1Q84

I have adored Murakami’s work immensely in the past but 1Q84 was a bit of a meandering slog. A bit clumsy, repetitive, and perhaps needlessly drawn out. I’m beginning to believe that Murakami is at his best when his writing is short.

This is a classic conundrum I sometimes find myself in. Is my distaste by design? Were the aspects of the book I dislike deliberately put there to antagonize me, or perhaps to immerse me in the feelings and experience of the characters? Or was it just an oddly self-indulgent piece of writing with no regard for its reader? I love the often-surreal and slightly mystical stream of consciousness narrative Murakami tends toward. However, to the extent that was present here, it was overwrought and overshadowed by so many problems that begin to take hold in the second book.

The portrayal of women, for example, is profoundly unflattering and borderline misogynistic. Is that a projection of Murakami’s genuine perspective or is Murakami merely the meta-author of a story written by Tengo and thus should we read it as the manifestation of Tengo’s sexualizing, misogynistic gaze? WHO KNOWS!

I’m normally up to be confronted and antagonized by an artist and their work, but I want the takeaway and the experience to pay off. Unfortunately this did not hit that mark.

1Q84 begins as an intriguing and fanciful story about a woman whose impromptu decision leads her to a world that is not quite her own; a world with strange, supernatural features around the edges.

I like the central story, but that story is told in a way that is often off-putting, full of tedious repetition and digression.

How repetitive is this book? There are multiple times where we watch a character go through a particular series of events, followed promptly by a section just as long in which that characters thinks about those events and there are redescribed in as much detail as was given the first time. In these repeats, we do not generally learn new information or see how characters reinterpret and expand on events; we just get the same story told a second time.

The book also loves extraneous detail. Characters often tedious muse about the past or the present or about trivial occurrences. I found myself skimming quite a bit of the book, although while most times these digressions never connected with the story, sometimes they actually did, which meant you could never skim in perfect safety.

The characters are fairly likable although I didn't end the book caring more than a little about any of them. In part, this is because I couldn't quite believe in them. This is particularly true of the women; according to the author, most women spend a huge amount of time thinking about their breasts and other women's breasts, and I'm just not convinced that's true.

Still, 1Q84 creates a nice amount of intrigue and mystery. Unfortunately, the author gets lazy about it. After building up the mystery for the half the book, many of the central puzzles are explained by a supernatural character who just says, okay, here's what's going on. While it was a relief to get an explanation, an info dump from an all-knowing prophet seemed like a cheap payoff.

The author also drags his heels mightily on getting to the end of the book, as you constantly feel things are about to reach a turning point they never seem to get to.

My overall impression is the author thought it would be neat to write a really, really long novel but didn't actually have much to say. I would much have preferred to read a Reader's Digest version of this that cut it down by about 70%. I think you could do that without losing a single important thing.

I didn't hate it, it has its moments, it did keep me curious, but I can't heartily recommend it, even if I wouldn't go as far as warning people away.

This is the first book I have read by Murakami.

I loved it. I listened to much of it via the audiobook on Audible, which was done excellently with collaborating voice actors. If I was only reading the book, without slipping into the audiobook when on the road, I think this may have been more difficult to get through.

Strange. Surreal. Hilarious. Weird sex scenes likely not to be found in other books. Cults. Questioning reality.

The audiobook included an interview with the two translators that worked on 1Q84 english translation. Strangely, one of them worked on the first two parts while the other worked on part three. Both of them worked alone, without collaboration by the sounds of it. Seems fitting for this weird story. I honestly couldn't tell in the audiobook, but perhaps I would have noticed a slight style difference if I was only reading it myself? Without the assistance of the voice actors persisting across all parts?

Definitely keeping a copy of it on my bookshelf, and I highly recommend the audiobook is one wants to experience another element to the storytelling. I've purchased a few of his other books that I'll need to read through next.