Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

Unrequited love. That’s what this one is about – and loneliness.

The thing about Murakami is, he writes in what appears to be such a simple way. There are no great flourishes, it doesn’t appear too technical, certainly not highbrow literature. Plain and simple. In, fact when reading this I sometimes thought “I can write that”. Not a chance buddy!! There is so much packed into this story – again, it looks short but reads long.

Our main character is Sumire, a young woman who has a short humdrum hairstyle, clothes that made you wonder what she could have been thinking, an ill-at-ease smile. She’s an aspiring writer, always scribbling away, thinking, pondering, not really marching to the same beat as everyone else. She’s all over the shop.

Sumire’s mother died when she was very young and when she used to ask her dashing Father (a dentist too!) what her mother was like – all he could offer was “She was good at remembering things and she had nice handwriting”. Now that small sample there is (a) Hilarious – I think and (b) such a simple way of describing the relationship between Sumire’s parents. Murakami – managed to do that in 11 words. Wow. This is what he does.

I’d also like to quote one of Sumire’s diary notes – “Understanding is the sum of our misunderstandings”. Didn’t Socrates once say “I know that I know nothing”? I think Sumire is a bright young woman – but it seems to me that people like her may quite easily fall through the cracks in this crazy, mad, greedy, and often nasty society of ours.

Our world full of round holes doesn’t always accommodate square pegs.

There are 2 main people in Sumire’s life. Firstly, there’s an equivalently aged male friend (K) she talks to (at) incessantly about stuff, at any hour of the day. He often tries to give her sage advice, see he’s a teacher – a responsible bloke and he feels she needs guidance sometimes. I loved their relationship. Secondly, there’s Sumire’s relationship with a sophisticated businesswoman called Miu who is 17 years older than Sumire. This relationship is fascinating and keeps the reader guessing where it will end up.

That’s all I will tell you other than the small matter of Sumire going missing – it’s mentioned on the jacket of the paperback and we end up in a beautiful unnamed little Greek Island near Rhodes. This part was fascinating, it also made me sad, because I felt the need to travel again.

I re-read the following passage over and over.

And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current’s too overpowering; I don’t have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I’ve never been before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there’s no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I’ll be burned up, gone for ever

This story keeps the reader guessing and thinking. A great combination methinks!

I liked this story a lot – and it was almost 5-stars, but it wasn’t as brilliant as recent 5-star reads, just.

4-Stars

I was looking for new authors and came across a lot of strong opinions on Murakami, good and bad, on Goodreads. I thought I'd give him a shot. But i absolutely hated it. What I don't know is if its a bad translation, or if its Murakami's style itself, but I felt it was just horribly written. His similes and metaphors were amateurish and misfit; Her resolve was a regular Rock of Gibraltar. His descriptions seem forced; ...to help prop up her uncertain life here on this third planet from the sun.And his sentence structures and overall story seem simple and flat.
I had just finished reading Michael Pollan, who I feel has an incredibly compelling narrative style, and in comparison I just couldn't get into this book at all. I felt I should maybe give him another shot, but I spoke with some friends who had similar experiences with other of his books so I feel I'm not missing much.

n  "Reality was one step out of line, a cardigan with the buttons done up wrong."n

I have come to realise that reading a Murakami book is not quite an act of reading itself but an act of dreaming with your eyes open. What you see is a series of surreal images barely held together by threads of reason. What matters however, is the feeling these images leave you with; an aftertaste that lingers and intensifies even as the world within these pages turns stranger and more disconcerting; until what you associate with the book is not the story or the characters, but simply, that feeling.

Sputnik Sweetheart would forever be linked in my mind with an aching kind of loneliness. Like losing something you thought you owned and then realising it was never really yours.

Only three characters inhabit the landscape in this book. Each is either a victim of unrequited love or incapable of being in love. They listen, talk, nod along and at the end of the day, go back to their lonely lives and continue to love just the person who cannot love them back. Like sputniks orbiting each other but never getting closer.

I believe what Murakami does is strip life of all flamboyance and expose how mundane it really is. How personal can a connection with a stranger be when some part of him/her will always be a mystery? We can know people, yet not know them. Is love simply a dream we see to avoid the reality of our lonely existence; each life in a separate orbit?

