1Q84

by Haruki Murakami

Hardcover, 925 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 2011 by Alfred A. Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-0-307-59331-3
OCLC Number:: 701017688

(136 reviews)

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private …

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s — 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.

1 edition

Scott Lougheed reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

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.

bab reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

The book didn’t really say much and it took ages to get to the point, pretty underwhelmed

Biwa reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Writing about my favorite parts of 1Q84 would spoil the surprise for others. And I believe the book's strength is weird "left field" turns and ironies.

Giving it three stars and don't have energy to go into why other than to say the book is just Way Too Long. I know this is lazy and misses the point of a review.... kind of like douche-level reviews of hiking trails such as "hill was too high, no restaurant on top". But there it is.

pithypants reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

This book had potential. What's NOT to like about a book that has a female assassin as one of its protagonists?

Turns out:
1. It's too long. (As an audiobook it's 46 hours long!)
2. It doesn't really have a point. After 46 hours I expect a big pay-off. Nope.
3. It's oddly preoccupied with sex. I feel like the author has some fetishes to work out.
4. Did I mention: it's unnecessarily long. Someone needs an editor.

To his credit, the author is imaginative. I just won't be reading another book by him.

rustybroadsword reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Storygraph'

1 star

oh for fuck's sake. i've been meaning to read this damn thing since it came out, and was so excited, based on the first fifty pages or so that i read years ago. well, i finished it, and what a letdown. so many rehashes of the same events. so many descriptions of boobs. so little plot. so little dimensionality in these characters.

chadkoh reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Couldn't put it down. Murakami's gotta Murakami and I am here for it! Particularly touched me since the funeral chapter was at the same time I was actually prepping and attending a funeral in my real life. Murakami is so good at capturing the emotions by making the reader observe the details.

cherold reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

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.

Cori H. Spenzich reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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? …

tomek reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Nareszcie po kilkunastu miesiącach, przeczytałem do końca.
Postaci ciekawie skonstruowane, mają jakąś głębię.
Trochę się zawiodłem przewracając ostatnią kartkę - zawieszenie akcji. Kolejnych tomów raczej nie przeczytam.
Podoba mi się lekki, luźny styl pisania. Ale to książka dość obyczajowa, zawieszona w historii Japonii. Nie porwała mnie.

suzidarling reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

In the middle of this--and loving it.

Moorlock reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

meh... I lost interest.

Vedang Manerikar reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Some of the writing is wonderfully expressive, but as a whole the story is unimpressive and poorly edited. Which is a shame because such a large part of this book is about a well-edited and poetically told book which becomes a best-seller.

jordan reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Homogeneous dialogue, anticlimactic plot twists, and too much "look at all my cultural references!" Perhaps if Murakami had expended as much effort developing an interesting world as he had trying to impress us with his knowledge of philosophy and classical music, this painfully long book would have at least seemed a bit shorter.

A firm reminder that not all books are literature.

Chris Mayes reviewed 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Review of '1Q84' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This is a book sorely in need of an editor. It reminds me of the narrative flabbiness of the Harry Potter books after book 3. Once writers become famous, it seems that editors become more timid with their editing. I skipped entire chapters in the second half of the book without losing much in the way of plot. This is a bad sign.

The story itself is a bit flimsy and didn't really interest me. I really enjoy Murakami's writing style ( through his translator), so I powered through as well as I could, but I definitely lost interest by about page 600. The story just felt stalled.

This is my first full-length Murakami novel, which I understand to be a bad place to start, but it was the first title available at the library. Murakami still intrigues me, bit I'd recommend skipping this doorstop of a novel.