well ? What was behind the story of the boy and the tree ? Rather than frustrate me , these questions just keep me fascinated , thinking about the book more and more , even as I write this review . This is the first of Murakami's work that I've read and I definitely will be reading more . Perhaps it would have been better to read another book or two of his first so I could get an idea of his style before tackling Wind-Up Bird , but I have no regrets . The book is insightful , humorous , imaginative and just all around enjoyable . Do I recommend this book ? Yes , but only to those who would have the patience for it . It's long , cryptic and doesn't tie up in a nice package at the end ( my only personal gripe came in discovering that there are two chapters from the original Japanese version that didn't make it here ) . But for readers of Tom Robbins , Kurt Vonnegut and other eccentric authors , Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle might be right up your alley .
    • 045 4  I was teetering between four and five stars . I really wish these review sites offered fractionals , or better yet , percents . Nevertheless , this book paints an interesting and engaging world . The style and application are quite unique . I would argue there is something for just about anyone here : comedy , suspense , the supernatural , you name it . If you're not sure you want to devote yourself to 600 or so pages , pick up one of his short story collections first . I know I will most certainly read more Murakami in the future .
    • 047 4  As you read the reviews of this wondrous book , two themes recur . One is the absolutely hypnotic , addictive quality of the prose . Somehow this doesn't feel like a translation : it's more like a transcript of some events taken directly from one person's experience and put on the page . The transcript feels disturbingly like real life . There is a partly-understood disaster : the hero's wife disappears . There are glimmers of hope , even hints of redemption . People do things for reasons that aren't outlandish but we don't quite comprehend . Threads develop in the plot and then are left unr . . . . . While the reader is becoming annoyed with the lack of resolution , she becomes even more exasperated at her own inability to put the book down.She is left with the suspicion that the author has tapped into some spring of human consciousness and simply let it flood the page so that we readers are helpless to do anything but bathe in it . I have the feeling that this book will be a monument , a milestone in literature and storytelling . After this , it will be hard to tell stories the same way again . Lynn Hoffman author of the much-less mysterious bang BANG : A Novel and the perfectly comprehensible New Short Course in Wine , The
    • 048 4  It all began when Okada's wife disappeared without leaving a note ; strange people began appearing in Okada's life ; everyday occurances become tinged with a hint of unreality - - and ultimately , Okada finds himself going on a wild sheep chase across improbable landscapes and scenarios . Perhaps the readers who questioned Haruki Murakami's purpose with scenes and imageries expect too much concrete details from a book that is meant to be surrealistic , and hence , doesn't go anywhere ( Did Kafka's books go anywhere , in the first place ? ) . In fact , what struck me as most profound was the fact that it simply doesn't go anywhere - - a perfectly accurate parallel of today's postmodern world . To be a plebian and put Haruki Murakami's magic into words is to destroy its effects ; words in their description have an anaesthizing effect towards the experience of the Wind-up Bird Chronicle . It is the experience in this book that gives us the thrill of reading it , that leads us through further conclusions , that ignites our imaginations and brings us to question our own lives . We live vicariously through Okada , in his surrealistic landscapes , and the experiences of those whom Okada meets . That is to say , The Wind-up Bird Chronicle represents life . In short , it is the experience of reading this book that presents the statement . It provides scenarios which bear no significance to the actual plot , but this very fact parallels life itself . What then , are we to make of this apparent absurdity ? The answer is : Those who are looking for quick-and-dirty quotes to issues that can't be resolved would certainly be disappointed . The key to reading this book is to look at the scenarios presented in this book , and then look within yourself .
    • 049 4  Although this is a long novel , I found it completely satisfying - - and strangely haunting . Murakami's images are vivid , and the tale could be depressing but stands short of that by its dream sequences . Or were they dreams ? Murakami replays images , and I , for one , have several etched into my brain , where they can join the likes of Rushdie's .
    • 050 4  If you're going to begin reading Murakami books , don't start with this one . After reading South of the Border , West of the sun , ( Which I thought was wonderful ) , I found this book to be a lot more laborious to get through . Around the 400 page mark , you don't really know where anything is going . You have to have a lot of faith in an author to keep reading after you begin to doubt he's going to take you somewhere special in the next 200 pages . Definitely try Murakami , but don't start here .
    • 051 4  I'll be brief . I read this book about 5 years ago , and have owned 3 copies since . Everyone I've lent it to has loved it ( and in some cases has lent it on . . hence the 3 copies ) . In this novel as in Life , stuff happens which we want to fit into a grand pattern , but which ultimately proves to have no resolution . I LOVE this book , and re-read it about once a year . The writing style is transparent , allowing the narrative to be absorbed subconsciously . Within his sparse use of language ( and what a wonderful translation , I guess ! ) is much beauty , moments where I stop and savour a sentence , letting the imagery dissolve like snowflakes on the tongue . I think this a wonderfully decadent book . You should indulge yourself and read it too !
    • 052 4  Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a good combination of the weirdness that turned me off his A Wild Sheep Chase , and the transcendent beauty that had me gushing over his Norwegian Wood . Thankfully , he's taken what didn't work in the former and made it work , and what did work in the latter and amplified it . Our narrator here , an out of work lawyer named Toru Okada , bears a lot of resemblance to his Norwegian Wood namesake , Toru Watanabe . Both men are ciphers , devoid of any personality of their own . No doubt about it : a whole day had gone by , Okada notes at one point . But my one-day absence was probably not having an effect on anybody . Not one human being had noticed that I was gone , likely . This is how both Torus see themselves , only it was hardly true . Okada , like Watanabe , is adept at unwillingly attracting a menagerie of strange women to him . There's a pair of seemingly psychic sisters with silly names , an inquisitive and curious high-school girl who lives across the alley , and the mysterious woman who's always offering Okada a cigarette . Most dominant of these women is Okada's wife , Kumiko . Is it possible , finally , for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another ? Okada asks early on , articulating the novel's central question . It is Kumiko of which he is speaking here . She appears one morning wearing a strange new perfume . And then she disappears . The remainder of the book finds Okada searching for her , and the situations he gets himself into do a lot of work in answering his question in the negative . Take one example , in which he relates the story of how on their first date , Kumiko wanted to watch the jellyfish at the aquarium . Unfortunately , the jellyfish call up a bad memory for Okada : the time as a boy when he accidentally wandered into a school of jellyfish and got badly stung , making him violently him sick . The curious thing about this story is that he admits to never telling Kumiko any of this . Through his own actions he misrepresents himself to his wife , while paradoxically proclaiming her to be the one person who understands him . It is Kumiko herself who metaphorically answers his question , later on in the book , when she notes that , Two-thirds of the earth's surface is ocean , and all we can see of it with the naked eye is the surface : the skin . We hardly know anything about what's underneath the skin . Mirroring this idea , that we can't ever know another human being , Murakami's book presents itself as a confusing mixture of styles and time periods and points of view . While writing in a prose style that's comfortable for a reader to flow through , Murakami does a lot of work not letting the audience ( nor Okada for that matter ) see the machinations that are powering the story . To a passive reader , this can be quite disconcerting . The book is filled with tools to keep the reader off-balance : characters often tell long-winded stories , and abruptly cut themselves off in the middle for seemingly no reason ; Okada asks countless questions of the people he believes to have the answers but never seems to get any ; in fact , his questions are often ignored . But a more discerning reader will revel in Murakami's post-modern detective techniques . Like Paul Auster's New York Trilogy , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is less about finding the answer , than about the labyrinthine path one must go through to even ask the questions . The story is : A well without water . A bird that can't fly . An alley with no exit . And - - as Okada incompletely notes at one point . He is a narrator most put off balance , but more than willing to follow along on the adventure . I felt as if I had become part of a badly written novel , he says . That someone was taking me to task for being utterly unreal . And perhaps it was true . He is constantly recognizing that the little universe into which he's stepped has artificial rules . At times he becomes frustrated with the lack of cohesive explanations ( This reminded me of several so-called art films I had seen in college . Movies like that never explained what was going on . Explanations were rejected as some kind of evil that could only destroy the films ' ' reality ' ) but he never quits on the search . The audience , in order to enjoy this book , should follow Okada's lead in this regard . If they don't , Murakami's head games will confuse rather amuse , and annoyance will rule the day . If you're not ready for a book so aware of its reader that it helpfully title chapters ' No Good News in This Chapter ' and ' A Place You Can Figure Out If You Think About It Really , Really Hard ' , then you're probably not ready for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . If you are ready , then you'll encounter 600 + pages ( it's long , but not * too * long ) of simply but effectively written narrative ( Jay Rubin's translation once again captures the tranquility-within-chaos that is a hallmark of Murakami's prose ) . One that's set in Japan but bears the cultural marks of American influence . One that jumps back and forth between the recent past and prewar Manchuria , continental East Asia , and the short war of 1939 in Nomonhan . You'll encounter an interesting use of parallel motifs , where items or events that occur in the past or in a dream or on TV reveal themselves again in Okada's waking life . Here's a helpful hint : follow the bat , the dry well , and , of course , the wind-up bird , which comes over by my place every day and goes ' Creeeak ' in the neighbor's tree . But nobody's ever seen it .
    • 053 4  Complex , well written , with characters who are both real and surreal in a plot moving from worldly to dream-world laid on a hum-drum background . The young May Kasahara reprensents modern , cool Japanese youth . Empty shells from the Manchurian ( but perhaps all of the empire days ) are still about . Nobura Wataya as a corrupt politician has the maniputlative skills needed . The wealthy moderns who can't cope and the counselors who service them including the supernatural Kano sisters . The central , first person Toru Okada is an honorable loser and the foil for Murakami to play out his message .
    • 054 4  If I have to pick out the best Murakami book , this would be it . At first , when I received my copy , I was rather intimidated by the number of pages . My reservation was with Murakami's ability to sustain my attention for that long . The book opens with the mysterious phone call and that sets the tone for the rest of the book . However , how many weird coincidences or unpredictable plot points can a book have without tiring out the reader ? The answer is many . Murakami will show you that his talent for writing something so puzzling and enganging is for real . The book swims in and out of a variety of stories about the supernatural . Each small story forms a node and when all the nodes are connected , you have a three-dimensional structure that is almost impenetrable . Impenetrable because you will not have the answers by the end of the novel , but at the same time , you will be content not to look for them . I certainly didn't feel deceived for not being able to complete the puzzle . Instead you will just gape at the complexity of the novel and the efforts it takes to conjure up such a structure . At the heart of the novel lies the story about the Japanese spying mission into what would be Manchukuo after the Japanese occupation . I think Murakami handles this very well . In light of what the world knows about Japanese atrocities , being a Japanese himself , it is definitely not an easy task to avoid the pitfalls of glorification or condemnation . Instead , the soldiers are presented as humans , neither good or bad , just ordinary humans encapsulated by extraordinary events . The only downside I can see to this novel is that it reaches stagnation at certain points and I strongly feel that the narration could be sped up . Overall , it is nothing short of a masterpiece that might earn him a Nobel Prize in literature one of these days .
    • 055 4  Alice remarked curiouser and curiouser as she fell down into ' wonderland ' and encountered the strange and the surreal . In ' The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ' our hapless , bland former Japanese white color worker ( or ' salaryman ' in Japanese ) finds himself entering his own wonderland , which happens to be right in his own neighborhood . No , he doesn't say curiouser and curiouser . But this reader certainly did . . . and smiling all the while . Haruki Murakami has created a truly bizarre , original and thoroughly enjoyable story involving metaphysics , the paranormal . . . and just plain wow ! . He touches many areas ( war , politics , meaning of life ) in an elaborately interwoven plot - it would be impossible to explain it all in a book review . However this book vaguely reminds me of the many Philip K . Dick novels where the author suggests that people can share the same mind space ( dreams , thoughts , soul ) . However ' The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ' is not a science fiction novel per se . While I thoroughly enjoyed this novel it does have some flaws . Murakami failed to produce closure , or at least satisfactory closure , on several of the many subplots ( and associated characters ) . The book seems to end with many unanswered questions . Murakami-san should have been slightly less ambitious on the scope of this novel and perhaps focused a little more attention on cleanly wrapping it up ( as much as this reader didn't want it to end ! ) . However all this is not a real bother ; I'm still busily recommending this novel because of its shear audacious originality . Bottom line : a unique piece of brilliance which should catapult Haruki Murakami on to the ' must read ' lists of fans who appreciate unconventional fiction .
    • 058 4  In one of his shorter works , Murakami wrote of watching through an air vent as strange things happened to space and time inside an elephant house . The physical universe takes on new wrinkles with this writer . Each of his works seems to fold back reality and give us a view of something wonderfully perplexing happening in a setting as distant as that elephant house but as familiar as our own lives . I love the way that the mundane and the fantastic weave themselves together in this book . His characters are fully 3 - D , giving the lie to his frequent tip of the hat to the hardboild genre . He likes a good mystery , but he's going to populate his with characters that pop and with situations that teeter on the brink between reality and something darker upon which reality seems to be built . Many of Murakami's protagonists seem simply to leave themselves open to the astounding things that happen around them and to them . They are open books onto which events simply scrawl - - leaving them ( and us ) to try to put the pieces together . More often than not , he portrays the perplexed state between the sexes nearly perfectly . I find his ability to portray characters who can't quite put their finger on their feelings very uncanny . He often seems to be saying , Look around you - - if you look closely enough , something astounding is happening . Whether you want it to or not .
    • 059 4  Haruki Murakami has always been a favorite author of mine , and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is a perfect culmination of every element of his work . He includes mystery , love , sex , politics , history , intrigue , philosophy , and more in this novel to make it a book that is nearly impossible to describe . As Toru Okada finds himself searching for his missing cat , and soon , his missing wife , Kumiko , the reader is taken on Toru's personal journey by meeting several characters during the search . The lustful and intriguing Kano sisters , the subconsciously insightful Nutmeg and Cinnamon Akasaka , and the evil Noboru Wataya all shift the direction of Toru Okada's life in such a way that the reader finds her / himself also on this journey determined by outside forces . Through all of this though , Toru maintains his goal of finding his wife , and the delightful conclusions to this tale leave the reader questioning every aspect of her or his own life . Just as Murakami's characters each experience the influence of a certain something in this novel , the reader is able to relate to a certain something in each of the characters . For some reason , Murakami is able to draw in his reader by using , quite possibly , the most obscure noun possible : something . It's not a frustrating ambiguity , but a helpful one . I loved it . The common theme of defiling also forces the reader to question external forces that are unwelcome in our lives . This book manages to be philosophical without being obnoxious or trying too hard . Also , May Kasahara . In my eyes , a perfect character , perfectly written with every flaw out in the open . I looked forward to the sections involving her . I have a difficult time describing this book and every aspect of it , so all I can say is read it and judge for yourself . You'll be missing out on an amazing piece of work if you decide otherwise .
    • 060 4  Hatred is like a dark shadow . Not even the person it falls upon know where it comes from , in most cases . - Wind Up Bird Chronicles This book is full of dreams , images , and weak , twisted characters who spend their life haunted by single , brief episodes . The images and symbols in this book alone are enough to make it amazing : the story is full of sounds and smells , and of course the list of incomprehensible symbols is lengthy . Like many great authors , namely John Irving , Murakami loves recycling characters and themes , the most obvious in this case being Toru , the main character of this novel who is nearly identical to the main character of Norweigan Wood , also named Toru . Both of these characters are mildly weak men , weak to the forces around them , including almost all of the women they ever meet . One thing Murakami's books are not about is Japan : his stories and symbols could occur anywhere . Of course there are themes and traits in the characters that are mirrored in Japanese culture : isolation , shyness , and withdrawing from society , and suicide . But don't read this as a guide to modern Japanese culture .
    • 061 4  Sitting in my chair , I saw a sunny spot on the carpet . I resisted moving for several minutes , and the spot shifted its position slightly . That's when the slender woman entered my line of vision . She was wearing a yellow plastic raincoat and pink Chuck Taylor high-top sneakers that sounded like Philly Joe Jones doing some inspired brushwork during Night in Tunisia ( the Verve version , not the Bluenote ) . She asked me if I liked her with our without breasts , and I said simply Yes , remembering that I needed to sautee the chicken breasts for dinner , add a little soy sauce , and vaccuum the carpet . When I looked up again the woman was gone . I looked back at the sunny spot , but it had started raining outside , and sounded like the rain drumming on the pith helmets of the Manchurian expedition stranded in Hangchow in the bleak autumn of 1939 , when many of the soldiers were forced to unwrap their leggings and wring them out for drinking water and nourishment . ( Continue for 600 pages . )
    • 062 4  I have chosen The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to review because it exaggerates every Murakami trait . You only have to read one on his novels and you have read them all . I'm not exagerating . It's the same story , same characters , same scenes over and over . I love Murakami's style and I initially enjoyed his symbolism and characters , but he never alters either from book to book . Wow ! Just a slight change would be nice , but it is the same main character with a different name disillusioned with his job in an industry that changes only a tiny bit from book to book . Who's tired of the underground well / water symbolism ? Who's tired of the music references that add little if any real tone to a scene ? And please . . . in every novel a woman disappears or is killed or in Murakami's world vanishes into a ill-defined nether region . He could have been a great author . . . sad . And by the way , if you are going to pick one to read make it Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World . At least it has that relatively clever even chapters being the second half of the odd chapter's story thing going on .