Indeed, reality bites.

n  "And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."n

Go on. Dream a Murakami.

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Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Blurb: Haruki Murakami, the internationally bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, plunges us into an urbane Japan of jazz bars, coffee shops, Jack Kerouac, and The Beatles to tell this story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited loves.

K falls in love with Sumire but a devotion to an untidy writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments - until she meets Miu, an older sophisticated businesswoman. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece K is solicited to join the search party and finds himself drawn back into a world beset by ominous, haunting visions.

Thoughts: Initially this seemed like the easiest of all Murakami's work to read, a simple love/friendship develops between two people and a third person becomes involved. This brief synopsis sounds like a terrible sitcom premise but in the hands of Murakami it is something beautiful. If you've experienced the powerful and complex narratives of Wind-up Bird or Kafka on the Shore you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

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“Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?” n

The regular Murakami themes of loneliness, isolation, effects of homogonisation of Japanese society are prevalent throughout but less reliant on mysticism and other worldliness. There's something quite wonderful about his style of writing that I just don't tire of, his metaphors are especially potent and the reference to Sputnik orbitting the Earth is one of the most enjoyable that I remember ever reading.

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n  “In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.” n

Murakami's ability to create powerful visuals with his words is another aspect that keeps him head and shoulders above most other novellists writing today but the sense of loss he creates towards the end of this fabulous, slim novel is second to none and will linger in the mind for some time to come.

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n  “Her voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my consciousness.” n

As a man who considers himself relatively closed off to emotion I'm unsure as to whether a novel should bring tears to your eyes and a pain in your heart but laying here alone in my empty house today that is what happened.

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n    “We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.” n  n  
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Originally posted at blahblahblahgay

Haruki Murakami's novels have a way of rubbing me the right way, and "Sputnik Sweetheart" is no exception. As someone who has delved into Murakami's world multiple times, I've pondered what draws me back to his books. It's not just vicarious experiences; rather, it's the tangible feeling of living within his stories and becoming one of his characters.

In "Sputnik Sweetheart," we encounter a simple premise: a boy loves a girl, who, in turn, finds love with a mysterious older woman. The plot unfolds gently, with minimal action. The book's thinness is deliberate; Murakami himself summarizes key points in short paragraphs, emphasizing the subtleties. What we find here are vivid descriptions of people, emotions, and settings—distinctly Murakami-esque. Interspersed are intriguing parables that weave disparate threads of the story together, along with subtle side plots.

But the true magic lies in the atmosphere. Murakami combines these elements into a captivating, therapeutic world—one where readers can immerse themselves without worry. It's a place where reality and magical realism coexist seamlessly. To fully appreciate Murakami's work, one must connect with the underlying thoughts and emotions—the essence behind the words.

While "Sputnik Sweetheart" may not be Murakami's magnum opus, it's a journey worth taking. So, if the right time presents itself, I'll gladly revisit its pages, savoring the delicate balance of love, longing, and mystery that defines Murakami's unique storytelling.



Book excerpts

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       "Sumire was a hopeless romantic, a bit set in her ways—innocent of the ways of the world, to put a nice spin on it. Start her talking and she’d go on nonstop, but if she was with someone she didn’t get along with—most people in the world, in other words—she barely opened her mouth. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she took the train. She’d get so engrossed in her thoughts at times she’d forget to eat, and she was as thin as one of those war orphans in an old Italian film—like a stick with eyes. I’d love to show you a photo of her, but I don’t have any. She hated having her photograph taken—no desire to leave behind for posterity a Portrait of the Artist as a Young (Wo)Man. If there were a photograph of Sumire taken at that time, I know it would provide a valuable record of how special certain people can be."

       "Miu smiled. A nostalgic, intimate smile, like a treasured old possession pulled out of the back of a drawer. Her eyes narrowed in an utterly charming way. She reached out and, with her long, slim fingers, gently ruffled Sumire’s already tousled hair. It was such a sudden yet natural gesture that Sumire could only return the smile."

"...Sumire was determined to brand her mother’s face on her memory. Then someday she might meet her in her dreams. They’d shake hands, have a nice chat. But things weren’t that easy. Try as she might to remember her mother’s face, it soon faded. Forget about dreams—if Sumire had passed her mother on the street, in broad daylight, she wouldn’t have known her."

