The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (ねじまき鳥クロニクル, Nejimakidori Kuronikuru) is a novel published in 1994–1995 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The American translation and its British adaptation, dubbed the "only official translations" (English), are by Jay Rubin and were first published in 1997. For this novel, Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award, which was awarded to him by one of his harshest former critics, Kenzaburō Ōe.
I'm not entirely sure what keeps drawing me back to Murakami's work. I think perhaps its how he blends mundanity with the surreal, and his unique prose (or at least, what uniqueness is able to be translated.) But even those reasons seem lacking. There's something more ineffable at play as to why I like his work, and that is to say, I just like it. Or at least, right now, I do not have the words to describe my pull towards his work, and why I loved this book especially, but maybe I can say that it's akin to Toru Okada's mysterious pull toward the well. Or really, I just need to let The Wind Up Bird Chronicle marinate my brain for a bit, reread it a few times, before I can give it a proper review.
this book does incredible stuff dealing with "the supernatural" or metaphysical this thinly hidden aspect of fundamentally mundane reality. with such an ordinary mc and such an ordinary premise its impossible to know what to expect. in popular horror, the source of anxiety is the monster and in a way murakami follows this template, there is a monster in the brother in-law noboru wataya. however its more in the existential horror that anxiety resides for this story. the idea that we live in a world guided not by causality but by fate and the correlation between distant times, places and people. we live in a world that is irrational and uncontrolable and freedom lies in letting go, being consumed by the flow and the darkness. the horror then seeps in at all sides; happenstance, chance encounters and dreams make it such that the world and the self are the source of horror. it would be accurate to call it ontological horror rather than psychological. i appreciated
the tools murakami utilizes for storytelling such as long monologues, letters, flashbacks, again dreams, and phone calls, each of which is able to conjure different voices than the mc's pov. overall, very excting story that rarely drags and offers a lot to think about.
Il romanzo è decisamente prolisso, fonde tantissime storie diverse e qualcuna, forse, era evitabile. L'ultima parte assume un aspetto onirico piuttosto confuso, che salta senza grosse indicazioni tra realtà e sogno. Nel complesso è un libro interessante, ma non uno di quelli che vanno letti assolutamente una volta nella vita.
Murakamin kirjat ovat luotettavia lukukokemuksia: tarina on aina käytännössä sama ja tunnelma aina mukavasti nyrjähtänyt. Tällä kertaa salariman-elämää vieroksuvan kolmikymppisen miehen vaimo katoaa yhtäkkiä, ja katoamisen selvittäminen ei tietenkään ole mitenkään suoraviivainen tai looginen prosessi. Tapaus tuntuu myös jollain tavalla kietoutuvan Japanin sotaoperaatioihin Kiinan mantereella, ja sitä kautta teos laajeneekin japanilaisen machokulttuurin kommentaariksi.
Review of 'The wind-up bird chronicle' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
4.5 stars
Now that I have had time to breathe and sleep after finsihing this book, I feel that I have recovered enough from the mindfck (not meant negatively) it gave me. Still I wonder whether my review will read like anything more than weird blathering. I'm not making any promises.
The wonderful thing is that, on the surface, Murakami started this novel like a family drama where one person realises too late that they have taken their partner for granted and thus have lost them. But that wouldn't really be Murakami, would it? Of course, there is a cat - or the disappearance of one which sets off the whole spiral of events which make Toru Okada, the main character, drift further and further away from what most people would call the real world. There, furthermore, are a bunch of psychically gifted persons of various shapes, a psychic …
4.5 stars
Now that I have had time to breathe and sleep after finsihing this book, I feel that I have recovered enough from the mindfck (not meant negatively) it gave me. Still I wonder whether my review will read like anything more than weird blathering. I'm not making any promises.
The wonderful thing is that, on the surface, Murakami started this novel like a family drama where one person realises too late that they have taken their partner for granted and thus have lost them. But that wouldn't really be Murakami, would it? Of course, there is a cat - or the disappearance of one which sets off the whole spiral of events which make Toru Okada, the main character, drift further and further away from what most people would call the real world. There, furthermore, are a bunch of psychically gifted persons of various shapes, a psychic prostitute, a teenager working for a wig company, a cursed soldier, a young man who can't speak since he saw his father bury a heart in their garden with a stranger, a power-hungry, sinister brother-in-law, a haunted house, and a bird who winds the spring of the world and also functions as an omen of undefined allegience. And they all are part of the same web that somehow has moved into a position to make it a tangent to Toru's reality and existence. This world doesn't necessarily hold itself to common ideas about space-time or the laws of cause and consequence. Its inhabitants are strange and powerful, and mostly not exactly well-meaning. As any proper knight in shining armour would do, Toru, or Mr Wind-up Bird, sets out to save his wife from this fascinating and horrifying mess.
As I mentioned before, this novel did something to my brain, possibly put a few knots into its wiring which didn't need to be there. I actually felt as exhausted as Toru after clubbing whatever creature it precisely was in the hotel room that maybe never was and then returning to the well which just might have been filled by the tears of a distraught teenager miles and miles away. (Do you see what I mean when I say this novel twisted some wiring in my brain?) Nonetheless, I highly recommend this book to anyone inclined towards Murakami's special kind of weirdness and surrealism and daring enough for a bit of (possibly reversible) mindfckery.