    • 065 4  At once strange , fantastic , logical , philosopical , existential , historical , this novel winds you up in perplexity and understanding , confusion and awareness , and subtly forces you into the realms of being you have yet explored . Certainly , this is what the protagonist , Toru Okada , is undergoing as you read one disconnected encounter after another as he goes about , in a very uneasy and slow journey , at first in search for his lost cat , then his lost wife . It is almost impossible to chronicle all the characters and encounters here , amongst them a prophesying fortune-telling woman , her sister , both eccentric ; Noburu Wataya , Toru's wife's brother , with his stiff uniformity and intelligence , looming presence and snobbery ; a Lieutenant and his horrifying and painful close encounters in Manchuria during the war ( WW2 ) ; a stranger and her son , nicknamed Nutmeg and Cinnamon respectively , and how they assisted in saving Toru from the brink of existential loss are among some of the colourful and fantastic characters you'll ever encounter . One after another , the events may seem random at most , seemingly having no place in the life of Toru . Of course they take place after one another but a questioning reader may wonder why they even appear at all . The answer to this is simply that , no reason at all . This novel is an exercise in existential self-questioning and is a bitter indirect satire at not just Japanese society , but modern society . Toru's idleness for instance , is a quiet take at modern society's conception of work and all the over-importance we have assigned to it . But if not work , then where are we to search for meaning ? Here comes Creta Kano , the prophesying fortune-telling woman who in some ways represent religion . Each characters is in some way , a symbolism . Noburu Wataya , for example , represents the dogmatic beaureaucratic worker , his looming presence is a mockery of government , his fate , well you'll find out in the end . Lieutenant Mamiya , arguably the most futile character , represents a Japan unable to come to terms with its past . What about the cat then , you ask ? That's for you to find out . For me though , it represents Nature . So where do we go from here ? Nowhere . This book argues and raises our consciousness that perhaps for all the bustle and activity that takes place in our lives , perhaps only a few , if anything , really is of particularly any importance .
    • 066 4  It has been about nine months since I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . After having read Murakami continuously for over a year , that book burned me out and disappointed me , and now it's time to write as objective a review about it as possible . Before buying it , I thought I was saving the best for last , as I had read every Murakami book available in the U.S . except this one . I don't understand why so many readers think this is Murakami's best work . I wish that I could have enjoyed it , but it was a dull , uninspiring , stale read . There is no growth in this book , no energy . No sympathy for any of the characters ; no ideas to awaken one ; every line is just the same existentialist circus . This book goes nowhere . After having heard so many starry-eyed , enthralled readers talk about Toru Okada's voyage to the underworld ( his wife leaves him , and he decides he wants to spend time in a dry well in his backyard ) , I thought I was in for the eighth wonder . In one word , it was boring . I don't know why I thought this . I'm not claiming that it will seem as stale to anyone else , but I just want to warn other readers that - - Murakami fans or not - - - if they haven't read it , perhaps it is best to go to a library before buying it . Here I will try to give the best reasons I can to say why I didn't enjoy it . I am very familiar with Murakami's work , and perhaps if this had been the first book of his that I read , I would have liked it more . But in any case , the writing was nothing of what I had anticipated . Toru Okada is the Murakami everyman taken to its most boring extreme . This is the heighth of this very Murakami concept to many , but his character is hardly believable . The story opens while he is cooking spaghetti . He has quit his job in a law firm and is trying to think at the moment , but he gets no thinking done and enjoys staying inside all day , listening to music . He seems to have no reaction , no emotion , no opinion , and his energy and spirit is lost somewhere in space . Toru Okada is pale , stale , flavorless . . . dry like camphor . Perhaps the book would be more effective if it were 400 pages shorter . With a little life breathed back into it , the book's elements , story line , events , all would make for an interesting story , but by the time each major event of the book is complete , though , we've forgotten what it is we are trying to find . We have ceased to care . There's no gravity anymore ; we're floating somewhere as dead as Toru Okada . Take Kumiko's disappearance , for example . It takes forever for it to happen , for it to be of importance to the reader . In the meantime we meet even more camaphorous characters that further bog down the story . May Kashara ( sp ? sorry , I don't have the book anymore ) , the annoying teenager . Toru Okada spends what it seems like 7 or 8 chapters taking little excursions to his backyard to talk to May , who seems to be hiding something . Her leg is bad ( Murakami's women characters either 1 ) have some sort of issue with sexuality and play the piano , 2 ) spend every day in a café until someone comes to pay the bill and takes her home with them , 3 ) have inhumanly gorgeous ears and little else , 4 ) have bad legs and disappear all the time ) ; she limps . She drinks soda . She is obsessed with death and seems to have an obsessive crush on him . He's oblivious to that , of course . Okay - all of these things have the capacity of forming a book worth reading , but the problem is that the writing is lifeless , and that even the most amazing ideas ( characters going through walls , psychic alter-egos , alternate realities , dangerous and mysterious characters , etc . ) all fall through and end up soggy and sickly , like discolored detergent-water on mud . Creta Kano ? Reviews make her out to be almost supernatural ; it doesn't get more enigmatic than this , I thought . But she and her sister are so dull . Murakami was running out of ideas ? The only part of the book that I can say I enjoyed was when the old army officer tells about his time in Manchuria , where he saw a man being skinned alive . That could be a nice short story . I have to be honest . I go to book three , and then threw the book in the fireplace . It just wasn't worth it . It is sadly disappointing , an anemic book . I liked other works by Murakami , though , especially The Elephant Vanishes ( a collection of his best short stories ) , Sputnik Sweetheart , and Norwegian Wood .
    • 067 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) 4.5 stars , rounded to 4 The stories are completely different , but in style and structure this book reminded me a lot of Kafka on the Shore . It has the same magical realism , strangeness ( which is a good thing , BTW ) , and surrealism . It even begins with a missing cat . ( In Kafka , lost cats are a major thread . ) And as in Kafka there are a very few , but highly explicit , scenes of bloody violence . I didn't like it quite as much as Kafka , because it doesn't have the passion of the love story in Kafka . But I did like it very much , and for the same reasons - the most important being its extreme originality . Murakami's is a world like no other . As is characteristic in his novels , there are many seemingly unrelated threads that , in the end , all come together in a way that makes sense , at least according to the rules of the bizarre world of each book . In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , some of the threads are : the wind-up bird ( of course ) , the lost cat ( followed by a lost wife ) , a teen-age neighbor girl who works for a wig company , dried-up wells , the same disfiguring mark on the cheeks of two unrelated men , people ( including a prostitute ) with strange powers , a house that seems to be bad luck for anyone who owns it , a zoo in Outer Mongolia , an evil brother-in-law . And most important of all , and to me the most interesting : the Japanese occupation of Manchuria ( an area of China ) during World War II . I had read other books about the Japanese invasion of China and the atrocities committed there by the Japanese . It was fascinating to read about it from the Japanese point of view . Murakami doesn't flinch from showing some of those atrocities , but he also shows us that the Japanese invaders experienced their share of hardship and great suffering . We see how terrible war is for both sides , and what it is like for soldiers who are forced to do ghastly things to other human beings . And we see the inhuman monsters who actually enjoy the suffering of others and force others to do terrible things to each other . I also learned a lot about the reasons for the invasion of China - the history and politics of the area , which was strongly influenced by the proximity of the Soviet Union and Japan's relationship with it . This isn't the easiest book to read . It is rather slow , and until the end the various story lines don't seem to have any connection with each other . It's not a book for fans of action and thrilling adventure . Although there is actually plenty of adventure in it , it is related in a surreal and dreamy manner . The book requires some commitment and thought on the part of the reader . But for those who enjoy intellectual stimulation , a writer with a boundless imagination , and fiction that is really different , I would highly recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . ( 607 pages ) Quotes from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A person's destiny is something you look back at after it's past , not something you see in advance . I happened to lose my life at one particular moment in time , and I have gone on living these forty years or more with my life lost . As a person who finds himself in such a position , I have come to think that life is a far more limited thing than those in the midst of its maelstrom realize . The light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment - perhaps only a matter of seconds . Once it is gone and one has failed to grasp its offered revelations , there is no second chance . One may have to live the rest of one's life in hopeless depths of loneliness and remorse . In that twilight world , one can no longer look forward to anything . All that such a person holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what should have been .
    • 068 4  4.5 stars , rounded to 4 The stories are completely different , but in style and structure this book reminded me a lot of Kafka on the Shore . It has the same magical realism , strangeness ( which is a good thing , BTW ) , and surrealism . It even begins with a missing cat . ( In Kafka , lost cats are a major thread . ) And as in Kafka there are a very few , but highly explicit , scenes of bloody violence . I didn't like it quite as much as Kafka , because it doesn't have the passion of the love story in Kafka . But I did like it very much , and for the same reasons - the most important being its extreme originality . Murakami's is a world like no other . As is characteristic in his novels , there are many seemingly unrelated threads that , in the end , all come together in a way that makes sense , at least according to the rules of the bizarre world of each book . In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , some of the threads are : the wind-up bird ( of course ) , the lost cat ( followed by a lost wife ) , a teen-age neighbor girl who works for a wig company , dried-up wells , the same disfiguring mark on the cheeks of two unrelated men , people ( including a prostitute ) with strange powers , a house that seems to be bad luck for anyone who owns it , a zoo in Outer Mongolia , an evil brother-in-law . And most important of all , and to me the most interesting : the Japanese occupation of Manchuria ( an area of China ) during World War II . I had read other books about the Japanese invasion of China and the atrocities committed there by the Japanese . It was fascinating to read about it from the Japanese point of view . Murakami doesn't flinch from showing some of those atrocities , but he also shows us that the Japanese invaders experienced their share of hardship and great suffering . We see how terrible war is for both sides , and what it is like for soldiers who are forced to do ghastly things to other human beings . And we see the inhuman monsters who actually enjoy the suffering of others and force others to do terrible things to each other . I also learned a lot about the reasons for the invasion of China - the history and politics of the area , which was strongly influenced by the proximity of the Soviet Union and Japan's relationship with it . This isn't the easiest book to read . It is rather slow , and until the end the various story lines don't seem to have any connection with each other . It's not a book for fans of action and thrilling adventure . Although there is actually plenty of adventure in it , it is related in a surreal and dreamy manner . The book requires some commitment and thought on the part of the reader . But for those who enjoy intellectual stimulation , a writer with a boundless imagination , and fiction that is really different , I would highly recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . ( 607 pages ) Quotes from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A person's destiny is something you look back at after it's past , not something you see in advance . I happened to lose my life at one particular moment in time , and I have gone on living these forty years or more with my life lost . As a person who finds himself in such a position , I have come to think that life is a far more limited thing than those in the midst of its maelstrom realize . The light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment - perhaps only a matter of seconds . Once it is gone and one has failed to grasp its offered revelations , there is no second chance . One may have to live the rest of one's life in hopeless depths of loneliness and remorse . In that twilight world , one can no longer look forward to anything . All that such a person holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what should have been .
    • 069 4  Strange things start happening to Toru Okada , an unemployed , passive man in his early thirties living in suburban Japan . First , his cat disappears , then he starts receiving anonymous phone calls of an erotic tone from a woman claiming to know him . Eventually , his wife vanishes as well . As this unfolds , he starts meeting very unusual characters : May , a sixteen year old girl , Lieutenant Mamiya , an elderly officer in the Japanese-Russian skirmishes in Mongolia , Malta and Creta Kano , two sisters who are some sort of seers or mediums . I loved the three previous books I have read of Murakami ( Norwegian Wood , Sputnik my love and South of the Border , West of the Sun ) but I found this very long book ( 900 pages ! ) disappointing . The first three hundred pages are very exciting , but the remaining 600 pages are more and more confusing and increasingly a drag to read .
    • 070 4  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of the best books I have ever read . After reading Norwegian Wood , and having piqued my interest into what kind of a writer Murakami is : like no other writer I have ever read before . He is a dose of smooth jazz , a good drink on a bad day , an adventurous afternoon while stepping out from work , a fashion designers dream , falling down into a well only to be tormented and then saved by the neighborhood darling , a trek across the frozen tundra only to be killed in the most violent way possible , a satire of the most annoying cloying tv commentator you can think of , your most creative fantasy turned nightmare ; all in one . Absolutely positively amazing . Sure , one can try to pin the tail on the donkey and say the book is about sin and evil and coming to grips with what happens when we confront or are faced with evil or badness and how does life turn out when it simply doesn't turn out . In the end , I personally don't think one can sum this book up . It just isn't possible . I'll bet Murakami can , and he's about the only one . Well worth the read .
    • 071 4  I first came across this book ( and this author , for that matter ) when I happened to see a news article last May about the long awaited book that he was about to release and the subsequent line ups of people waiting to buy the book all over Japan . The new book hasn't been scheduled for an English translation yet . However , after a little investigation , I found out a lot more about Haruki Murakami . His story is an inspirational one and he is only new to me apparently . His books have been hugely popular with both critics and readers alike all over the world . He is especially popular with U.S . critics , including the New York Times . So all of that intrigued me to look into him a little further . The first novel that I read was The Wind Up Bird Chronicle . This fantastic story intertwines a complicated story line with a strong connection to the surreal and the spiritual . It picks up on the protagonist , Toru Okada , standing in his kitchen making spaghetti when the phone rings . When he picks it up it is a woman who he has never met before and she seems to know who he is and other odd facts about his life and his wife . She suddenly cuts the connection . When she calls back a little later , she boldly asks to come and see him at his home . He reluctantly agrees to this , even though he really thinks that it would be wiser not to . His style is unfamiliar and yet absorbing at the same time . I believe that it may turn some people off , however it is unique and it works beautifully in the unwinding of his story of love , betrayal , and redemption . This story reads like a thriller , a mystery , and a literary classic all rolled into one . But don't take my word for it , see it in action for yourself . So Toru carries on with his fairly boring day ( and boring life . . . ) until the time comes around for his unknown visitor to show up . From here , we are launched into a fast paced mystery that moves fast enough to keep you turning the pages , yet slow enough to allay the beauty of it all . It starts with a hunt for his wife's missing cat . He has disappeared and while he is at home doing nothing after quitting his job that he hated , so he is the one to search the neighborhood for the cat . As he does so , he meets the girl who lives across the back alley and at the end of the block from him , May Kasahara . Her back yard faces his and his neighbor's backyards . She is a dark girl with obvious problems at home and at school , for she is at home most of the time as well . She observes him almost more than she talks with him . She's got the whole morbid thing going on , but her undeniable cheerfulness betrays her more often than she would like it to . Throughout the novel she continues to act as more than the little girl down the street , she offers advice and insight that far out weigh her years . She is but only one part the many intersecting lives and stories that formulate this story . From the initial search for the cat , Toru finds himself suddenly thrown into a search for his wife , who doesn't return home from work that day . His easy and uncomplicated life has now become a lonely and desperate one with the disappearance of his wife , Kumiko . He wonders if she is or has been having an affair , although now matter how he tries to look at it , he just can't see her having an affair . She would be the type who would be more likely to just tell him outright if that were what she had done or it that was where she was headed . Sneaking around wasn't her style , it was almost beneath her to do so . All I can do here in this review is tell you the good and bad , the how and the why , and perhaps even some of the beautiful , dreamy details . What I can not do in this review is give you an overview of the story itself . It is far to complicated and interconnected . It is a testament of Mr . Murakami's talent and skill as to how he does this . For me to try and show you or even to explain it , would require me to virtually re-write it all here . So what I can do is encourage you to read this book and experience it for yourself . It is richly filled with wonderful language that even survives through the translation process , but then again kudos must also be given to the translator , Mr . Jay Rubin , who has translated many other of Mr . Murakami's novels as well . The book has several plot lines that are all intriguing in their own right , but they all revolve around the search that Toru is mounting not only for his wife's cat , but for her as well . It seems more and more important for him to find the cat and that it is somehow connected to the mystery of why his wife has left him . By the end of this engaging story you feel as if you are a friend of Toru's and that you want to make sure that he is doing okay . If this can be accomplished by any author , then it can be regarded as a great success . The fact the Haruki Murakami does this on a regular basis can be regarded as something much more than a success , he is a rare gift to the writing world . I am more than happy to have discovered him , no matter how late in the game I was . I am grateful . I hope that you are too . Todd Hurley The Hurley Edition [ . . . . . ]
    • 072 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) The Windup Bird Chronicle WBC begins as a simple story of a happily married man ( Toru Okada ) who wakes up one day to find his wife ( Kumiko ) has left him . An old friend ( Lt . Mamiya ) of Kumiko's family mystic ( Mr . Honda ) comes by to bring Toru an inheritance from Mr . Honda - an empty box . From there on , the story switches between the present ( Toru's search for Kumiko ) ; flashbacks of various characters ; and magic realism ( Toru's dreamlike journeys into an alternate universe . ) If you can't handle multiple viewpoints of a multitude of characters , time and dimensional shifts , then read another book . Personally , it didn't bother me , because I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy . I shift mental gears easily . Magic realism is a literary variation of fantasy . WBC is a book , which even if you read the end before you reach it , you will still be surprised at how you arrive at it . Another reviewer said that the American publisher insisted on cutting about 100 pages out . This is a 607 page book , I wonder what was deleted . WBC is a long , interesting read , but you won't read it all in one sitting . There are too much information and too many plot twists to absorb that quickly . Note : Murikami's use of magic realism in WBC is a precursor to his use of magic realism in his more recent After Midnight . In any case , ifyou want a good long read , which will keep wondering what ? , then read The Windup Bird Chronicle .