       "Sumire was born in Chigasaki. Her home was near the seashore, and she grew up with the dry sound of sand-filled wind blowing against her windows. Her father ran a dental clinic in Yokohama. He was remarkably handsome, his wellformed nose reminding you of Gregory Peck in Spellbound. Sumire didn’t inherit that handsome nose, nor, according to her, did her brother. She found it amazing that the genes that had produced that nose had disappeared. If they really were buried for ever at the bottom of the gene pool, the world was a sadder place. That’s how wonderful this nose was."

         “My head is like some ridiculous barn packed full of stuff I want to write about,” she said. “Images, scenes, snatches of words … in my mind they’re all glowing, all alive. Write!  they shout at me. A great new story is about to be born I can feel it. It’ll transport me to some brand-new place. Problem is, once I sit at my desk and put them all down on paper, I realize something vital is missing. It doesn’t crystallize—no crystals, just pebbles. And I’m not transported anywhere.”

“Instead of things I’m good at, it might be faster to list the things I can’t do. I can’t cook or clean the house. My room’s a mess, and I’m always losing things. I love music, but I can’t sing a note. I’m clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can’t tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can’t help myself. I have no money in the bank. I’m bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of.”

"If just the thought of seeing Miu has me this worked up, she thought, imagine how painful it would be if we’d said goodbye at the party and never saw each other again. Am I just yearning to be like her—a beautiful, refined older woman? No, she decided, that can’t be it. When I’m beside her, I always want to touch her. That’s a bit different from a yearning."

      "There are people who have so many leftover clothes they can’t stuff them all in their wardrobe. And then there are people like me, whose socks never match. Anyway, I don’t mind. She went over to her friend’s house and came back with an armful of these leftovers.  They’re just a bit out of fashion if you look carefully but most people wouldn’t notice.”

     “Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it. I’m speaking from experience. Somebody once said if it’s something a single book can explain, it’s not worth having explained. What I mean is don’t leap to any conclusions.”

     "I find it hard to talk about myself. I’m always tripped up by the eternal who am I? paradox. Sure, no one knows as much pure data about me as me. But when I talk about myself, all sorts of other factors—values, standards, my own limitations as an observer—make me, the narrator, select and eliminate things about me, the narratee. I’ve always been disturbed by the thought that I’m not painting a very objective picture of myself."

     "I’d stand at the front of the classroom, teaching my primary school charges basic facts about language, life, the world, and I’d find that at the same time I was teaching myself these basic facts all over again—filtered through the eyes and minds of these children. Done the right way, this was a refreshing experience. Profound, even. I got along well with my pupils, their mothers, and my fellow teachers."

     "I really enjoy my new apartment. Moving is certainly a pain (I know you did most of the work, for which I’m grateful; still, it’s a pain), but once you’re all moved in it’s pretty nice. There’re no roosters crowing in my new place, as in Kichijoji, instead a lot of crows making a racket like some old wailing women. At dawn flocks of them assemble in Yoyogi Park, and make such a ruckus you’d think the world was about to end. No need for an alarm clock, since the racket always wakes me up. Thanks to which I’m now like you, living an early-to-bed-early-to-rise farmer’s lifestyle. I’m beginning to understand how it feels to have someone call you at 3.30 in the morning. Beginning to understand, mind you.
     I’m writing this letter at an outdoor cafe on a side street in Rome, sipping espresso as thick as the devil’s sweat, and I have this strange feeling that I’m not myself any more. It’s hard to put it into words, but I guess it’s as if I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling. Can you understand what I’m getting at?"

     "This letter’s getting pretty long, isn’t it? It’s like once I take hold of a pen and start to write I can’t stop halfway. I’ve always been like that. They say well brought up girls don’t overstay their welcome, but when it comes to writing (maybe not just writing?) my manners are hopeless. The waiter, with his white jacket, sometimes looks over at me with this disgusted look on his face. But even my hand gets tired, I’ll admit. Besides, I’ve run out of paper.
     Miu is out visiting an old friend in Rome, and I wandered the streets near the hotel, then decided to take a break in this cafe I came across, and here I am busily writing away to you. Like I’m on a desert island and I’m sending out a message in a bottle. Strange thing is, when I’m not with Miu I don’t feel like going anywhere. I’ve come all this way to Rome (and most likely won’t come back again), but I just can’t rouse myself to get up and see those ruins—what do they call those?—or those famous fountains. Or even to go shopping. It’s enough just to sit here in a cafe, sniff the smell of the city, like a dog might, listen to voices and sounds, and gaze at the faces of the people passing by."

