the wind-up bird chronicle (haruki murakami): a review

 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (a review)

rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨/5

I have read, at the time of writing, two books by Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. To me, the experience of reading Murakami is being extremely confused until 20 pages before the end, at which point you figure out about half the answers to your questions, and then the book ends without answering the other half, and you are, if possible, even more confused. It's fun. 

I've decided to become a Murakami fan (which makes very little sense to me because I am 

a) dense 

b) incapable of dealing with symbolism

c) not that pretentious

d) a girl

but, I don't know, maybe I'm just a masochist), so you (reader) and I can both look forward to a lot of me being confused. 

For much of this book, my major gripe was that it was taking so long to get to the good part. I was on page 450 or something and I was still wondering when I was going to get to the good part. This cuts both for and against this book because it was super slow paced, but it was very well-written, so I wasn't bored to death. If an author can string me along for 400+ pages without me wanting to die, I think that shows they're a good author. 

Furthermore, it wasn't so much that the good part was so delayed and more so that the good part sneaks up on you. I got to page 550 (the really good part, in case you were wondering) (this is a 600 page book) and realized that it had been building up to the good part for a solid 350 pages. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is just a very, very slow paced book. If you hate that, I would not recommend this book. Incidentally, I would not recommend this book to my father, either. 

So, what is the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle about (I'm sure you are wondering)? The blurb on the back promises a "search[] for [Toru Okada's] missing cat—and then for his wife as well," "a netherworld beneath the city's placid surface," and "a bizarre group of allies and antagonists." I'm here to tell you that this is not entirely accurate. Mr. Okada does not search for his missing cat—or, rather, he does, but for such a short duration that his heart is clearly not in it. He does search for his wife. That part is accurate. There is not a netherworld beneath the city's placid surface, unless you count the well in which 10% of the book takes place. There is some weird stuff at the end that could be described as a netherworld, but it is much more like a dream world. The part about the bizarre group of allies and antagonists is accurate, although there is really only one antagonist. 

I would say this book is about a man receiving mysterious phone calls and visits, sitting at the bottom of a well, listening to old men talk about the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, buying a cursed vacant house, and eating spaghetti. If I had a nickel for every time Toru Okada made spaghetti in this book, I would have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. 

Other things that occur in The Wind Up Bird Chronicle are people getting beaten up with a baseball bat/dying of blunt force trauma from being bludgeoned to death (sometimes concurrently), a teenaged girlboss called May Kasahara, and a politician who breaks apart people's consciousnesses and exiles half of them to a strange dream world. At least, I think that's what he does. It's unclear.

I have tried to explain how exactly this book goes, but it is really impossible to describe its ethereal, dreamlike quality. It's interesting because characters are forever trying to explain their internal states to each other and realizing it's impossible to put into words. So I do understand how they feel now. 

Bella says that she hears Murakami writes women poorly. This is 100% true. Almost every female character in this book is objectified. This is something I can tolerate, since the female characters (while unrealistic) are extremely cool, but people with more discriminating taste (i.e., Bella) may not find this tolerable. 

I enjoyed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It felt like a weird dream. I was invested for all 600 pages, even when nothing was happening. I expect I'll be thinking about it for a while. I sort of want to hang out in a well now. I would recommend this book to smart people and people who are really there for the vibes and not the reading comprehension.