    • 073 4  The Windup Bird Chronicle WBC begins as a simple story of a happily married man ( Toru Okada ) who wakes up one day to find his wife ( Kumiko ) has left him . An old friend ( Lt . Mamiya ) of Kumiko's family mystic ( Mr . Honda ) comes by to bring Toru an inheritance from Mr . Honda - an empty box . From there on , the story switches between the present ( Toru's search for Kumiko ) ; flashbacks of various characters ; and magic realism ( Toru's dreamlike journeys into an alternate universe . ) If you can't handle multiple viewpoints of a multitude of characters , time and dimensional shifts , then read another book . Personally , it didn't bother me , because I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy . I shift mental gears easily . Magic realism is a literary variation of fantasy . WBC is a book , which even if you read the end before you reach it , you will still be surprised at how you arrive at it . Another reviewer said that the American publisher insisted on cutting about 100 pages out . This is a 607 page book , I wonder what was deleted . WBC is a long , interesting read , but you won't read it all in one sitting . There are too much information and too many plot twists to absorb that quickly . Note : Murikami's use of magic realism in WBC is a precursor to his use of magic realism in his more recent After Midnight . In any case , ifyou want a good long read , which will keep wondering what ? , then read The Windup Bird Chronicle .
    • 075 4  This is a kind of ' love it or leave it ' book : It's well written but poorly edited , has meaning and resonance but has an untidy narrative ( not everything is answered and we never know which part is ' real ' ) which can be hard for some readers to penetrate through . But , to it's credit , it's hard to put down and felt much shorter than it's sprawling six hundred page length may , at first glance , hint . Personally , I enjoyed the book . The novel is all about defilement and the struggle to purge the evil from oneself . So , while the story seemed random and surreal on occasion , all of the dreams , sub-stories and stories within stories all contribute on different levels to this theme of defilement . To the book's benefit , Murakami doesn't give us an exact answer , instead opting to say that our emotional scars may be our only identity not our sworn enemy . This seemed even more interesting considering this novel is a product of post-war Japan . Having been defiled by the atomic bomb , Japan has become the world's only true post-apocalyptic society and although she has survived the ordeal , Japan's historical scars linger in the cultural psyche still . Which should make more sense for Americans who perceive Toru as being too weird or obtuse to be an ' everyman ' . If I had to compare this book to anything it would be Thomas Pynchon's ' V . ' - sprawling , audacious and innovative but far from perfect . Still though , ' The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ' is an interesting and engaging read meant more for the ponderous and adventurous type , those willing to take a trip down the proverbial ' rabbit hole ' ( or in this case , a hollowed-out well ) . Funny , odd , sexy , scary , mysterious , surreal and , most of all , fun . Anyone interested in strong , promising postmodern fiction or those just looking for something different , look no further than ' Chronicle ' .
    • 077 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) I had not really expected to like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . This is the fourth Murakami that I have read . Of the other books , I find Norwegian Wood the best of his work . As I understand from the more serious Murakami fans , it is generally the magic realism that attracts people . I would say that for me the magic realism is the thing that I like least . I had understood from reading reviews in book communities that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is generally the favorite among fans who really like the more fantastic aspect of his work . Anyhow , I liked it quite a bit better than I had expected . For the majority of the book , the magic realism is not located in the fantastic . Instead , Murakami uses a disjointed series of details and events to build the narrative . Coincidence , juxtaposition , and Okada's strange lack of affect provide the red thread that binds the seemingly unrelated together . Particularly in the first half of the book , I found it wonderfully sharp . It hung together like a dream of a detective story . All ordinary moments are treated as meaningful . There was something about it that reminded me ( in a good way ) of The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke . In the end , I am not sure that the novel really succeeds . If Murakami had kept the scope slightly smaller or had resisted the temptation to draw the plot into the actually fantastic , then I think that the material would have been better served . The half resolutions and the partially revealed mysteries are much less satisfying than even a completely unresponsive blank would have been . While I was interested in the way that Murakami ties personal guilt and responsibility to collective guilt and responsibility , I am not sure how well it these two themes work together in the narrative . The last one third of the book interested me significantly less than the first two-thirds . It lost its sharpness . The dream-like quality became simply clouded . In the end , I remain interested in Murakami as a novelist . Norwegian Wood stays my favorite of his work . I would , however , recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle particularly to readers interested in the absurd or alternative narrative structure . I look forward to reading something else by him in the not-too-distant future .
    • 078 4  I had not really expected to like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . This is the fourth Murakami that I have read . Of the other books , I find Norwegian Wood the best of his work . As I understand from the more serious Murakami fans , it is generally the magic realism that attracts people . I would say that for me the magic realism is the thing that I like least . I had understood from reading reviews in book communities that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is generally the favorite among fans who really like the more fantastic aspect of his work . Anyhow , I liked it quite a bit better than I had expected . For the majority of the book , the magic realism is not located in the fantastic . Instead , Murakami uses a disjointed series of details and events to build the narrative . Coincidence , juxtaposition , and Okada's strange lack of affect provide the red thread that binds the seemingly unrelated together . Particularly in the first half of the book , I found it wonderfully sharp . It hung together like a dream of a detective story . All ordinary moments are treated as meaningful . There was something about it that reminded me ( in a good way ) of The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick by Peter Handke . In the end , I am not sure that the novel really succeeds . If Murakami had kept the scope slightly smaller or had resisted the temptation to draw the plot into the actually fantastic , then I think that the material would have been better served . The half resolutions and the partially revealed mysteries are much less satisfying than even a completely unresponsive blank would have been . While I was interested in the way that Murakami ties personal guilt and responsibility to collective guilt and responsibility , I am not sure how well it these two themes work together in the narrative . The last one third of the book interested me significantly less than the first two-thirds . It lost its sharpness . The dream-like quality became simply clouded . In the end , I remain interested in Murakami as a novelist . Norwegian Wood stays my favorite of his work . I would , however , recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle particularly to readers interested in the absurd or alternative narrative structure . I look forward to reading something else by him in the not-too-distant future .
    • 079 4  What an eerily strange tale ! It starts off simple enough , but before you know it , you are completely absorbed into a surreal situation where you don't know what is going on around you . But , to give credit to this talented writer , you simply don't care ! You accept the absurdity , the trippy-ness , the lack of reason with complete abandon . This is not easy to do . The writing style is absolutely beautiful . . . the descriptions , at times lush , at others , creepy as hell ! ! ! There is one scene that actually made me want to cover my eyes it was so gruesome - - and I'm not easily shocked ! I would definitely recommend this , but only to those who are ready to surrender themselves to an alternate universe . Not for the skittish !
    • 080 4  As with most of Murakami's work , the first two-thirds of his books are engaging . For me , his books usually crap out on the last stretch , but his endings do not strangle you with a conclusion , leaving everything open for discussion ( always the sign of a good book ) . Murakami creates characters with quirk , concepts that smack of the serial . It's grand to read of the relationships he builds or tears down . I've always thought Murakami is the best writer of killing time . He has a knack for describing what could just be mundane tasks to give us an extra understanding of his characters . This book is about more than a missing wife and the equally missing family cat . Murakami manages to inject an off-beat nymphet into each of his books , usually to both create a gap between the younger and older generations and to then bridge that gap by pairing them together . He also throws in his unusual but captivating secondary character ( this time the mute boy codenamed Cinnamon ) . Contemporary Japan , a flashback tale of an old war hero and an escort service are thrown in the mix . If this hits the spot , try ' Kafka on the Shore ' and ' Sputnik Sweetheart ' , both by Murakami .
    • 083 4  Imagine a book containing historic fiction , erotica , mystery , suspense , romance , fast-paced , mind-bending and literary . You add those together and you get The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . Not only does the author fit the many genres into the story , but he does it very , very well and without force . This is one of those books you try to savor and read in small sips . I have the soft cover and it's all ripped up and stained from hanging out in the backpack and coffee shops . It had to go everywhere just in case I had a minute or two to read on . The vocabulary alone kept me entertained . It was so fresh and rich and very original , no cliches at all . In terms of vocabulary , this is a great example of what one can do , and this is saying A LOT . Many writers get stuck in overly used language and never understand why they don't expand the world they are trying to create . But Murakami , to me , seems to be the measure of what can do with words and simple language . The many streams of story-line and characters will be an all-you-can-eat buffet for University English course study . Yet this book is written in such a simplistic fashion that any level of reading comprehension can walk away very happy after reading this book . Every person I tell to read this book usually calls me back after a few chapters and thanks me . Yes , it's one of those books you drop in your friend's hands and rush them off to the cash register at the book store ; or you ship them a copy .
    • 084 4  A book that will make you give out an exhausted sigh once you finish it . Because and despite of that , The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is the masterpiece of Murakami . Highly recommended !
    • 087 4  I also loved this book . But why did I keep reading when it was so painful ? Also confusing . The plot line ( s ) are certainly gripping enough to keep you coming back , but it seems that some basic explanations are never divulged . At the end , I wanted to go into a tantrum , like Alice , and pick up all the pieces and throw them around until I had an order I liked . Maybe it was too much like life , for all the transrational bits . Do we read to escape ? To return ? As Okudzhava sings : Fate , fate , fate .
    • 088 4  I recently finished reading Murakami's ' Wind-up Bird Chorincle ' and frankly I felt a little empty as I put the book on my shelf . Not that the writing was bad or the book wasn't thematically rich , it's just that well . . . the third part of the book is too loose . I'll refrain from a full plot summary here as there are many good ones already posted . In the third part ( or book ) the main character is supposed to become even more lost and confused . Murakami reflects this by having him fade out of the narrative most of the time allowing letters , others life stories , or dreams to fill the pages . While I don't doubt this is in interesting , and occassionally successful technique ( the war stories are impeccable ) , it leaves the text too fragmented and without a satisfying resolution ( Kano sisters ? ) . As a proponent of the book I'm certain you'll respond That's the point ! Okay perhaps . I understand cool cynicism and often engage in it myself . Here is something to keep in mind though , I have read that this translation Vinatage International publishes is severely cut and this probably leads to my dissatisfaction with the text . I can see the outline of what Murakami wants to do but the execution is flawed . Since I am a fan of Murakami's other work I'll say this is a result of the cuts . Unfortunately I cannot read Japanese well enough to see if I am correct here . If you are truly a fan of Murakami please write to Vintage and tell them to restore the book to Rubin's complete translation . I am not putting this book down completely - bare in mind I gave it four stars . The first two parts are very well done , almost reminiscent of the great book Paul Auster is incapable of writing . Even if I do consider the third part somewhat of a failure , it is an interesting one , not quite Tolstoi's view of Hamlet but as close as you'll get here . Note : Those new to Murakami read his short stories , Norweigan Wood or the Wild Sheep Chase first to see what he can do .
    • 089 4  This book will keep you interested and entertained from start to finish . It is a sort of fantasy , mystery , love story . The plot is actually three plots . The protaganist is searching for his missing wife , is developing a friendship with a teenage girl all the while Murakami is retelling a veteran's horrific war story . The book is hard to interpret , my belief is that it has many meanings but the main point I took away from it is the power of imagination and meditation in acheiving our goals and desires . It is beautiflly written and I would give it a higher rating were it not a little slow in spots . Still , an excellent , mesmerizing read
    • 090 4  When I was 12 , Madeleine L'Engle's fantasy , A Wrinkle in Time , effected me in a way no other book did - bridging the gap between childhood stories and grown-up novels . Like A Wrinkle in Time the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a fantastic tale in which a certain amount of the story occurs in places that are not of this world . We are given to suspect that some of these places might be in the protagonist's mind , or , they might not be . Set in Tokyo , this is the story of a young married man named Toru Okada whose cat and wife both disappear ( under different circumstances ) . The reader follows Toru as he searches for them both ( as well as his search for self ) , and in the process encounters oddly re named mystics , an endearing if somewhat depressed teenage neighbor girl , an old war veteran with horrible memories from Japan's engagements in Manchuria , and a megalomaniacal brother-in-law ( by far the scariest character in anything I've read in a long time ) . The tale gripped me and was a great read . Murakami does fantastic things with both the physical and psychological details and has a way of drawing in the reader to feel ( s ) he is in Toru's head .
    • 091 4  If you enjoyed Twin-Peaks you will love this book . It takes you off on directions never thought of . It starts in normality - a guy making spagetti and starts to twist and turn into alternative realities . Its themes are present , past and the supernatural world that lies just beneath the surface . It shows how all these worlds are linked . If you are into sincrinicity then you will understand this book entirely . I really enjoyed this book and will definately buy other books by this author .
    • 092 4  Engrossing , complex , and thoroughly rewarding book which I finished , as it happens , about an hour ago . Things don't interweave together as clearly , smoothly , or admirably as they do in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World ( the only other Murakami novel I've read at this point ) , and this was something of a disappointment to me , but it makes up for it in the sheer massiveness of its narrative , juxtapositions , mind-boggling parallels , etc . It's like a giant , fascinating , literary puzzle , and although the picture the puzzle ultimately forms isn't especially clear , that doesn't mean it wasn't a lot of fun to spend time with . Thought-provoking , epic , and though certainly not flawless , very much worthwhile .
    • 093 4  I just want to point out that the July 28 review from Washington DC completely misses the point of the book . This is not meant to be a conventional supernatural suspense story in any way , shape or form . That person has read a different book than I did . Many people won't get this book because nothing is spelled out for you . The skill of the storytelling comes from using lots of juxtaposition . Mysterious events are played alongside very tangible items and so on . I think the Washington DC reviewer read the book very literally and missed the point . The story isn't told though a conventional Hollywood plot . You'll need to think sideways ( and sometimes backwards ) to understand this very rewarding book .
    • 094 4  I first came across Murakami browsing through my local bookstore and coming across Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World . I bought that book on a whim , and was blown away . It was like nothing I'd ever read before ; funny , fast-paced , and suspenseful , and yet it was also one of the more meaningful ( and in the end , strangely touching ) books I'd ever read . When I went back a couple of months later for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , I figured that Murakami couldn't possibly top himself . He does , and it gives me pleasure saying that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is easily the best book I've read so far ( I'm 19 so hopefully I have a long way to go ) . Hard-Boiled Wonderland could not have possibly prepared me for this sprawling masterpiece , which bridges across fifty years and a myriad of colorful characters . Murakami , I know , gets a lot of flack for recycling similar plots and disembodied narrators , but that can be overlooked because of his extensive vision . Written in his inimitable style , the plot of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle races along at breakneck speed , never allowing the reader to collect their bearings . But where Hard-Boiled Wonderland had a tongue-in-cheek flair to it , Chronicle got its laughs much more nervously . Several times while reading I actually shuddered and had to put the book down it affected me so much . There are moments in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that will sear themselves into your consciousness forever . Little Cinnamon Asakawa watching with equal amounts of excitement and horror as two mysterious men bury SOMETHING in his own backyard . Lt . Mamiya watching helplessly as one of his comrades is skinned alive . The doomed Chinese soldiers , all dressed in baseball uniforms , awaiting their deaths . And the enigmatic folk singer who , for his finale , burns himself . To say that all these moments ( and many more ) build up to a cohesive final result would be untrue . In the end , the reader may have more questions about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle than they did at the beginning . But in my mind , any book that invites the reader to ( willingly ) reread it to decipher all of its secrets is a good book indeed .
    • 095 4  I was amazed at reading the author's own comment in Amazon.com that this was the best book I have ever written and possibly the best book in the history of Japan . That audacity ( and arrogance ? ) alone would have convinced me to buy the book even without reading exceptional reviews . The book is fascinating and different and fun as well as moving and sad and disturbing . I'm certainly not qualified to say that the author's self-estimate of his book's place in Japanese literature is true , but if it is , Japan certainly has nothing to be ashamed of . Murakami is right up there with Pynchon and DeLillo , both of whom he resembles in some ways . The books weaves seamlessly through completely mundane daily life , horrifying events from the 2nd World War , and David Lynchian supernatural , inexplicable events . It is intimidatingly large ( though beautifully bound , for the bibliophile ) but reads quickly ; even though a lot is left for the reader to try and figure out , it's a very satisfying book . The best I've read in a while , by anyone .