"...I felt like I was some meaningless bug clinging for no special reason to a high stone wall on a windy night, with no plans, no beliefs..."

"When did my youth slip away from me? I suddenly thought. It was over, wasn't it? Seemed just like yesterday I was still only half grown up. Huey Lewis and the News had a couple of hit songs then. Not so many years ago. And now here I was, inside a closed circuit, spinning my wheels. Knowing I wasn't getting anywhere, but spinning just the same. I had to. Had to keep that up or I wouldn't be able to survive."

"...In the midst of this illogical dream—or uncertain wakefulness—I thought about Sumire. Like some documentary of ages past, fragments sprang to mind of the times and places we’d shared. In the bustle of the airport, passengers dashing here and there, the world I shared with Sumire seemed shabby, helpless, uncertain. Neither of us knew anything that really mattered, nor did we have the ability to rectify that. There was nothing solid we could depend on. We were almost boundless zeros, just pitiful little beings swept from one kind of oblivion to another."

     "The people who’d left the ship with me scattered in all directions. Shoppers trudged home, travellers went off to hotels and inns. As soon as the people who’d come to greet their returning friends spotted them, they hugged each other tightly or shook hands, and off they’d go. The two lorries and the Peugeot, too, were unloaded and roared off into the distance. Even the cats and dogs that had assembled out of curiosity were gone before long. The only ones left were a group of sunburned old folks with time on their hands. And me, gym bag in hand, thoroughly out of place."

     "When we left the restaurant, the sky was a brilliant splash of colours. The kind of air that felt like if you breathed it in, your lungs would be dyed the same shade of blue. Tiny stars began to twinkle. Barely able to wait for the long summer day to be over, the locals were out for an after-dinner stroll around the harbour. Families, couples, groups of friends. The gentle scent of the tide at the end of the day enveloped the streets. Miu and I walked through the town. The right side of the street was lined with shops, small hotels, and restaurants with tables set up on the pavement. Cosy yellow lights shone at small, wooden-shuttered windows, and Greek music filtered down from a radio. On the left side the sea spread out, dark waves placidly breaking on the wharves."

     "Narrow stone stairs paralleled the slope of the hill. They were long and steep, but Miu’s trainer-clad feet showed no signs of tiring, and she never slackened her pace. The hem of her skirt just in front of me swished pleasantly from side to side, her tanned, shapely calves shone in the light of the almost full moon. I got winded first and had to stop to take some deep breaths. As we made our way up, the lights of the harbour became smaller and further away. All the activities of the people who’d been right beside me were absorbed into that anonymous line of lights. It was an impressive sight, something I wanted to cut out with scissors and pin to the wall of my memory."

     “And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”

     "It’s been that way since I was little. When I didn’t understand something, I gathered up the words scattered at my feet, and lined them up into sentences. If that didn’t help, I’d scatter them again, rearrange them In a different order. Repeat that a number of times, and I was able to think about things like most people. Writing for me was never difficult. Other children gathered pretty stones or acorns, and I wrote. As naturally as breathing, I’d scribble down one sentence after another. And I’d think."

     "Without any fuss, then, I gave up worrying about the difference between knowing and not knowing. That became my point of departure. A terrible place to start, perhaps—but people need a makeshift springboard, right? All of which goes to explain how I started seeing dualisms such as theme and style, object and subject, cause and effect, the joints of my hand and the rest of me, not as black-and-white pairs, but as indistinguishable one from the other. Everything had spilled on the kitchen floor—the salt, pepper, flour, starch. All mixed into one fine blob."

     "It was far too hot to think about complicated matters. Admittedly I was confused and tired. Still, as if marshalling together the remnants of a defeated army—minus any drums and trumpets—I rallied my scattered thoughts. My mind focused, I began to piece it together."

