Welcome Back, Me!: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Hello everybody! Sorry it's been such a long time since I posted, but hopefully it was worth waiting for.

I recently finished reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, written by Haruki Murakami, who is a well-known modern Japanese fiction writer. After reading this book, I completely understand why. I was given an except of this book to read in my Modern Japanese Literature class, and it did not give the book the justice it deserves (although it did peak my interest which got me to read the whole thing, so I guess there's that). A review of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is apparently not something that is new to the blog-o-sphere, but here's my two-cents anyways.

To give you an idea, the book runs just around 600 pages (my copy, anyways), the excerpt was maybe 30 pages of that. The expanse of this novel is phenomenal--as you can probably guess from the page count--it covers months in the life of Toru Okada (the protagonist), plus it takes you back in history with stories from older characters. These stories often overtake the main storyline, which can make the book a little hard to read, but it truthfully adds so much to the story, I don't think the book would work without it.

I guess you want to know what the book is about, huh? That's where things get...complicated. It's very hard to nail down exactly what the book is about, because at that 600 page count, it covers so many different things. To begin with, it tells the story of a failing marriage and the search for a missing cat, and the overall drive for Toru is to get his wife back. However, within that there's some strange supernatural aspects involving wells, women who "heal" people through prostitution of sorts, a brother-in-law who doesn't seem to be who he says he is...all connected in a way that Toru must unravel in order to get his wife back somehow.

Probably the hardest part about this book for many readers will be just how Japanese it is. Murakami takes great care in his descriptions, which are fantastic, but often very little will happen in a chapter and that can deter some readers. I personally enjoyed the descriptions, especially when Kumiko (the wife) first leaves--you can truly feel the lagging that Toru feels as he waits for her to come home and doesn't know what to do with himself. Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award for this book, and those who read this novel will understand why. However, if you don't enjoy a book that drags once in a while to make a point and you don't have the patience for a 600 page read, you probably won't enjoy The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and that's just the honest truth. But, if you think you can read this (you should know better than I), I highly recommend it. It's weird, but oddly mesmerizing, with by no means a "fairy tale ending" and a great read for the right kind of person.