    • 096 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) This book was recommended to me after I had made a recommendation for another Japanese author , Natsuo Kirino . Windup Bird begins with promise but after 400 or so pages you are still trying to figure out what the blazes is going on . After 500 pages , I'm too stubborn to stop ; but , the last ten pages were absolute torture . There are many components and characters in the book , while I'm sure the author thought would be interesting , were plain silly making little sense . Natsuo Kirino's Out would be time better spent .
    • 097 4  This book was recommended to me after I had made a recommendation for another Japanese author , Natsuo Kirino . Windup Bird begins with promise but after 400 or so pages you are still trying to figure out what the blazes is going on . After 500 pages , I'm too stubborn to stop ; but , the last ten pages were absolute torture . There are many components and characters in the book , while I'm sure the author thought would be interesting , were plain silly making little sense . Natsuo Kirino's Out would be time better spent .
    • 099 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) The Bird is HM's fattest novel in terms of sheer size , but also in complexity and strangeness . It also has much more ' real ' life in it than most of his other fiction , definitely more ' history ' . None other of HM's books deals with war so explicitly and in such graphic detail . The other story lines , apart from war memories , cover the present day disappearances of cat and wife ( the Amazon description above is wrong , the main character has not lost his job , he has given it up , which is not an unimportant trait of his character ) and the oddities of assorted female characters , some with Mediterranean island names , i.e . Malta and Creta . Also the family history and current shenanigans of a very strange politician with sinister habits and motives . The narrator , ' Mr.Wind-Up Bird ' , has a problem to leave a trace in the world , his assertiveness level is low , his vision of himself is lacking in conviction . He searches for it in deep wells . Figures . The world was not made for him . Japan is an island , by the way , literally ( or rather several of those ) . HM writes about it from a perspective with one leg outside . He is unusually international . That may help to explain his international success ( as does his brillance ) , but it also explains some of his problems in the home market . I am not able to follow the Japanese public , of course , but I heard through 3rd parties that HM is not without headwind at home . I assume that must be largely caused by his international appeal and habits . Fascinating . Unfortunately I have now read all that is available in English by HM . The next one comes out in May 07 only . Should I learn Japanese in the meantime ? One remark on literary relatives . The usual references to Kafka are a bit tiring and not really to the point . Similarly , the relationship with so-called magical realism is quite limited . One could with equal justification mention Nabokov an ancestor . I think the most interesting similarity is the one with David Lynch's movies . Has that been explored by somebody ?
    • 100 4  The Bird is HM's fattest novel in terms of sheer size , but also in complexity and strangeness . It also has much more ' real ' life in it than most of his other fiction , definitely more ' history ' . None other of HM's books deals with war so explicitly and in such graphic detail . The other story lines , apart from war memories , cover the present day disappearances of cat and wife ( the Amazon description above is wrong , the main character has not lost his job , he has given it up , which is not an unimportant trait of his character ) and the oddities of assorted female characters , some with Mediterranean island names , i.e . Malta and Creta . Also the family history and current shenanigans of a very strange politician with sinister habits and motives . The narrator , ' Mr.Wind-Up Bird ' , has a problem to leave a trace in the world , his assertiveness level is low , his vision of himself is lacking in conviction . He searches for it in deep wells . Figures . The world was not made for him . Japan is an island , by the way , literally ( or rather several of those ) . HM writes about it from a perspective with one leg outside . He is unusually international . That may help to explain his international success ( as does his brillance ) , but it also explains some of his problems in the home market . I am not able to follow the Japanese public , of course , but I heard through 3rd parties that HM is not without headwind at home . I assume that must be largely caused by his international appeal and habits . Fascinating . Unfortunately I have now read all that is available in English by HM . The next one comes out in May 07 only . Should I learn Japanese in the meantime ? One remark on literary relatives . The usual references to Kafka are a bit tiring and not really to the point . Similarly , the relationship with so-called magical realism is quite limited . One could with equal justification mention Nabokov an ancestor . I think the most interesting similarity is the one with David Lynch's movies . Has that been explored by somebody ?
    • 101 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) I loved this confusing book . It was hard to put down because the writing is so good and so compelling . The bottom line is there is nothing going on in this book . A seemingly ordinary life of a man and a woman and a lost cat . Soon the woman leaves , we don't know why , and by the end of the book we still don't have a clue but what a journey getting to nothing remarkable at all ! ! ! ! The writing is supurb - descriptions of seemingly ordinary events become surreal and etraordinary . I don't know why I liked this book so much - there are many many many unanswered questions and there is no plot or hardly a story line to speak of .
    • 102 4  I loved this confusing book . It was hard to put down because the writing is so good and so compelling . The bottom line is there is nothing going on in this book . A seemingly ordinary life of a man and a woman and a lost cat . Soon the woman leaves , we don't know why , and by the end of the book we still don't have a clue but what a journey getting to nothing remarkable at all ! ! ! ! The writing is supurb - descriptions of seemingly ordinary events become surreal and etraordinary . I don't know why I liked this book so much - there are many many many unanswered questions and there is no plot or hardly a story line to speak of .
    • 103 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) I just wanted to say that I have been an avid reader for fifteen or so years and have plowed through three or four books a week during this time . ' Wind Up Bird Chronicle ' is a book that I read many years back and it is still fresh in my mind to this day . I think that is saying a lot for a book , that it will stick with you for such a long period of time . Over the years since I read Murakami for the first time , I have recommended this novel to over a dozen family members and friends . Pretty much universally they are all grateful for the nudge in this direction . The one drawback to this tale is the ending . And I say this as a cautionary note in that I did not mind it so much , but it was a little confusing . The protagonist enters a dream like sequence that becomes a little confusing , but if you read it with an open mind in tune with the complexities of the rest of this novel it will not detract overly from the perfection of the first 90% of the novel . This book is in many regards as complex as ' Moby Dick , ' in that the story jumps around narratively from one plot line to another in a most elegant and pleasing manner . But whereas Moby Dick is best appreciated while reading it in a group in order to understand its nuances , ' Bird Chronicle ' is exceedingly comprehensible and a pure joy to enter into . While you are reading this novel note how expertly Murakami shifts the focus in several different directions . I can't say enough good things about this book . After reading it I spent a great deal of time tracking down his books that were only printed in Japan as well as everything available in the US . Sadly , the complexity was missing in these other books that you will find here . I kind of consider this to be one of the five or six great post modern works of our time . One of the great things about this book is that it will charm you right from the very first opening paragraph . I wish I had it to read for the very first time again , count yourself lucky and pick up this book .
    • 104 4  I just wanted to say that I have been an avid reader for fifteen or so years and have plowed through three or four books a week during this time . ' Wind Up Bird Chronicle ' is a book that I read many years back and it is still fresh in my mind to this day . I think that is saying a lot for a book , that it will stick with you for such a long period of time . Over the years since I read Murakami for the first time , I have recommended this novel to over a dozen family members and friends . Pretty much universally they are all grateful for the nudge in this direction . The one drawback to this tale is the ending . And I say this as a cautionary note in that I did not mind it so much , but it was a little confusing . The protagonist enters a dream like sequence that becomes a little confusing , but if you read it with an open mind in tune with the complexities of the rest of this novel it will not detract overly from the perfection of the first 90% of the novel . This book is in many regards as complex as ' Moby Dick , ' in that the story jumps around narratively from one plot line to another in a most elegant and pleasing manner . But whereas Moby Dick is best appreciated while reading it in a group in order to understand its nuances , ' Bird Chronicle ' is exceedingly comprehensible and a pure joy to enter into . While you are reading this novel note how expertly Murakami shifts the focus in several different directions . I can't say enough good things about this book . After reading it I spent a great deal of time tracking down his books that were only printed in Japan as well as everything available in the US . Sadly , the complexity was missing in these other books that you will find here . I kind of consider this to be one of the five or six great post modern works of our time . One of the great things about this book is that it will charm you right from the very first opening paragraph . I wish I had it to read for the very first time again , count yourself lucky and pick up this book .
    • 105 4  The imagry that the author creates is very vivid , but he leaves some things left for you to imagine . Maruakami brings so many different , unconnecting worlds together with a single thin thread , managing to give their puny existing a world of meaning . The story flows like life does , with characters coming in forever or leaving forever , but their memory stays . He also creates a new keywhole for the reader to peek through - a way of looking at one situation completely different as though you were seeing it for the very first time ! This book is fantastic . It's a little hard to follow , but as a High-School student I managed pretty well . I finished it within 3 weeks .
    • 106 4  We chose this book for our Book Group knowing absolutely nothing about it . I admit I was a little daunted at the prospect of reading so large a book in the 3 weeks we had allocated for it . But I have never been more unaware of the pages flying by . Murakami's prose flows so easily you'd think it had been written in English ( hats off to the translator ) . The writing isn't dense with convaluted ideas and traditional literary structures ; his writing is woven with imagination and unique events . If you are a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez , Julio Cortazar and The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov , you will love this book . Murakami combines reality with myth , the supernatural and surreal with the mundane and routine . He is able to create a world where a cat disappears for a year , only to come back and take a nap , and grown men have friendships with teenage girls and you don't think anything of it . I feel very strongly that this is one of the stongest pieces of imaginative fiction out there . If you enjoy strange happenings , dream-like realities , and finding out how an unemployed man spends his days at the bottom of a well , this is the book for you .
    • 107 4  This is an addictivly unsatisfying book ( and I mean that in a most positive way ) . It is addictive because it draws its reader in with its first sentence and does not let him / her put the book down for the next 500 pages . I went through it so quickly ; devouring each page while searching for answers and meaning . It is unsatisfying because I never seem to have gotten the answers I was looking for or I found meaning where I did not expect it and where it did not make sense . It is hard to describe what the book is really about . On the surface it is the story of Toru , who without a job spends his days swimming , reading and hanging around the neighborhood while his wife works a mundane job at a publishing house . One day the couple's cat vanishes and Toru's wife tells him to meet with a spiritual woman to find the cat . Toru initially questions this strategy , but agrees to it . When his wife leaves him without as much as a good-bye note shortly thereafter , Toru believes that his introduction to the spirit is a clue to finding his wife again . An additional meeting sets off a chain of events that range from the surreal to dreamlike , from the bizarre to violent . Toru searches for his wife throughout the book , meets some very interesting characters , does some crazy things and seems to develop a very active personality that seems very unnatural for his very passive character . What seems to stand out is his love for his wife and his determination to find her . Below the surface , this is also a book about the violence of war and the atrocities that happened in Manchuria . Finally , it is a book about life stories , about the things that happen to people and how they relate to each other . Murikami is a wonderful writer , who has the ability to bring the bizarre , the natural , the comical and the violent together in one book . You will laugh and cry while reading this book . You will meet characters with strange names and even stranger occupations . You will walk through Tokyo with Toru searching for his wife and the meaning of his life . You will read many different stories and you will wonder what the sense of all this is . Ultimately , this is a book that leaves so much room for meaning that the unexpected reader may feel lost . However , do not give up . This is a book which you will remember for years after finishing it .
    • 108 4  This was my first introduction to the author and it seemed suiting , once I got into the novel , that I read it while alone , away from my partner over the span of a brief vacation alone . For the right person in the right context , this could be a very life changing novel to which you could relate . I enjoyed the level of mystery or puzzle included in the book , and the nicely balanced bits of history , and the author's voice - - my only beef is that I truly wanted to know more in the end , however , it seems like such a reality simply wouldn't exist and its ending is in balance with the kind of mystery and similarities to real human life this novel conveys . Sometimes in life , you simply won't have all the information , and you'll never really know . Our minds do the best with what we have . If there were one message from the book overall , I believe that would be it .
    • 109 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) After reading this lengthy page-turner of a book , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel , I am now a huge fan of Haruki Murakami . Easily , the best book he's ever written . I hope some day he is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature .
    • 110 4  After reading this lengthy page-turner of a book , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel , I am now a huge fan of Haruki Murakami . Easily , the best book he's ever written . I hope some day he is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature .
    • 111 4  I haven't quite figured Murakami out . I bought Blind Willow , Sleeping Woman and gave up on it after a few stories . Some of them were just too surreal for me , and didn't make any sense . But just as I was about to take it to a used book shop , something compelled me to give it another chance . Perhaps it was because the writing was so interesting , even if I didn't understand everything that was going on . Perhaps I was just determined to understand . Whatever it was , I finished it and it ended up being my favorite short story collection in some time . And it pushed me to try one of his novels . Having heard it was the best , I tried The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle first . Not surprisingly , I'm also ambivalent about The WBC . Even though Murakami doesn't always stay within the confines of reality , his stories are almost always engaging . The WBC begins with the protagonist , unemployed Toru Okada , receiving a call from a mysterious woman as he makes spaghetti and listens to The Thieving Magpie . Soon , he is receiving a call from another strange woman named Creta Kano , who is something of a seer and has been hired by Toru's wife Fumiko to find their lost cat . And the mysteries only multiply from there , as Toru meets more strange characters and makes more discoveries as he tries to fill his days and find their cat . Soon , things turn serious though as Fumiko disappears and Toru is forced to go into some deep and dark places to find her , both literally and figuratively . Murakami kept me riveted with this ever expanding web for about 250 - 300 pages . But then things got a bit stale . After about 400 - 500 pages , I felt like the novel was collapsing from its own weight , filled with information but going nowhere . It began to drag . It began to go to places not so interesting . Yet , it picked up towards the end , and somehow Murakami managed to pull it out . somehow , I finished the book satisfied . I still don't know how he does it . I can't say Murakami is for everyone , but can say that everyone should at least give him a try . If you've never read him before , I would recommend his short stories as a starting point . If you like them , give The WBC a try .
    • 113 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) I had heard great things about this book . However , it was pure drudgery to read it . I only kept reading it because I expected it to get better as I read further , and I needed to finish it for my book club . After 600 pages I was disappointed and confused . I probably won't be reading another Murakami book , based on this one .
    • 114 4  I had heard great things about this book . However , it was pure drudgery to read it . I only kept reading it because I expected it to get better as I read further , and I needed to finish it for my book club . After 600 pages I was disappointed and confused . I probably won't be reading another Murakami book , based on this one .
    • 115 4  Murakami , a baby bommer , is fast replacing Kawabata and Mishima as the voice of literary Japan to the English speaking world . There is much to say without abandoning them completely . Dream like and gritty by turns , the story line is a wisp , an almost invisible teasing thread , that the reader chases through textured passages devoted to the minutia of a loser's lethargy worthy of Sartre . The impossibly thin thread divides and passes into layers of clear modern experiences and charcol or pen and ink drawn characters . I found myself dreaming the images Murakami creates while asleep and then when awake and alone . And , there is the language : She smiled now for the first time , which made her look more childlike than she seemed at first . She couldn't have been more than fiftenn or sixteen . With its slight curl , her upper lip pointed up at a strange angle . I seemed to hear a voice saying ' touch me - the voice of the woman on the phone . I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand . The clock on the shelf continued its dry rapping on the walls of time . So this was how secrets started , I thought to myself . People constructed them little by little . Trotting out the technical jargon was another forte of his . No one knew what it meant , of course , but he was able to present it in such a way that you knew it was your fault if you didn't get it . Nowhere has everything you need . The minute you leave your house all phones sound alike . These quotes came from the first sixth of the book . You will want to underline others .
    • 116 4  Upon completion of this novel , I was furious . I felt as though I had been ripped off or worse , ( and at the risk of sounding melodramatic . . . ) as though someone I cared deeply for had wounded me . I branded Murakami a dilettante and moved on . However , this brash indictment didn't stick for long . A great many people really hate this book , and an equal number adore it . I'm somewhere in the middle , closer to those who loved it then not . I enjoyed the book while reading it in spite of its occasionally tedious nature . There's a lot of dream / reality convergence , magically real oddities , and detailed historical factoids , and one has no idea what is actually occurring for quite some time . Murakami's writing is nonetheless powerful and I found myself caring deeply about a number of the characters despite the lack of in depth exposition or revelation that is so common with other novelists . It works to his advantage here , I think , as the writing is quite cinematic in scope and brings to mind a number of arthouse films that are decidedly more atmospheric than plot-based . There is an undeniable , inherent poeticism in the words that I found rather poignant , even in the context of the narrator performing simple and mundane activities , perhaps even more so in these moments . I was unsatisfied and disappointed in bits of the ending , not because things weren't wrapped up in a neat bow ( frankly , I don't see how he could have endeavored to do so without completely destroying the world he had created , and generally speaking , I'm not a fan of narratives that favor this neatly conclusive approach ) , but as a result of what I felt were some hastily attended to narrative points . He spends so much time establishing various elements of an incredibly complex narrative , and in such great , at times painstaking ( for him , not on my end , mind you ) depth , and I felt the resolution could have been tended to with the same care and detail . It felt a bit rushed , frankly . I should mention that this sentiment of mine may very well be a result of portions of the novel being omitted from American reproductions / translations . That being said , this is an absurdly ambitious novel and I think Murakami is successful for the most part . The blending of surrealism , magical realism , and Japanese history , the switches in perspective ( the point of view shifts from that of the narrator to letters sent to him from a supporting cast member to stories told to him by other supporting players ) , the noirish elements . . . it's all there and it's all good stuff . I need to read more of his work before my opinion of him is cemented , but I am eager to do so , which is perhaps a sign of the positive effect his writing has had on me thus far . All in all , I'd recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , but perhaps not without a brief preface regarding my issues with it .