     "Moment by moment the blue of the sky turned deeper, a large circular moon rising from the sea, a handful of stars piercing holes in the sky. A breeze blew up the slopes, rustling the hibiscus. The unmanned lighthouse at the tip of the pier blinked on and off with its ancient-looking light. People were slowly heading down the slope, leading donkeys as they went. Their loud conversation came closer, then faded into the distance. I silently took it all in, this foreign scene seeming entirely natural."

     "I wanted to see what was taking place on top of the mountain, yet at the same time I thought I should keep my distance. Irrepressible curiosity vied with an instinctive fear. Still, I had to go forward. I felt as if I was in a dream. The principle that made other choices possible was missing. Or was it the choice that made that principle possible that was missing?"

     "An awful chill swept through me and I felt choked. Someone had rearranged my cells, untied the threads that held my mind together. I couldn’t think straight. All I was able to do was retreat as fast as I could to my usual place of refuge. I took a huge breath, sinking in the sea of consciousness to the very bottom. Pushing aside the heavy water I plunged down quickly and grabbed a huge rock there with both arms. The water crushed my eardrums. I squeezed my eyes tightly closed, held my breath, resisting. Once I made up my mind, it wasn’t that difficult. I grew used to it all—the water pressure, the lack of air, the freezing darkness, the signals the chaos emitted. It was something I’d mastered again and again as a child."

     "We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone for ever. What I’d lost was not just Sumire. I’d lost that precious flame."

     "But tomorrow I’ll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice after I’m back in Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and something inside me is gone. Face turned down, without a word, that something  makes its exit. The door opens; the door shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am won’t be here any more. Someone else will occupy this body."

"We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever."

Cats, classical music, other dimensions, a young man in love, great dialogue, a magical feeling.... Sputnik Sweetheart is pure Murakami.

Our narrator "K" is in love with Sumire, and she is in love with an older woman. Something happened to this woman, Miu, years ago that turned her hair preternaturally white and made her feel like half a person.

Sumire disappears and our narrator is left searching for her, searching for love.

It is a mesmerizing novel to read, as I find all of Murakami's novels to be. If you're a fan, you know what I mean. It's hard to describe but even the cadence of his words feels magical.

With most any other author, I have no patience for romantic feelings. It bores me to read about. But with Murakami, it's different. It's a given that there's going to be a young man in love with a young woman. It was wonderful to also have a woman in love with a woman.

There are layers of meaning in this novel though I don't feel the need to analyze them. That's another thing with Murakami - his words hypnotize and relax me where other novels would force me to try to unearth all the symbols.

For a literal-minded brain like mine, it's much more enjoyable to just take the words as they are without needing to figure out what all they could mean. I'll let other reviewers take on that task.

I'm happy to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

"I couldn’t forget that little cat and start loving another.”".

There are certain books you shouldn't read to get the TRUE flavor of a writer. Haruki Murakami is wildly popular--but what is really look like are the thoughts of a fan of Americana, not a participant of the Japanese empire--his ONLY 2 novels you should busy yourself with are:
1) Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
2) Kafka on the Shore
Everything else is a distillation of the themes in these two superior experimental novels. Don't let this be your first foray into Murakami. He is usually pretty good: just not here.

“Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the water flow into the sea… I can’t really say why it’s such a lonely feeling to watch all the river water mix together with the seawater. But it really is.”

I hope that Haruki Murakami is a forgiving sort of guy. I’d like to apologize for abandoning him several years ago. I had picked up Kafka on the Shore, set it aside, and just like that never came back to Murakami again. I don’t know why; I’m a true believer in second chances. It’s not like me to just suddenly drop someone and never think of him or her ever again. Well, to be honest, I have thought of Murakami on occasion, but it took the encouraging nudge of a wise friend to finally convince me of another try. This time I fell in love.

“A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.”

I’ve never read anything quite like this. It was similar to the feeling I have when waking from the most beautiful and haunting dream. My heart is expanded, my heart aches. There’s a sense of something hard to capture, fleeting; it will disappear in an instant. What remains is a sort of impression that is nearly impossible to explain. You can’t really tell anyone about it coherently because it only really makes sense to you alone. It’s just something you “know” and something you feel. You can’t get it out of your head. Your greatest desire is to go back to sleep forever, to dream that dream over and over again.

“So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow—not thinking, in other words?... The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.”

