Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the ninth book in my 2014 TBR Challenge. My sister gave it to me as a Christmas present years ago, but I set it aside for a time when I could get over the intimidation factor. Interestingly, I would not have appreciated it the way I do if I'd read it right away.

Toru Okada is unemployed by choice, living in a house that belongs to his uncle but would otherwise go empty, and has no idea what he wants out of the future. As the story opens, his cat is missing. The cat is named after his brother-in-law, who he dislikes. Then one day, his wife fails to come home from work. The aforementioned brother tells him she wants a divorce, but Okada is determined to find her and talk to her, himself, to get to the bottom of it. She writes him a letter explaining her actions and telling him to move on, but he remains unconvinced. His quest to find her becomes an inner journey, fueled by sensory deprivation inside an old, dried-up well, the mystical sisters Malta and Creta Kano, and his friendship with a flippant teenager who's stopped going to school.

Had I read this book years ago, Okada's passivity would've driven me up a wall. I would've been yelling at him to do something, instead of waiting for a solution to come to him. But two years ago, I found myself in similar circumstances. My husband left, with no hint to where he'd gone. He'd left only a note that explained nothing. Okada's and my stories diverge there; his wife, Kumiko, needs rescuing, and she's worth the effort, whereas my separation was an inevitability, and I'm better off now. Still, I can understand Okada's paralysis, his sense that the solution is out of his hands, his increasingly odd decisions. I didn't have any encounters with a prostitute of the mind, but I can relate to Okada's mental state. The story resonated with me.

The book is beautifully written. Even as a translation, the language is musical, full of vivid imagery. Haruki Mirakami works in impossibility alongside the mundane, and he makes good use of these elements. He has a parallel narrative about a Japanese soldier during WWII running throughout that even this historically illiterate reader can follow.

To call the narrative dreamlike is cheating, because dreams are such an essential part of the story. The story depends on the line between sleeping and waking being porous and blurry.

I was worried this book would feel like homework, or at least that it would be a slog to get through. I expected that I would need to paste a polite smile on my face when my sister asked what I thought. Instead, I find myself hoping she's read it, so we can talk about it. I owe her my thanks for this one. She didn't know it when she gave it to me, but I needed this book.


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