Feasting on Murakami

I've finished reading Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and am now embroiled in a feast of another sort, Haruki Murakami's 1Q84.  The title of the book is a reference to George Orwell's book, 1984, and in fact the novel takes place in 1984.  The letter Q is a reference to the Japanese number 9, pronounced "kyu."

  Murakami's, The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, is the novel that put him on an entirely different plain from those around him and remains his major work.  He certainly took us to places we've never been before, and the book remains one of my favourites.  I suppose I like the kind of journey he takes us on, even if we can't figure out afterwards quite where we've been.

I like the way Mr Murakami writes, his patient writing style, while he slowly weaves his web and draws you ever into his intricate story.  1Q84 is a story of two parallel worlds and to try to describe them would only make the whole endeavor sound more confusing.  Suffice it to say that both worlds are almost identical; one world is basically the world we know, while the other one has a few historical differences and one major difference: there are two moons hanging in the sky.

In each world there is a character we are following.  In one world there is a man, Tengo, who has ghost written a book by a beautiful 17 year old girl that has become a bestseller.  Tengo is also writing a long novel, which may actually be the other world we are reading about.  I am almost half way through the book and Tengo is about to be drawn into a deeper mystery.

In the other world there is a woman named Aomame, who is a hired assassin.  She knows that having two moons in the sky is not right and some historical differences do not make sense to her.  She seems to have entered this alternate reality by accident, or there is a reference that she may have somehow entered the story that Tengo is writing.

We know that Tengo and Aomame knew each other as 10 year old children and have never seen or forgotten each other since, and we know that inevitably their paths are going to cross again.

This is all background.  This is also a story that touches on several topics: violence towards women, revenge, family relationships, the elusiveness of memory, the nature of time, and "story" itself, to name a few.

Each chapter in the book alternates between the two parallel worlds and trying to hold the parallels between the two worlds together can be a challenge, but fortunately, Mr. Murakami is our guide and we have to trust where he will take us.  So far it has been a very engaging journey, and maybe a very engaging journey is all that we can ask for.