Somehow, I need to convey what this story is about. It’s about a lot of things. Things we can all relate to, such as unrequited love, loneliness, loss, desire, friendship. There are three major characters – Sumire, Miu and the narrator, referred to simply as “K.” Yes, there’s a love triangle, but one that is wholly mesmerizing. Sumire and K are friends of the best sort. They are much like soul mates but missing a connection of intimacy on the physical level. But that’s not for a lack of wanting, at least on K’s part.

“We used to spend hours talking. We never got tired of talking, never ran out of topics—novels, the world, scenery, language. Our conversations were more open and intimate than any lovers’… I imagined how wonderful it would be if indeed we could be lovers. I longed for the warmth of her skin on mine.”

One day Sumire falls in love. A trip to a Greek island with her new employer, Miu, turns this book into something so surreal, so compelling, that I couldn’t stop reading. Murakami’s use of magical realism is used flawlessly. Sometimes I want to head for the hills when I get a whiff of this element in a book, but here I was completely drawn to it. I don’t think Murakami could have gotten his point across to me quite so clearly without it. Here we are in a world surrounded by people, some with whom we are even the most intimate. Yet we are lone souls always just missing that most elemental of connections for which we yearn. People pass in and out of our lives. Are we destined to never make that most perfect bond? Or does there exist the one ephemeral moment in time when it is just possible that someone will come into our orbit, our world, and make that connection, leaving behind a piercing memory of something gained and lost? Just like that dream you woke up from that keeps nagging you at the back of your mind for all eternity.

“We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.”

I’m completely sold on Murakami’s writing now. I went on to download a collection of his short stories right after finishing this novel. I’ve added more to my list. His writing is not extravagant, not overstated. Yet it’s lyrical, beautiful, and infused with a sense of unfulfilled longing. It truly resonated with this reader.

“I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.”

This is my 2nd novel by Haruki Murakami and just like Kafka in the Shore, this still amazed me. I even enjoyed this more than Kafka.

For me this is the best unrequited tragic love story I've read so far. As this is said to be the most openly emotional novel of Mr. Murakami, the prose is really haunting and the scenes are dreamy and surreal. Again, because Mr. Murakami uses a lot of metaphors and symbolisms, there can be layers of interpretations. I am not really fond of love stories (this just happens to be part of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die), but I choose to see this novel as a story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited loves.

The narrator, a 25-year old teacher, K is in love with a 22-year old lesbian writer, Sumire. However, Sumire is in love with her boss, a 39-year old married businesswoman, Miu. Miu and Sumire, working as the former's personal secretaty, went on vacation in Greece as a side trip from a business trip in Italy. Sumire told Miu her feelings. Because of her past, Miu could not reciprocate Sumire's love. The latter disappeared "like a smoke."

There are many nice heartfelt quotes but the one below is my favorite as this explains the title. Based on history, Sputnik 1 & 2 were the first man-made satellites launched by USSR in 1957. In Sputnik 2, there was a dog Laika that becaume the first living being to leave the earth's atmosphere, but the satellites were never recovered.

With Sumire writing and referring to her and Miu:

n  "And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."n

The novel is easy to read and it took me less than a day to finish all the 210 pages. Especially towards the end, I had to stop several times as the writing is so good that I had to close my eyes and think of my own lost or unrequited loves I had in the past.

My unsuspecting wife thought that my knee was hurting.