    • 118 4  This deep , thorough novel is quintessentially Japanese in style and content ; echoes of this story can be heard in countless works of literature and film that I have seen . I love this book , and because other reviewers have all said the basics better than I could ever hope to , I'll just make a few additional points that may not have been said . This novel was clearly an inspiration for many of Japan's most well-known independent film directors . Specific scenes in the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle vividly portraying horrific and supernatural events recall similar imagery I've seen in some of my favorite directors ' films , such as those of the well-known Miike Takashi and Kitano Takeshi . The attitudes of the characters and their interactions with each other has the so-called dreamlike quality crafted so powerfully that as I read it , my own sense of time distorted to Murakami's liking . The exact same effect is prized by Japanese film directors , which is what makes Japanese film either entrancing or boring depending on the audience . A disclaimer : I in no way can claim that Murakami directly inspired the above directors . That he did , somehow , is merely my assumption . Yet , the similarities are unmistakable . I admit it is most likely due to simple commonalities throughout Japanese artistic culture . A note on the translation : it is good , very readable , but it is clear to me that the translator favors literal translation techniques . This leads to some redundancy in style that presents itself more clearly due to the novel's incredible length . This is not truly a problem , but readers used to British writing may find the style dry . For your information , I am a fluent speaker of Japanese , and read Japanese at a 5th grade level . The above is just one small example of how well Murakami captures the spirit of Japanese modern art in this novel . My own limited skill as a writer and reviewer compels me to simply implore anyone reading this review : if you have even a slightest interest in Japanese contemporary art and literature , you should read this book . If you've seen any Japanese films such as those by the directors I mentioned above , then you MUST read this book ! The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle will sum up a rich modern tradition of Japanese storytelling for you ; if you love it , it will open your tastes to the entire world of Japanese culture that enthralls countless people ( myself included ) . If you dislike it , you can at least rest assured that you have tasted some of the very best of Japanese contemporary fiction before passing your judgment .
    • 119 4  This book was truly gave me the bang for my buck ! I purchased this item around the early winter ( December-January ) of 2007 , and finished it November 15 of 2008 . ( Yes I know I'm a very slow reader ) . However part of this had to do with the fact that I had almost given up on the book , I'd say around the half way mark . So why did I give this book a five star ? Should the fact that I almost gave up on the book send a message saying that : if it doesn't hold your interest than the purpose of the book has failed you ? I say absolutely not . I just gave the book time . After picking it up from where I left off , it slowly trudged it's way back into a great book . Sure there were what appeared to be slow parts or irrelevant chapters , but everything by the end of the book grew on me . I was surprised myself reading whole paragraphs or even pages , just describing certain things whether it be expressions people had on their faces , tones of voice , or descriptions of clothing . All of this made the characters and environments seem all the more real . However not so much problems I had with the book , but questions . ( SPOILER ALERT BELOW ! ! ! ! ! ) 1 . Who was the boy looking at the men with shovels ? 2 . Why did Malta Kano test Toru's drinking water ? 3 . When did Toru get cut with a knife near the end of the book ? These questions however don't take away from the experience of the book . If anything the many different stories ( such as the one in the first question ) , only enhance it . If anyone if considering giving up on the book because it's getting slow , DON'T . This book will not fail you . You'll take away so much from this book , the characters , events , and emotions in this book will be with you for the rest of your life !
    • 120 4  For a few years now , I've heard The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was a magnificent book of surreal mysteries that stood as one of the best of the 20th century . I guess in a way , both of these arguments are true . However , the book fails to connect in the end and leads the reader on a long and winding journey through high expectations and , ultimately , dead ends . The book is undoubtedly an epic . I usually don't commit to 600 page books or more unless I expect a punch and some sort of intellectual awakening . When starting this one , I surely did . After the first 300 pages , I was enthralled , intrigued , entertained , and hopeful . I was telling people what an excellent book this was , ready to mark it down as a confirmed favorite . Murakami filled it with , not only a series of mundane , yet oddly disturbing and cerebral events , but with history lessons , and intricate character studies . But when I reached the 500th page , I was deeply worried the book would end with a van ride off a cliff . I was right about that aspect of the novel . Murakimi is a talented writer . The ideas are there . The concepts flow . But in the end , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle feels like an extreme insomnia binge more than well throughout novel of the surreal . It would probably make a great David Lynch movie but not a book you have to invest time and brainpower in . The women are oversexed nothings . The main character is shiftlessly interesting at first , then unbelievable and emotionless til the end . The book makes me want to read more Murakmi to discover the bright spots in his career . However , avoid this book unless you want to impress the 20 somethings at your local cafe .
    • 121 4  Toru Okada , the protagonist , loses his job , his cat , and his wife and goes looking for all three . His search introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters . Strange occurances abound . In the end , this book has too many loose ends ( perhaps because the English translation is abridged ) and wanders into the weird too often . I do , however , continue to think about the book after finishing it .
    • 122 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) I just finished reading The Wind Up Bird Chronicle , I stayed up too late several nights in a row because I couldn't put it down . Sometimes scary and haunting but altogether very beautifully written and very true to the human situation .
    • 123 4  I just finished reading The Wind Up Bird Chronicle , I stayed up too late several nights in a row because I couldn't put it down . Sometimes scary and haunting but altogether very beautifully written and very true to the human situation .
    • 125 4  By any standards this is an extraordinary book : beautifully written and , by extension , translated , that records , as the title suggests , in a linear account , a man's search for his wife who , mysteriously , absconds from his house and his life with no apparent prior warning . Along the way we are treated to an account of another man's experiences fighting for the Japanese army against the Mongols , Chinese and Russians in Manchuria before and during the Second World War and introduced to an increasingly bizarre range of characters that progressively enhance the dream-like quality of the narrative : so much so that , ultimately , the reader begins to ponder the nature of reality , time and space . However , if this was the author's intention it is only partly successful . True , the writing is magical but the frequent ` punctuations ' disrupt the flow of the narrative to such an extent that it becomes easy , in the end , almost to lose interest in the protagonist's quest for his missing spouse and , consequently , any curiosity as to her eventual fate . And yet , Murukami still manages to enmesh the reader in a web from which he or she cannot become extricated until the final page : Okada , the bereft husband is everyman and no man , he is apparently insignificant yet curiously sought out and sought after ; of little importance in the lives of his acquaintances yet seemingly pivotal to all the events that gradually unfold . Perhaps it is the very ambivalence inherent in the character of Okada that provides a clue to understanding the strange allure of the book . Or perhaps it is simply its ability to stay in the consciousness of the reader long after its apparent end .
    • 129 4  I found this to be an extremely engaging , well written novel . Murakami blends the real and the unreal wonderfully , and it's a real page turner . Like most of the other reviewers here , I too felt disappointed with the ending . However , considering Murakami is a professional , I figured I'd give him the benefit of the doubt , and didn't let myself be disapointed for too long . I think he does wrap things up , just not in the way that you might want .
    • 131 4  Being the first Murakami book I have read , this story caught me in mid breath . It is not so much a novel , as a comprehensive , passionate account of everything that I have missed from the world . Everything that has slipped by un - noticed Murakami engages in the beauty of simplistic prose from the start to the finish , and yet forced me to discover something under every stone , every street corner that I dared to ignore . I was enthralled and disturbed by this Neo - PI detective story , and at the same time fascinated by his seemingly effortless ability to instill in me the gut wrenching empathy for Toru Okada that followed me to the end of the book . This book sets the stage lights on loneliness , deceit , and a profound , wondrous imagination that blows everything else I have ever read out of the water .
    • 132 4  This book is a startling and intellectual exploration of human experience . The incredible subject matter is paralleled , if not surpassed by the disconnected delivery . Mr . Murakami's technical skills are considerable . His greatest work , I believe , is yet to come . Time never flows in a straight line ; it is cut apart and pasted back together so that every chapter tells a story virtually unrelated to the last , like a stained-glass window . One of the most interesting points , though , is Mr . Murakami's acknowledgement of the Japanese campaign in Manchuria , and his disapproval of the entire situation . This is a book that will make you want to look up that campaign , and half a dozen other topics . The full meaning of it is hidden until the last page , after which you will want to read it again .
    • 133 4  I finished reading the Wind-Ip Bird Chronicle about two months ago . I didn't write a review at that time mainly because I hadn't decided if this one was an excellent or just very good novel . Since then , occasionaly I have surprised myself remembering some of the characters ( specially May Kasahara and Creta Kanoo ) and thinking about the plot . From that very subjective point of view I would say this novel is an excellent one . Murakami has written an extrordinary complex story full of quite strange , although credible , charcters . Many stories ( and maybe too many ) are linked , either clearly or subtly . Symbols are used frecuently and paranormal experiences are assumed as facts . Combinig all these produces a reading that is difficult to stop despite the many pages of the book . I'll definitively read other novels by Murakami .
    • 134 4  This was the first Murakami novel I read , and it remains the best ( above NW , Sputnik Sweetheart , or Underground ) . What this reminds me of more than anything is David Lynch's ' Twin Peaks ' . A man is comfortable in his seemingly humdrum life until he starts to investigate the case of his wife's missing cat . As the layers start to peel back , he slowly discovers that the world is following the logic of a kind of Japanese dreamtime . . . and as he follows the signs and symbols of this madness , he is drawn to ANOTHER PLACE . . . the mysterious hotel , and the nightmare figure that stalks it . Often Murakami re-uses the same system of symbols in his books - deep wells , missing animals , disturbed women . This has two main effects - one , you can better understand what he's getting at in one of his books if you've read a couple of his others too , and two , after a while his novels seem to be remixes of each other , which can take the edge off your enjoyment of them ( Sputnik Sweetheart in particular suffers from this ) . So , should you start with Wind-Up Bird Chronicles , and get Murakami's worldview in it's strongest form while you are still fresh to it , or work up to it , all the better to appriciate it's nuances ? All I can say is - this was my first trip , and I loved it . A novel of shadows that bite you .
    • 138 4  I have read everything of Murakami's that is available in English and a tiny bit of what is not , and this is my absolute favorite . He gets a lot of flak in Japan for being too much of a popular writer , and I think that this novel proves that it is possible to be popular and be a legitimate writer at the same time . Wind-up Bird Chronicles does an amazing job of linking contemporary Japan to pre-war / wartime Japan , on both an individual and societal level , without coming to any easy conclusions . I don't want to tout this work as a great way to make sense of modern Japan , because that would be reductionist , but I think that it is a sweeping look at a society , as well as a fascinating personal journey . Some of the other reviews that were posted here when I wrote this try to make sense of Murakami in terms of very Japanese authors like Mishima Yukio , which is fine , but I think that it's important to emphasize that this book is a great story set in a Japan which is no more mysterious or exotic than any other culture . And the translation is great !
    • 141 4  This was a very engaging and provocative book , which stands out among the works Murakami has produced since A Wild Sheep Chase . The undistinguished narrator , Toru Okada ( here , think Frances McDormand in Fargo ) , faces escalating degrees of unreality entering his world via a lost cat , a series of dreams , fashionable psychics , traditional diviners , and recounted narratives . While many of his trademarks ( e.g . anonymous encounters , Jazz allusions , furry totems ) and a few of his weaknesses ( e.g . abandoned plot threads ) are present in this book , I found that Murakami was able to address more serious issues in a less flippant way than in the past - - and that I cared about the central romance . He is attempting to explore nothing less than the nature of evil , and does so slyly , passing the topic among several characters , all with slightly different takes on the world . While this occasionally gets melodramatic , the recounted narratives of Japanese soldiers and civilians during the war are interesting and compelling . Murakami is not as much a Japanese novelist as an international one , and perhaps this is the reason his books receive so much press in the United States . The world his characters inhabit is as fantastic and universal as the cartoon landscapes of Miyazaki , and a first time reader who has been able to navigate Marquez or Calvino ought to have no problem enjoying this book .
    • 142 4  Murakami s latest , the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , distantly echoes Douglas Adams Dirk Gentlys Holistic detective Agency , in that both novels seem to begin with the search for a lost cat , a search that blooms and expands across immense landscapes , that encompasses luminous and dangerous characters , that invokes a brooding , sullen man who threatens to completely devastate human civilization . Yet to say Murakamis and Adams tales are alike is to claim Tchaikovskys Roccoco Variations and Shostokovichs Cello Concerto are the same because both are Russian cello music . Murakami takes a darker path in both body and soul . The hero , Okada , spends much time brooding in a dry well , borrowing deeper into his mind ? another world ? Okada is searching , first for his cat , then his wife , all the while opposed by his ominious brother-in-law , a man apparently capable of rape without touching , of dominating souls . Okada s only help seems to flicker from the memories of Japanese soldiers once stationed in China . Compelling persons , the capricious May Kanasawa , the Kano sisters , Nutmeg and her silent son Cinnamon , flit through Okadas life , thier mystery never fully explained . The long terrible shadow of Japans involvement in China , and later Russia , increasingly affects Okadas present day life , though how is never quite clear . Murakami explains nothing clearly , much of the seeming action is almost offstage . This can be extremely frustrating compared to more action-driven novels , yet Murakami seems wise not to dwell on it . Yet the fact remains that this is not a book to read once , that the odd details keeping the reader returning to double-check . What happened to the stone bird sculpture in the vacant yard ? Or the fate of the elephants in the Chinese zoo ? Where had Okadas cat been for a year ? Small things , yet I wondered if Murakami made their answers central to the larger questions . I dont know if I enjoyed the book , more is evoked that actually revealed . The novel had grown from the short story The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesdays Women , essentially the first chapter ; the book ends on the opposite image from the short , the lost cat now found , the mans wife lost for now . ( The reverse of the Adams book , where the hero gets the girl , but alas ! the cat dies . ) Not a conventionally happy ending , not really satisfying , but it WORKS . - - though what Murakami meant by * wind-up bird * is never explianed at all . Perhaps it could be anything - - or nothing . Compelling and irritating by turns , Okadas search for his cat and then his wife take him through the * souls darkness * of previous novels . Murakami writes in the dark , yet knows where he is going .
    • 143 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) Really enjoyed it , reminded me of PKDick . Will read more , probably Kafka and NWood next . Great eye on Japan and surprised by the sex , which was done well .
    • 145 4  This book was recommended by a friend of mine who exclaimed , I don't know how to explain what this book about . Just read it ! After reading Wind-Up Bird , I can see what she means . At the same time , I can also see how some could find this book frustrating . However , since this was my first experience with Murakami , I was completely blown away by its freshness and originality and have since purchased every novel he has written . There is something so calming and familiar about Murakami's style even though his plot and characters are so far out . There's also something very Hemingway-esque in this book - - repressed , unemotional characters who try to keep it together under the most sensational circumstances - - that I enjoyed . I highly recommend Wind Up to anyone who loves slow paced indie films ; surrealism ; and / or modern Japanes culture . It's a guaranteed mind bender .
    • 146 4  I agree with a previous reviewer that the end of this 600 page novel isn't satisfying , in the traditional sense . Most American fiction has a predictable happy ending for the hero . This one doesn't . But that may just be part of the different feel one gets when reading foreign authors . I've read Marquez and other South Americans , but this is my first foray into Japanese writers . The imagery , the revealing life of the mind , and the unpredictable plot , kept me glued to this book from early morning until 1AM .
    • 147 4  This book is , as all of Murakami's books are , a wondrous , singular blend of western culture with eastern sensibility ; surrealism with magic realism ; and an haute literary style with page-turning suspense . I cannot recommend Murakami enough , and I think anyone who reads this book will be well rewarded .
    • 148 4  It is rare when a book echos the culture of a time and space so eloquently . Although I did not like his other works all that much , I found this lacking the forced quasi-coolness I was annoyed with in such works as A Wild Sheep Chase . If a Zenlike Freud lay down Japan on his old yellowing couch , this book is the response . . . For some the wackiness is off-putting , but one should realize the richness of Murakami's storyline . Symbolic representations of symoblic figures throw some into confusion - but if you push through the confusion a coherence starts to develop and you are pulled into his strange world - it all starts to make sense ( and your not sure why ? ! ) . The thwarted passions and obsessive mindset of modern Japan is laid out in ballet , barfight , brothel of a work . . . must read .
    • 149 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) This book is what I am starting to believe is typical murakami . It's about figuring out who you are and that , it seems to me , is what just about everyone in the book is doing in one way or another . It's about being lost and finding your way home . And yes , the characters are weird , talk funny and have strange things happen to them , but these are reasons that I like this guy , not strikes against him . The whole point is to look at the world in an off kilter way .
    • 153 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel by Haruki Murakami Japan , 1984 ; Everyman Toru Okada has recently quit his job at the Law Firm and is at home making spaghetti when he receives an unusual call from an unknown woman . The woman claims to know Toru and presents him with evidence and wants to talk to him so that they can Understand each other . Toru dismisses her quickly and goes back to cooking . It turns out that this is only one of many strange things to happen to Toru which include , his family cat running away , his wife mysteriously going missing , and introductions to a very unusual cast of psychics , politicians and an unusual 16 year old girl who lives down the alley from Toru amongst others . All of this seems to have happened while an unusual bird cries in the back ground . A bird Toru has never been able to see and has never heard anywhere else . Its strange cry sounds as if it were winding a spring . Toru and his wife have taken to calling it The Wind-Up Bird . . . . . . This was an interesting yet sometimes meandering read . Japanese writers seem to tell stories in a vastly different way than westerners and this is one of the things that make Murakami's stories interesting . There seems to be more emphasis placed on the supernatural , philosophical view points , and metaphysics . These are all prominent issues in Wind-Up . Also we are given a glimpse at Japanese culture and the Japanese psyche . This is the second book of Murakami's I have read with Kafka on the Shore being the first . The Good : Murakami's writing has a way of keeping you interested . Even sections that would typically come across as mundane or boring if written by someone else still seem to come across as interesting or unique . As seems to be the case with Murakami , we are introduced to very unique and interesting characters and somewhat fantastical situations which is part of the charm of Murakami's writing . The Bad : There are parts where Wind-up feels a little overwritten or a little meandering . I felt that a little too much time was being spent on some of the ancillary tales he used to explain some of the side characters and their involvement in Wind-Up . Some of his ideas were a little too abstract at times as to how certain things worked and peoples actual capabilities . I can't be too specific on that without giving spoilers . Overall : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles wasn't a bad read overall though if you haven't read Murakami before I wouldn't recommend you start with book . If you have read him before and enjoyed his work Wind-Up is worth checking out but it along with all of Murakami's work is not likely to be for everyone .
    • 154 4  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel by Haruki Murakami Japan , 1984 ; Everyman Toru Okada has recently quit his job at the Law Firm and is at home making spaghetti when he receives an unusual call from an unknown woman . The woman claims to know Toru and presents him with evidence and wants to talk to him so that they can Understand each other . Toru dismisses her quickly and goes back to cooking . It turns out that this is only one of many strange things to happen to Toru which include , his family cat running away , his wife mysteriously going missing , and introductions to a very unusual cast of psychics , politicians and an unusual 16 year old girl who lives down the alley from Toru amongst others . All of this seems to have happened while an unusual bird cries in the back ground . A bird Toru has never been able to see and has never heard anywhere else . Its strange cry sounds as if it were winding a spring . Toru and his wife have taken to calling it The Wind-Up Bird . . . . . . This was an interesting yet sometimes meandering read . Japanese writers seem to tell stories in a vastly different way than westerners and this is one of the things that make Murakami's stories interesting . There seems to be more emphasis placed on the supernatural , philosophical view points , and metaphysics . These are all prominent issues in Wind-Up . Also we are given a glimpse at Japanese culture and the Japanese psyche . This is the second book of Murakami's I have read with Kafka on the Shore being the first . The Good : Murakami's writing has a way of keeping you interested . Even sections that would typically come across as mundane or boring if written by someone else still seem to come across as interesting or unique . As seems to be the case with Murakami , we are introduced to very unique and interesting characters and somewhat fantastical situations which is part of the charm of Murakami's writing . The Bad : There are parts where Wind-up feels a little overwritten or a little meandering . I felt that a little too much time was being spent on some of the ancillary tales he used to explain some of the side characters and their involvement in Wind-Up . Some of his ideas were a little too abstract at times as to how certain things worked and peoples actual capabilities . I can't be too specific on that without giving spoilers . Overall : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles wasn't a bad read overall though if you haven't read Murakami before I wouldn't recommend you start with book . If you have read him before and enjoyed his work Wind-Up is worth checking out but it along with all of Murakami's work is not likely to be for everyone .
    • 156 4  and not all answers need to be spelled out . The comments left here about unanswered themes and untidy threads might indicate a possible misunderstanding . The clues referred to in one reviewers comments are indeed real , there is no weird and quirky superficiality in this novel . Sometimes things not obvious are the most rewarding on deeper penetration . Characters do not just disappear , they are absorbed . If at first you don't get it , it doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't make sense ; maybe you just don't get it , and maybe if you ponder it you still will . This is great and profound literature , and a page turner as well , with everything happening on multiple levels . Great characters , fascinating developments , deep undercurrents , terrifying and yet so much fun . Like a lot of great and lasting art , you just gotta let it cook . This is a book that rewards .
    • 157 4  You can find the plot and characters detailed in many other reviews , so let me cut to the experience of reading the book . Toru Okada , like the reader , waits for information to come to him , whether it's a titillating phone call , clues about his wife's disappearance , or insight at the bottom of a well . We scramble to make connections , to go deeper , to see the pattern , and are constantly distracted by new incidents and ideas . Many have noted that Okada is a passive character , but that makes us connect to him since we are reading . Like him , we are most active in our dreams or in that netherworld where we're not really sure if we're acting or imagining . The book is most alive at the psychic level , which encourages this faith that if we can make the deep connections , if we can find psychic wholeness , that we'll do the important work of combating the evil represented by the telegenic politician , Noboru Wataya . I have no idea why so many readers feel the book is unresolved - there's a violent climax in which the narrator takes heroic action and returns to the world with a stronger self . What more can one ask of a story ? While I was reading the book , I felt myself splitting in two - there was the reader moving quickly through the prose , reacting viscerally to the shocks and jolts of the narrative , and a deeper self , struck as by a tuning fork , waiting for revelation . Okada goes beneath the surface of the mysterious world of war , consumer goods , and music to the place where he finally sees the true face of his enemy , confronts his fear of the flashing knife , endures real wounds from psychic battle , and is healed by unseen tears . I emerged from the well of the book with a similar sense of hope and integration . Some strands of narrative remained unwoven , some ideas seemed outside the provisional pattern I constructed , but that's the way it is in this life . I read many books more than once , finding richer webs of meaning each time . Murukami provides pleasure on so many levels - historical , musical , cultural , literary - that I trust him to be many steps ahead of my first reading of this masterwork . I've read his early novel , A Wild Sheep Chase , his recent South of the Border , East of the Sun , and his non-fiction examination of cults and culture , Underworld , but this novel was the most satisfying of all because of its breadth of vision and sheer ambition . It requires attention , but it rewards deep reading .
    • 158 4  I've read most of Murakami's books and I can't escape the feeling he's some sort of reincarnated Zen master standing behind me with a stick and head full of koans . Murakami plays ; he recycles characters , has kinky relationships and likes the just-a-bit-lost-ordinary-guy type of male leads . I'm not sure how many times he'll keep trying to enlighten his readers ( I hope for a few more novels at least ) before he gets bored and probably just lives out in the country listening to jazz and cooking ( oh , did I mention he has a theme of jazz and fine cooking in the books ? ) . Like Calvino , what you take away from the novel is what you have inside . Some literature is more like a mirror than a force-feeding of ideas . Let your patterns go and enjoy the pleasure of turning the pages over for the first time . . .
    • 160 4  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was my first Murakami , and through the first half of the book I had every reason to be impressed and excited by its promise of a rewarding and thought-provoking read . Indeed , in the early going I was mesmerized by the multifarious cast of quirky characters and the somewhat kooky plot lines , and additionally , the unbalanced mood and the underlying tension kept me eagerly focused towards the explanations and resolutions which were surely coming . I was willing , if not thrilled to leave the main storyline time after time to read and absorb the lengthy historical chapters , secure in the knowledge that by book's end , the interconnectedness of it all would be made abundantly clear . However , the second half of this book left me far more disappointed than the first had gotten me interested . Let's get this out of the way first so there is no misunderstanding : Murakami is , without a doubt , a gifted and interesting storyteller with a unique voice and an engagingly oblique manner of limning his plot . But his technical skills and economical prose style notwithstanding , he is either the laziest or most arrogant author I've ever come across . After causing us to feel so strongly about the predicaments and machinations of so many characters , and making us wonder about the resolution of and connection between so many story lines , and schooling us in a good dose of Japanese , Manchurian and Mongolese history , and escorting us through a variety of worlds , netherworlds , cyberworlds , dimensions , dreamscapes and cityscapes , we are left dangling in mid-air . Absolutely nothing we are interested in having revealed to us is ever explained or made clear . And 600 pages of unresolved set-ups is no small matter . We have been on the receiving end of long and ponderous expositions , all of which are interwoven with mysterious shadow-plays and subtle implications : What are Noboru Wataya's strange powers ? how do Malta and Creta Kano ultimately tie into everything ? - and please tell us why we had to hear about that red hat so many times if it didn't end up being important to the story . . . and what the heck is really happening at the strange sessions where Nutmeg and Cinnamon offer rich women the opportunity of fondling Toru's skull in a dark dressmaking room ? where on earth had Mackerel been ? was Kumiko the mysterious woman in the netherworld hotel room ? and why did May Kasahara run away from home only to start writing Toru an endless stream of letters in which she refers to him as Mister Wind-Up Bird every other sentence ( o.k . , so it's cute . . . ) , all this in-between the times she is making men's wigs in the countryside 15 hours a day ? and what is the significance of the strange guy with the bat ? and why did Toru Okada share the trait of a throbbing blue mark on the face with Nutmeg's zookeeper father ? So after 600 pages we don't get any answers to anything , and meanwhile most of the characters whose unresolved predicaments we have been wondering about for quite some time now , have either disappeared from the plot entirely , or been transmogrified into less-palatable versions of themselves . Some simply flit back into the story for a brief moment before the end mercifully comes . We are , shockingly , left without any of the answers we have been so eagerly reading towards , left to fend for ourselves with our own imaginations , abandoned to perform what was essentially the author's main responsibility to his readership . If we are not owed either the answers he has made us wonder about , or at least some reason for having asked the questions in the first place , what are we doing with our noses buried 600 pages deep in this book ? In my opinion , the end result of this type of coy , shadowboxing style of writing is pointless storytelling . These are not the type of deeply - conceived characters with fascinating complexities , where it would be interesting and rewarding to ponder the various sorts of ways that life and fate might have affected them had the story resolved this way or that . It is the very situations and the bizarre potentialities of this story which imbue it with interest , and I felt bamboozled after caring enough to wonder what it all meant , only to have Murikami stop the engines in total limbo . Frankly , in this vein , I think Murakami missed his golden opportunity towards the end of the book when Toru Okada is morphed back from the strange hotel room to the bottom of the flooding well . As the well fills with water and our hero is paralyzed from the abject exhaustion of just having traveled through time , space and hotel room walls , we are not sure what will become of him , but we fear the worst . Now comes the brilliantly-named chapter , The Story Of The Duck People ! ! ! Holy cow , here was Murakami's chance ! As long as our author is leaving it all up to us anyway , I think he should have drowned Toru in the well and made this Duck People chapter describe a bizarre other-dimensional world , which is some kind of weird afterlife place , where everyone from the book ends up as half-duck folk , and where because of this strange new reality the whole plot has a chance to be explained and resolved . I'm being serious ! Before I knew what this chapter actually was - alas , just a final May Kasahara letter in which she describes the antics of some real-life ducks who live by her wig factory * yawn * , I had some STRONG chills running up and down my spine . The image evoked by those weird words , The Story Of The Duck People , made me think that Murakami had fooled us until the very last moment , blindsiding us with the unexpected coup de grace , succeeding richly at the precise moment when all seemed hopelessly unresolvable . And such is the fine line which writers walk . . . In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , in my opinion Murakami fell off the high wire , and didn't build himself a net sufficient to save himself and his book from a failed try at greatness .
    • 162 4  This review is from : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle : A Novel ( Paperback ) I guess I like his books so much because there is always hope I will understand one of them . Even if I don't , I find pleasure in his writing and the fun of TRYING to make sense of them . I don't know why this book by Murakami was so difficult for me to get through . It is no more obtuse than the others of his I have read , but I could only take this in small doses . I rarely re-read a book but I may give this one another try in a few years . As I said , there's always hope .
    • 163 4  I guess I like his books so much because there is always hope I will understand one of them . Even if I don't , I find pleasure in his writing and the fun of TRYING to make sense of them . I don't know why this book by Murakami was so difficult for me to get through . It is no more obtuse than the others of his I have read , but I could only take this in small doses . I rarely re-read a book but I may give this one another try in a few years . As I said , there's always hope .

  • 139 4  I had no expectations when I was given this book , just told it was good . It began simply enough , with a man looking for his lost cat and then losing his wife . Murakami's story is simply told in spare prose . He evokes a dreamlike world where the reader is drawn gradually over the line of the possible into the improbable . Throughout the novel he balances between reality and fantasy with such subtlety that it became possible to believe even the fantastic could happen . The characters are strange and seem to know all about the protagonist but , like him , I found myself clueless as to their motivations and thoughts . This was not a problem , merely a curiosity . I gave equal attention to everything I read because I didn't know what was important and what wasn't . One of the most moving experiences in this novel were the scenes in the well . On a vacant lot in his housing development , the main character finds a dry well . He descends a ladder into its depths and discovers a place of fear and then tranquility . It is there that he can pass through the walls to travel . There are many complex stories within the book , all of them intriguing and vying for attention . One of the most important characters in the story is his antithesis . The more evil and powerful he becomes the more the protagonist becomes powerless and good . There are no answers in this book but many questions are stirred up . You will find yourself thinking about the possibilities . Indeed , I found myself looking forward to the well trips because it was such a marvelous place to think . It became a very comfortable thing to inhabit this novel . I was sorry to see it end , not because there were no ends neatly tied up but because it was such an intriguing , puzzling and challenging place to be . There's nothing like it I have ever read .
    • 030 4  Like others , I found this book unexpectedly thrilling . It begins innocently enough , an innocuous tale of a guy who sits at home , fixating on his lost cat . But then , you're off ! I nearly couldn't believe my eyes for large portions of the book . Murakami makes the most disparate , bizarre storylines and elements seem related and rational . The over-the-top weirdness of the book , so nonchalantly presented , is absolutely riveting . After finishing the book , I immediately gave it to my friends , to see if they would find the book as engrossing as I did . They were as amazed as I had been . One of the best books I've read in a long time .
    • 046 4  Bizarre , wonderful , completely engaging . Murakami writes with an original , delicate precision and the reader is left with a sense of having witnessed something singularly surreal and yet completely believable . The author manages to guide his reader coolly through a labyrinth of seeming randomness that blossoms into an epic flower of a novel . This novel will have you pondering long after the last page .
    • 057 4  This is the first book i've read by Murakami . I was in the bookshop when its strange cover beckoned me . i didn't feel like reading anything too heavy and the thickness of the book made me a little reluctant . but i bought it anyway and i don't regret it . On the surface , everything seems simple . the plot seems simple , the lives of the characters seem simple . but as you read further into the book , you can't help but get totally absorbed . this book really made me think about things . . . life , its meanings , japan . . . . such bizarre , surreal concepts arise from such a simple plot . even though the book is fairly thick , i wished it was thicker . i didn't want to put the book down , and when i finished , i wish i still had a chapter more to go . brilliant brilliant brilliant ! go buy this book now !
    • 074 4  This is Murakami's masterpiece , it's everything they say , hypnotic , surreal , thought-provoking , mysterious and highly entertaining . I have a theory that the folks that realize Murakami's talent but still didn't give a good review are the type who want everything explained and resolved in easily understood and satisfying ways . I think that some people feel unsatisfied if an author doesn't come up with pat explanations for everything . I think that takes away from the fun of thinking and contemplating the mysteries presented for yourself , and is less realistic . As Alan Moore writes through the character of Hollis Mason in his great graphic novel , Watchmen Real life is messy , inconsistent , and it's seldom when anything ever really get's resolved . It's taken me a long time to realize that . I think people can enjoy great modern authors like Murakami if they don't think it's his job or purpose as a writer to explain everything to them . Rather if he gets you to think and wonder about the nature of life and reality while entertaining you at the same time , he should be thanked for doing a great job .
    • 081 4  It is impossible to try and summarize the story , the genre , or even the characters . Murakami poses many questions , and while no answers are clear , the journey and exploration is wild , fascinating , and rich in detail . The story keeps growing and becoming more complex , and yet never loses its way . It is a lot to consume , but ultimately very satisfying .