A moment in my life that has come back to haunt me during times of communication difficulty is when I told my grandmother that I hated to repeatedly shout out what I'd said for my mostly deaf grandfather because it made what I'd said sound stupid. Her response was that it was stupid all along, or something like that.
I've decided that reading translated works and translating them again with one's mind, experiences, what have you is like doing a cover song. Jeff Buckley actually used another Leonard Cohen song in his working of Cohen's Hallelujah. (I can't remember which one off the top of my head. This is going to bug me.) (Tv shows need to be more original. They can't use any other song?! My favorite Homicide: Life on the Street did it first, at least.) I mix up Murakami books in my mind. I'm not entirely sure that my favorite remembered things about Sputnik Sweetheart were actually in this particular book.
The wish to have someone you could call up at three in the morning and talk about anything you wanted. Even if they were asleep.
Noooo, that's not what I meant! Leave me alone, Rob!
Maybe I wouldn't like this book if I reread it. It's sorta caught in my mind of my ex. Speaking of Cohen, my ex hated him because he sang about being alone and yet always had lots of women. It smacked of "No one loves ME" resentment, which kinda sucked hearing from the guy you were with. (He wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than total world love.) Anyway, the narrator reminded me of him. I might hate that now... That's one problem that I do have with Murakami. His strength of seeing the sinister possibility or shadows of something that was always there is also too everyman at times when it comes to things like relationships. Like there are SUPPOSED to be these set rules that everybody follows with men and women. Or I could be remembering it wrong. We're not supposed to be anyone else. That's the beautiful thing about not always understanding what the hell anyone means. I dislike the general male-y everymanly things.
Still would want to talk at 3 a.m with the imaginary person who might actually get it and not care if they didn't.... (Shit. That fucking song is in my head now.)
I loved the description that the girl looked like she'd grow a beard if she could. I love descriptions like that 'cause that speaks to my brain functions in a way I can actually picture it. I think it was Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World that described the chick as looking good like playing a best friend of the lead in a movie. (The Flight of the Conchords did it even better. "You could be a part time model!")
My favorite part is the girl who splits into two people. That feeling lived in my eyes right off the pages.
You know what I really hate more than just about anything? Anyone who will respond to heart ache with a tale about how someone else has it worse (my ex EXcelled at this) like that means you should shut up. These people are always the ones who whine about the small shit, spare no self-pity. Whatever. I pretty much think those people should fuck off. If there's an everymanliness about the sex stuff (I didn't care if it was amazing to find a big girl hot, for example. Wonderland? I think?), Murakami is wonderful about the heart aches that matter because those are the beats you can hear pounding in your ears, no matter what else (shit talk) is drowning out the rest.
I wish I could read braille. I wonder what it would be like to translate words into finger touches.

Murakami'ye başlamak için en uygun kitap bu bana sorarsanız. İçindeki konu ve mekanların, şüphesiz dilin de etkisiyle oldukça sürükleyici. Yine de beni rahatsız eden bir seyler var romanda. Tatmin etmeyen. Kaybolmak ve keşfetmek gibi insanın okurken kendinden ve hayattan birçok şey bulup romandan haz alacağı kavramlar muazzam verilmişken, karakterler bu kadar detayla işlenmişken ve daha önemlisi son ana kadar giz ve arayış temposunu düşürmemişken, hiçbir yere bağlanamadan bitmesi de bende kaybolmuş hissi yarattı açıkcası. O kadar yükselmişken havada asılı kaldım, oysa yere çakılmayı yeğlerdim. Eksiklik hissiyle biten bir roman oldu.

I don’t always read Murakami, but when I do I prefer reading slowly and letting the writing carry me off like I’m having some kind of lucid dream I never want to wake from. Stay thirsty my friends.

What we have here, at least in the beginning of the book, is what New Order would likely describe as a bizarre love triangle. There is even a paragraph where the narrator takes the time to break down how messed up his situation is: he’s in love with a girl, but she’s in love with an older woman, the older woman likes the girl but not in that kind of way, the older woman and the narrator become friends and seem to really care about each other... things are just... let’s just say if it were 2005 and these three had a Facebook profile they would describe their relationship status as “It’s complicated”.

This thing goes off into other directions though, bending into new genres and telling smaller stories within the larger one, and it was just such a joy to read it. In my opinion, few people write as well as my man Murakami does so no matter what story he tells he locks me in right away. His writing feels effortless, but it really does have this dreamlike quality to it- he drifts in and out of reality, into magical realism and fantasy, while still keeping one foot on the ground. You don’t even feel like when he lifts you up into space and swirls you around before gently drifting back to Earth. He’s like a dentist that gives you a lot of laughing gas and lets you float around for a while, but he never comes back to fill a cavity or give you a root canal. He just shuts off the gas slowly before going home for the day.

And that’s how I would describe Haruki Murakami: a trip to the dentist without the pain and anxiety. I wish I had a better description. I also wish I could describe more of the book to you because it really is much more than a boy is crazy about a girl who doesn’t feel the same way. A lot more happens, and even when nothing happens it doesn’t matter. Just read some Murakami and get lost in one of his books for a while. Also visit the dentist every six months or so.