    • 082 4  This book has been on my shelf for a long time since I know I can only read Murakami in small doses , and this was the biggest dose of them all . When I finally decided to tackle it , I found myself to be as frustrated as fascinated , but in the long run , enthralled by the sensuous images and juxtaposition of humor , history , apology and rage . Murakami uses the natural world more effectively here than in other works . His metaphor involving jellyfish is particularly haunting and memorable . It will be a while before I pick him up again , but I know that despite the challenges put forth , the rewards are ultimately gratifying .
    • 085 4  If you are new to Murakami , this novel might not be the first one you should read by this author . I would recommend starting with A Wild Sheep Chase which , in my opinion , is by far his best . In the Wind up Brid Chronicle you will recognize many of the same types of characters and intriguing plotlines that are laid out in A Wild Sheep Chase . However , in the Wind up Brid Chronicle the plot is not quite as nicely laid out and the book does not flow as well . That being said , Murakami is one of my favorite authors and the Wind up Brid Chronicle is a fine example of his craft .
    • 135 4  I have not been this enthralled with a book in quite a while . I happened upon this book in November , and picked it up last week . Well , I am not finished yet , and I am not sure that I want to finish . I am simply enjoying the journey that I am experiencing . I have already purchased Murakami's other available works in the States , for future pleasure . I wouldn't mind acquiring the rights to this book , writing a screenplay , and turning this wonderful book into a film .
    • 152 4  this book is honestly one of the most amazing i have ever read . the characters have breadth and depth and yet remain singularly out of reach . . . but in an intriguing , incredible way . his prose is amazing and i would recommend this book freely to any reader .

  • 150 4  This book is what I am starting to believe is typical murakami . It's about figuring out who you are and that , it seems to me , is what just about everyone in the book is doing in one way or another . It's about being lost and finding your way home . And yes , the characters are weird , talk funny and have strange things happen to them , but these are reasons that I like this guy , not strikes against him . The whole point is to look at the world in an off kilter way .
    • 124 4  The wind of bird chronicle is a mix of mystery and philosophy with a beautiful flavor of Japanese culture . It's one of the best books I've ever read and has kept my thinking well beyond the last page !

  • a young teenager with incredibly profound remarks and questions , a sister pair Malta and Creta Kano who seemed to have deliberately crossed his life , a mother and her silent son who are keys to the secrets of his own life , an astrologist who gives him precious hints and sends him a friend who indicates through his own story that fate is part of it . In addition , Toru because of his simplicity and his open mind becomes some sort of knight , the only one capable of stopping the absolute evil . The more I progressed through the pages the more I felt that all the characters were part of a cosmic chess game , each one of them related by some means to another disregarding time and space . It seems as if not only the story is part of the cosmic arrangement of things , everything in the book is part of the story , the page numbering , the breaks , the chapter headings , the picture and the drawings , the final comments on the font type . In addition , I got to know so much on the Japanese presence in China and Outer Mongolia , and some parts of the story playing in the Siberian ice desert is simply frightening you to the bones . A really magical story that leaves no one indifferent .
    • 023 4  I loved this book . It's just plain crazy . The most random things happen that made me laugh just at the thought of someone being able to think-up these things . In the end , a lot of things still don't make sense . But that's life i guess . . . A couple parts were disturbing , but the vivid imagery depicted makes this the great book that it is .
    • 024 4  I found this book to be wholly and completely engaging . While it's true that Murakami does leave many , in fact , dozens of questions unanswered , I believe the beauty of his book is in the journey and not the destination of the story . Toru is clearly overwhelmed by the ambiguity of both his situation and the people he meets . He searches for something concrete that he can wrap his head around . But he learns , as do we , that one can't always understand what's happening , or why it is . Sometimes you just have to go along , and hope for the best . It becomes a matter of faith .
    • 056 4  I read this book over one year ago and I am writing this review because I am rereading it now ! The story is fascinating and frightening . I agree with the author - it is his best work .
    • 063 4  Three quarters throught this book I started to feel jealous that anyone else in the world besides the author and myself had read this book . That is how much it meant to me . I knew this was silly , Haruki Marukami is a very popular author ! I have never felt like this before , but oddly I felt hurt that other people could conjure up names and images of these very same characters . On another note , this author amazed me in his ability to write with simplicity without being boring or mundane . This is my first book by this author . Luckily there is a fount of other H.M . titles for me to continue reading .
    • 076 4  Like I said , it's so great I can't wait to let some of it fade then pick it up again in a few years . Some of the gory bits are hard to handle , but it's well worth it . It's longish , but I wished it would keep going at the end . He really lets you slip into the life of the main character , as surreal as it may be .
    • 086 4  I really liked this book . I feel like it will be one of those books I will read again and again . Some books point at deeper truths while realizing that trying to explain those truths is pointless . This is a wonderful book . Not for those who want things to be tidely wrapped up . I really cannot state my gratitude for the wondrous imagination of Murakami . This is my first exposure to his writing . I look forward to reading more of his work . In some ways it reminded me of The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro , another great book . Highly recommended ! !
    • 098 4  I liked this book because its covers several stories , some obviously intertwined , some not . Particularly fascinating are the sections dealing with the War in Manuchuria . They are based on facts about the Japanese incursion into Manchuria during the 1930 ' s , but some of the details are so bizarre that they blend exquisitely with the surreal atmosphere that permeates the entire book .
    • 126 4  This review is from : The Wind-up Bird Chronicle ( Paperback ) Rather than try to describe this book , I will simply advise that you try it . What is it with Japanese artists and wells ? A well plays a major role as both plotting device and metaphor in this book . The same is true in The Ring and Spirited Away . Trapped at the bottom of a deep pit , looking up towards freedom and escape , or down and inward at the very hell of one's own being . The Woman In The Dunes comes immediately to mind .
    • 127 4  Rather than try to describe this book , I will simply advise that you try it . What is it with Japanese artists and wells ? A well plays a major role as both plotting device and metaphor in this book . The same is true in The Ring and Spirited Away . Trapped at the bottom of a deep pit , looking up towards freedom and escape , or down and inward at the very hell of one's own being . The Woman In The Dunes comes immediately to mind .
    • 161 4  I picked this up by mistake but loved it . The sense of time , synapse and memory was wonderfully engaging . Don't want to give anything away , but be prepared to see things in a different light .

  • I don't expect every question to be answered completely . Sometimes using your imagination works best . I can accept that there is no explanation to things like what tendency it was exactly that made Kumiko disappear , what powers Noboru Wataya had , how he used them , or even how Toru got the mark . . . The general idea is there , and that's enough . It is not described what work Nutmeg and Cinnamon do , but we can use our imagination . It is not explained what netherworld Toru traveled to from the well , but we can use our imagination . Something to do with subconscious , human nature , the nature of reality and the consequences of our actions . OK , I can live with that . But in the end , simply TOO MUCH is left to our imagination . I couldn't help but feel that I was reading about the same people that I read about in Hard-Boiled Wonderland . I suppose I have to read more to say for sure , but at this point I feel that Murakami's characters are very one-dimensional , and they act and speak in strange , irrational ways most of the times . Perhaps part of it is my having a Western mindset , but something tells me that's not it . Toru Okada is described as everyman , but tell me , what everyman normally climbs down an old well to sit in the dark for hours on end ? What sixteen-year-old virgins normally lick thirty-year-old men on the cheek without much explanation or reason ? What husband usually remains absolutely emotionless after finding out that his wife of six years has misteriously disappeared ? Easterner or Westerner , I don't buy this as usual human behavior . And , given that this is a first-person narrative , it's especially odd that the narrator rarely reveals any emotions . Is it done of purpose to keep up guessing , or is it the problem of Murakami's writing's style ? Brace yourself , the questions are only beginning . How did Toru get the mark and why ? Who was the singer with the baseball bat , and why did he attack Toru ? How did the cat manage to survive for over a year of missing , and why did it come back after all ? What was Leutenant Mamiya's role in all this ? What were Malta and Creta Kano's roles in all this ? Why did Kumiko change all of a sudden after six years of marriage ? What happened to Cinnamon as a child that made him stop speaking , and what was the significance of that bizarre What happened in the night chapter ? Why wasn't Toru getting May Kasahara's letters ? Who wrote the Chronicles stored in Cinnamon's computer and why ? Why was Nutmeg's husband murdered in such a vilent and bizarre way ? Who was the anonymous woman that kept calling Toru throughout the book ? Who were the holow man and the whistling waiter ? The questions are endless . There's a saying about fiction , If there's a gun sitting in the corner , by the end of the story it must fire . In this case , that isn't true . We keep on hearing about things that seem to bear some great significance - like Malta Kano's red hat , or the tune from The Thieving Magpie . But in the end we realize that those things are there just because it sounds cool . That is the biggest problem I have with the book . There are lots of things in it that could be edited out without having any impact on the book as a whole . The war stories are very well written , I'll give Murakami that . But take Boris the Manskinner , for example - WHY was it even there ? What's the point ? Take out Creta Kano's long story , take out May Kasahara's letters , take out Cinnamon's incident when he was a child . . . None of those things had any point or explained anything . I'm not saying they shouldn't be there - no , I understand that the events of WWII , for instance , are tied in to our time . What I don't understand is why did Murakami had to present so many complelling characters only to have them disappear without a trace as the story unfolded . A lot of people say that Murakami is a genius and if you didn't get his books then you're simply not smart enough . As an artist , I see this attitude a lot in art as well . Here's the truth : * people often say they got it even when they haven't , for fear of appearing stupid . * Perhaps I really am not smart enough to get it . But the truth is , this book made me feel like the story was written one chapter at a time - i.e . , that Murakami in fact did not have the foggiest where it was going , and how it would end . I take my hat off for Murakami's ambitiousness , imagination and vivid writing style . But to me it remains questionable whether he is truly a genius trying to convey some vastly significant message with his books ( which , consequently , only a genius can truly understand , and I don't claim to be one ) . More often I get this very strong feeling that he is merely a very CLEVER writer who is very skilled at making a bunch of nonsense sound important and significant . Either way , I won't deny that what he does is entertaining . So I'll definitely be reading more of him .
    • 004 4  I should say that half way through The Wind-Up Bird , I read over some reviews to get a feel for what other people think . Unfortunately , many were intent on giving the story away . Quite simply , it is best not to know the story line in advance . This is not a book one could possibly rationalize and understand without having first experienced it . More to the point , such analysis will only detract from the experience of reading the book in the first place . Encountering The Wind-Up-Bird Chronicle is like encountering a delicate origami crane for the first time . From the very beginning , you wonder how it got in that shape . You wish to know the secret of its structure . To do so , you must work at it slowly and carefully , undoing each fold with the utmost care and caution in order to discover the pain-staking sequence that led to its beautifully complex and elegant shape . Reading The Wind-Up-Bird is like unfolding a bigger , more-complex crane - - so complex in fact that you might be confused when the entire thing is laid out in front of you , creases spanning the entire page . If you are like me , you might spend weeks or months trying to figure out how to put that crane back together . Without giving too much away , allow me to share some of the things that engaged and enwrapped me : * The possibility that every experience in our life contains deep and profound philosophical meaning . * Discovering the mysterious nature of life and the vagaries of chance fate ; realizing that the place we inhabit and the family we are born into are givens that guide us , not things we can ultimately choose . * Questioning the extent to which we can fully understand other people - - from the man why walks by us in the street to the significant other who sleeps on the other side of our bed . * Realizing the deep and intricate continuity between dreams and waking life . More to the point , discovering how the two realities affect each other and blend together in a seamless fabric called reality . * The possibility that our most profound insights about life might only be found in the bottom of a dry well in a deep meditative , trance-like state . * Finally , the book made realize that a story is quite possibly the best tool with which to convey historical reality . Sounds strange , I'm sure , but after doing a lot of deep research about Japan's involvement in Manchuria during WWII , Murakami is perhaps in the best possible position to give voice to what is often omitted from non-fiction historical texts , simply because history ( which is almost infinite ) is never fully uncovered or told by finite , fallible and imperfect historians . Hmm , I suppose I should discuss names a bit too . All Japanese names have meaning as written in kanji . Tanaka means ' in the rice field ' . Kobayashi means ' small forest ' . O'Hara means ' big field ' . It wasn't until the entrance of Mr . Ushikawa ( bull river ) that I remembered this and began to wonder how each character's name was written in the original Japanese version . Indeed , Mr . Ushikawa's speaks openly about the significance of his name at one point . As he says , he sort of grew to fit the name , instead of the name growing to fit him . The main character's name is also significant , but more so when he comes to known as Mr . Wind-Up-Bird . ( I'll leave that one to you . ) Mr . Wind-Up-Bird and Mr . Ushikawa made me realize that I might be missing some important context , so I decided to research every name that appears in the book . It wasn't hard for a man in my position . After buying a Japanese edition in Tokyo , I spent a good hour talking over the names with a kind English-sensei that just happened to be handy . From this , I was able to flesh out many hidden nuances . One of the character's names , a certain Noboru Wataya , turned out to be of critical significance . Noboru Wataya's first name was written in katakana in the Japanese version , but any Japanese reader would know that noboru has two corresponding kanji : One means to rise and the other means to climb . The kanji representing to rise has the further significance of pictographically representing a rising sun , and thus in Japan it is often referred to taiyo noboru - - taiyo meaning sun . Although written without a corresponding kanji , Noboru implies something moving up - - quite possibly sun itself , and thus the very symbol of the Japanese people . The last name , Wataya , appears in kanji , and it simply means cotton valley . Not just any valley , though . It has the connotation of a hidden , secret or mystical valley . The image of shrouded Shangri-La comes to mind . While reading the book , it is important remember that Noboru Wataya might be rising or climbing something in both the literal and figurative sense of the term . Is he rising in the social ranks , or perhaps climbing the social ladder ? Again , I'll leave that to you . Of particular note , though , is the fact that Wataya is not a common Japanese name . According to my source , it is extremely rare , if anybody of Japanese origin bears the name at all . All of this overlaps very with the myterious and unique character of Noboru Wataya himself , so I was glad to have gotten the scoop . I will say no more about the book , because it is simply too complex to unravel in a review like this . If you want to know whether or not the book is for you , try reading into it for a good ten minutes . It is amazing how much you can get from ten short minutes if you really invest your attention . I hope you find this book as intoxicating and rewarding as I did . Feel free to write me and let me know either way . I'm good like that .
    • 011 4  I love this book . I hate this book . That would be the best way to describe how I feel about it . I don't think it's possible to explain exactly why I feel this way without revealing certain things about the book , so please be advised that this review contains some SPOILERS . This is the second Murakami book I've read ( first one being Hard-Boiled Wonderland and . . . , which I loved ) . Without a doubt , The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a real page-turner , but unfortunately , this page-turning doesn't really lead anywhere , which is why this is such a disappointment . Questions remain unanswered , characters vanish into thin air , things happen without as much as a hint at explanation . Don't get me wrong : I don't expect every question to be answered completely . Sometimes using your imagination works best . I can accept that there is no explanation to things like what tendency it was exactly that made Kumiko disappear , what powers Noboru Wataya had , how he used them , or even how Toru got the mark . . . The general idea is there , and that's enough . It is not described what work Nutmeg and Cinnamon do , but we can use our imagination . It is not explained what netherworld Toru traveled to from the well , but we can use our imagination . Something to do with subconscious , human nature , the nature of reality and the consequences of our actions . OK , I can live with that . But in the end , simply TOO MUCH is left to our imagination . I couldn't help but feel that I was reading about the same people that I read about in Hard-Boiled Wonderland . I suppose I have to read more to say for sure , but at this point I feel that Murakami's characters are very one-dimensional , and they act and speak in strange , irrational ways most of the times . Perhaps part of it is my having a Western mindset , but something tells me that's not it . Toru Okada is described as everyman , but tell me , what everyman normally climbs down an old well to sit in the dark for hours on end ? What sixteen-year-old virgins normally lick thirty-year-old men on the cheek without much explanation or reason ? What husband usually remains absolutely emotionless after finding out that his wife of six years has misteriously disappeared ? Easterner or Westerner , I don't buy this as usual human behavior . And , given that this is a first-person narrative , it's especially odd that the narrator rarely reveals any emotions . Is it done of purpose to keep up guessing , or is it the problem of Murakami's writing's style ? Brace yourself , the questions are only beginning . How did Toru get the mark and why ? Who was the singer with the baseball bat , and why did he attack Toru ? How did the cat manage to survive for over a year of missing , and why did it come back after all ? What was Leutenant Mamiya's role in all this ? What were Malta and Creta Kano's roles in all this ? Why did Kumiko change all of a sudden after six years of marriage ? What happened to Cinnamon as a child that made him stop speaking , and what was the significance of that bizarre What happened in the night chapter ? Why wasn't Toru getting May Kasahara's letters ? Who wrote the Chronicles stored in Cinnamon's computer and why ? Why was Nutmeg's husband murdered in such a vilent and bizarre way ? Who was the anonymous woman that kept calling Toru throughout the book ? Who were the holow man and the whistling waiter ? The questions are endless . There's a saying about fiction , If there's a gun sitting in the corner , by the end of the story it must fire . In this case , that isn't true . We keep on hearing about things that seem to bear some great significance - like Malta Kano's red hat , or the tune from The Thieving Magpie . But in the end we realize that those things are there just because it sounds cool . That is the biggest problem I have with the book . There are lots of things in it that could be edited out without having any impact on the book as a whole . The war stories are very well written , I'll give Murakami that . But take Boris the Manskinner , for example - WHY was it even there ? What's the point ? Take out Creta Kano's long story , take out May Kasahara's letters , take out Cinnamon's incident when he was a child . . . None of those things had any point or explained anything . I'm not saying they shouldn't be there - no , I understand that the events of WWII , for instance , are tied in to our time . What I don't understand is why did Murakami had to present so many complelling characters only to have them disappear without a trace as the story unfolded . A lot of people say that Murakami is a genius and if you didn't get his books then you're simply not smart enough . As an artist , I see this attitude a lot in art as well . Here's the truth : * people often say they got it even when they haven't , for fear of appearing stupid . * Perhaps I really am not smart enough to get it . But the truth is , this book made me feel like the story was written one chapter at a time - i.e . , that Murakami in fact did not have the foggiest where it was going , and how it would end . I take my hat off for Murakami's ambitiousness , imagination and vivid writing style . But to me it remains questionable whether he is truly a genius trying to convey some vastly significant message with his books ( which , consequently , only a genius can truly understand , and I don't claim to be one ) . More often I get this very strong feeling that he is merely a very CLEVER writer who is very skilled at making a bunch of nonsense sound important and significant . Either way , I won't deny that what he does is entertaining . So I'll definitely be reading more of him .
    • 021 4  When the narrator of a Haruki Murakami novel - - always male , 30ish , unnamed , hip , Japanese , westernized , Tokyo-dwelling , and beset with relationship problems - - hears his wife tell him she's leaving him , or finds out his business is falling apart , or learns that his colleague and best friend is an alcoholic , he reacts with a surprising degree of equanimity . But when the same narrator finds himself forced by evil international agents to search in the snow country for a magic sheep with a star on its back , or receives a unicorn skull in the mail wanted by the Japanese mafia , or enters an office building on an assignment and finds himself escorted by a voiceless woman down a tunnel into the ground filled with waterfalls and flesh-eating monsters , he reacts with the exact same degree of equanimity . Murakami's heroes have been criticized for being too stiff and emotionally detached from their often shocking surroundings , but the fact is that his narrators have always fit the author's central theme - - the staggering uncertainty of everyday modern life , and the bravery we exhibit just by stoically facing it . In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , however , the narrator decides to fight back for once . In this sense , the book seems to represent a turning point in the author's career . Rather than watching his cat walk out on him , his wife walk out on him , his very identity walk out on him , the narrator ( who's given a name for the first time in a Murakami novel - - Toru Okada ) decides to fight back and retrieve what he's lost . Not surprisingly , he doesn't fight back by physically assaulting the strange posse of psychics , faith healers , and ghosts that swarm up around him and tease him with clues about the disappearance of his wife ( with the exception of one violent baseball bat attack he commits against a creepy folk singer who offered a bad omen in the early days of Toru's marriage ) . Instead , the narrator fights back by thinking . He fights back by hiding away in an abandoned well in the neighborhood and forcing himself to reflect back on the early days of his marriage , on the reasons that he and his wife got together , and on the reasons that might have driven her to leave him . In this sense , the narrator's self-imposed thinking sessions constitute a kind of metaphysical psychotherapy - - therapy that's designed , not to cure some mental condition , but to help him regain his identity and to reaffirm his very existence . The novel's atmosphere is daringly dreamlike : Characters walk through walls , get skinned alive , shoot zoo animals in their cages during WWII , have sexual intercourse with each other in their dreams , and grow strange purple bruises on their faces . Most of the supporting characters ( e.g . , Malta and Creta Kano , Nutmeg and Cinnamon Akasaka ) remind me of the characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude - - vivid and lifelike , yet identifiable by a single , exaggerated personality trait ( e.g . , Malta's composure , Creta's physical hypersensitivity , Nutmeg's perfectionism , Cinnamon's orderliness ) . This isn't a novel for overly literal-minded people . It's the type of book that gets at truths in the most indirect manner possible , so that the reader may not fully understand what has happened until after finishing the book , so that the narrator may not even fully understand what has taken place until the story is over , so that even the author himself may not have known quite where he was going with the book until he was nearly finished . Overall a colorful , ambitious , haunting , and even terrifying book , and highly recommended .
    • 025 4  I should start by saying that I usually like bizarre fiction . Well , Wind-up Bird Chronicle is certainly that . A regular Joe for the main character , surrounded by the weird and inexplicable - psychic sisters named after islands , a healer and her mute son ( named after spices ) , a well with no water in it , and an alternative reality set in a hotel . The beginning of the book sucks you in , written in a crisp , modern style , with no high-brow literary waffle . Very quickly you realise that something strange is happening to our normal protagonist , Toru Okada . The events don't seem to be connected in any way , but they are portrayed as clues , and you are batting for Toru to figure them out . The random , bizarre happenings make you excited , curious , desperate to read on . So then you read on . And on . More strange characters and events get introduced . There are large forays into the Japanese occupation of Manchuria before WWII and gruesome stories of violence there . But still , you think ( or rather hope , by now ) that this will all be explained . Somehow . But alas , it isn't . And you begin to suspect that many of the things you thought were significant clues , were actually just there to increase the weird and quirky factor . At the end , several important people and occurances had just disappeared out of the novel ( Malto and Creta Kano ? ) , or were left hanging without explanation or resolve . I don't want the meaning of everything spelled out to me , I'm happy to use my imagination to figure some things out . But this book didn't even leave me with a skeleton on which to build my thoughts at the end . Only one of the themes ( good vs . evil - how original ) was resolved to my satisfaction . Read Murakami's book for an introduction to his style , read it if the words Japanese and bizarre in combination sound good . But don't expect to finish it feeling contented .
    • 128 4  Haruki Murakami is a genius with a pen and fantastic imagination . WIND UP BIRD CHRONICLES is one of the most unique fiction ever written by Murakami . Murakami's central character , TORU , is a middle-class guy who is in between jobs . He is surviving on his wife's salary and spends his afternoon looking for a lost cat , cooking spaghetti and avoiding phone sex . After making through the first 50 pages , I realized that CHRONICLES is much more than Toru having a bad day . The novel describes the subconsciouness of modern Japanese mentality , which is evident from the surreal dreams that haunt Toru throughout the novel . Chronicles is a proof that Murakami has a very personal , yet objective prospective on the Japanese routine life and gives the reader a plenty to absorb and chew on . The novel is filled with classic Freudian defense mechanisms and cultural psychology for the modern Japanese society . Creta Kano is one of my favorite characters in the novel . She is simply what Murakami would most identify with as she is above just making the wrong choices and being in the wrong place at the worng time . She's objective , intelligent and outrageously brave .
    • 130 4  Amazon.com has not yet given the option of rating with half stars , or I would have given this 4.5 . This is not a perfect work of fiction , but part , if not most of its charm lies in its imperfection . The only real disappointment is the lack of grace in some of the translation , but that hardly detracts from the beauty of this book . WUBC is based on a short story from Murakami's collection An Elephant Vanishes ( also recommended ) , which becomes the first chapter of this novel , but works very well on its own . In this story a man in present time Japan wakes up to find his wife has left him , with only a vague note of explanation . Prior to WUBC's publication in English , another chapter was published in The New Yorker , about WWII China ( Japan is invading Mongolia , I believe ) , in which a Chinese man falls into a well ( yes , well as in a deep hole where you get water ) and has a somewhat mystical experience . Somewhere along the way , sympathy is found between individuals of the two cultures . These stories don't sound like the same book , do they ? Well , like many of today's postmodern novels , WUBC is a collage of many different stories which lead the reader to a more profound and universal conclusion . This , along with many ambiguously mystical ( hence magical realism ) experiences - the majority of which occur in wells , with the charmingly reserved and eccentric would-be detective who is the story's main character , and the ( mainly ) Japanese setting described beautifully from the point of view of this man to whom almost anyone can relate , makes the length of this novel well worth your time . The writing in this is not genius , but it is a translation . The stories are simply and perfectly told . The novel as a whole is effective if effective means heart wrenching and dear , leaving that longing feeling which makes you sad that it has ended , as if an old friend had disappeared without a trace . I would read this book again , and again . I recommend that anyone with or without the slightest interest in Japanese and Chinese present and past , and / or the slightest bit of the jaded romantic in their hearts do the same .
    • 136 4  As a long-time reader and admirer of Murakami's , I must say I really enjoyed this book . It's his biggest , widest ranging , and I would certainly rate it his best so far . If you are a newcomer to this writer , then you are in for a real experience ! However , coming to the book with a knowledge of his previous work , I must admit to being a little disappointed at the extent to which he recycles his ideas . You could easily argue the case that this book is not much more than a re-working ( expanded and improved ) of Dance Dance Dance . The plot is the same ( man searches for mysteriously disappeared lover ) , the atmosphere is the same , the central concerns of the uncanny in everyday life and the feeling of reality gone disturbingly awry are the same . Even some of the characters are the same : the intense and rather warped teenage girl , the slickly charismatic bad guy , the passive , unflappable hero who stumbles blindly towards the centre of the mystery . And the central location to which the main character is inescapably drawn seems to be more or less the same luxury hotel as in the earlier novel . But this is what Murakami does . Each novel has the same main character going through more or less the same experience , and the unsettling worldview that emerges becomes more reassuringly familiar with each trip through the same territory . Where Murakami breaks new ground here is in his excursion into Japanese history , unearthing the forgotten Manchuria campaign . I actually found this to be the least successful aspect of the book . Far from trying to confront Japan's wartime record honestly and clearly , he creates a sensational little story of a cartoonishly malevolent Russian soldier with his animalistic Mongolian sidekick , against which foil the nobly suffering Japanese characters appear almost saintly . While I am sure that atrocities were committed by the Soviet army , as by all sides in the conflict , and that many ordinary Japanese did suffer terribly at their hands , I can't help feeling that Murakami's account could have done more to show both sides of the picture . The execution of the ' baseball team ' by the Japanese lieutenant is perhaps intended to serve this purpose , but it is of a wholly different order to the subhuman barbarity attributed to the enemy . Plus , the whole Manchurian episode seems to me to be grafted on , rather artificially , to the main story , with which it has little connection . Compared to say , Vonnegut's ' Slaughterhouse Five ' , where the fantasy elements of the novel combine much more effectively and disturbingly with the historical WWII narrative , I'd have to say that Murakami's novel comes across as considerably less powerful . So , after such a relentlessly negative review , I'd like to urge you to buy this book and read it , because it is most definitely worth it , especially if you don't know his earlier novels . I've mentioned only my reservations about the book , for the good points , see all the other reviews . . .
    • 151 4  This is one of the best books of the 1990 ' s . It is difficult to even begin to describe it . It is a portrait of post-WWII Japan , a confessional of a late 20th century Everyman , and an almost Hitchcockian ( or Lynchian on his better days ) wild and surreal ride through the unexplainable . After reading some of his other works , the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle does somehow start to make sense , but there are still plenty of powerful and strange moments . I don't have much to add to the several excellent reviews here , but the narratives of the WWII veteran were , for me , the most disturbing and most profound parts of the book ; Murakami essentially describes pure evil in unflinching detail . The surreal becomes very real in his descriptions of unbelievable violence and heartlessness . I also found the May Kasahara letters to be touching and funny , and somehow oddly central to whatever meaning the book has . One reviewer mentioned that the book was originally published in three separate volumes , and that somehow it was abridged . I think this is unlikely ; the paperback version clearly has three separate sections , and says nothing about it being an abridged version . I don't think Murakami ever attempts to resolve the mysterious and strange plot ( many things in life have no answers , after all ) , and focused more on creating a mood and an overall theme of isolation and the surreal in modern life . This will undoubtedly be a book I visit again and again . It's hard to say exactly what it's about , but somehow it becomes a peek into an odd and fascinating world , a world that lives inside all of us .
    • 159 4  In THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE ( Neijimaki-dori kuronikuru ) , the famed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami presents us with a most unusual series of events . His protagonist Toru Okada is a Tokyo paralegal who has recently quit his job and is mulling what to do next . His cat disappears , and then his wife as well , which brings Okada into contact with a bizarrely morbid teenage girl from down the street , a mystic and her former prostitute sister , and a veteran of World War II haunted by what he saw in the puppet state of Manchukuo and his subsequent imprisonment in a Siberian POW camp . Murakami slowly builds up to a showdown between Okada and his wife's brother Noburu Wataya , an antagonist rarely seen but whose threatening presence is felt throughout the novel . This conflict takes place mainly through a series of psychological journeys , something like but not quite the same as Arthur Schnitlzer's Freudian novel TRAUMNOVELLE . While THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE is entertaining and reads smoothly in this translation by Jay Rubin , it does have a number of faults . The foremost is the novel's genre . The psychological journey has always been a difficult form to write convincingly , as everyone has a different view on workings of the mind and schools of psychology come into vogue and fall out of fashion regularly . As a result , the plot of this novel will seem unconvincing and unbelieving to most readers . The novel's second weakness is Murakami's sudden lack of interest in his protagonist around page 200 . Although the entire novel is narrated by Toru Okada , after a while he stops being a fleshed-out character and begins just drily reporting facts . A unfortunate aspect of this translation is that it is heavily abridged . The novel was originally published in three volumes , but in translating the novel into English , Jay Rubin abridged the novel into a single trade-paperback volume . As a result readers in English aren't really getting the same book that Murakami wrote , and who knows how many mysteries and unclear points of the novel would be resolved if only the entire novel were available . In spite of several serious complaints , THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE does have many fine qualities . With Toru and his wife Kumiko , Murakami gives one of the most realistic portrayals of married life in contemporary fiction . His reflections , like those of the playwright Harold Pinter , on the ultimate unknowability of one's lifelong partner are fascinating . And while his protagonist is written imperfectly , characterisation is generally quite good in this novel . Murakami's antagonist Noburu Wataya is a marvelous creation . Despicable and menacing to an extreme , Wataya is nonetheless incredibly believable and even inspires fear in the reader . Finally , Murakami's dealing with the dark secrets of Japan's occupation of Manchuria shows another horrifying side of World War II . While I'm not sure THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE will survive the test of time and be considered a piece of great literature , it is an entertaining and thought-provoking novel . Fans of contemporary fiction would do well to read it .

  • Murakami is a genius . Everything about this work was perfect or near perfect . It has amazing insights into the problems of existance that are as profound as any philosophical text , yet it doesn't ( as so many so-called Postmodern novels do ) sacrafice plot to do this . Rather , The Wind-up Bird Chronicle has , quite possibly , the best plot in any contemporary novel . No one except a psychic schizophrenic could predict what will happen next . And yet is all fits together beautifully . It reads as a literary representaion of the chaotic order of current philosophical thought . Amazing , amazing book . I haven't encountered an author who shocked me this much since Nabokov and Lolita . I know I'm rambling right now , but I can't help it . READ THIS BOOK . It will change every perspective you have on life . I know it did mine .
    • 032 4  Wow . Just . . . wow . I finished this novel about 10 minutes ago and I'm only now able to put it down and enter the real world again . This is one of the best novels , if not THE best , I have ever had the pleasure to read . Many people here say it , and they are all right : Murakami is a genius . Everything about this work was perfect or near perfect . It has amazing insights into the problems of existance that are as profound as any philosophical text , yet it doesn't ( as so many so-called Postmodern novels do ) sacrafice plot to do this . Rather , The Wind-up Bird Chronicle has , quite possibly , the best plot in any contemporary novel . No one except a psychic schizophrenic could predict what will happen next . And yet is all fits together beautifully . It reads as a literary representaion of the chaotic order of current philosophical thought . Amazing , amazing book . I haven't encountered an author who shocked me this much since Nabokov and Lolita . I know I'm rambling right now , but I can't help it . READ THIS BOOK . It will change every perspective you have on life . I know it did mine .
    • 155 4  Over 600 pages on emotional constipation beautifully written on any subject you could ever think of : sexual relationship between man and wife , man and fantasy , man and mental prostitute , man skin peeling a life , deep well , water , hunted houses , nasty V.I.P intellectual , empty boxes and so on . I definitely HATED THIS BOOK but never the less coudnt let it go . The vivid wild deranged imagination of Murakami hypnotised me totaly . He is one wacko writer . . . What a genius ! !

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