Murakamis Schreibstil ist einfach grandios! Sowohl die Charaktere, als auch die Konversationen sind phänomenal ausgearbeitet. Allerdings war das Ende irgendwie etwas seltsam. Entweder habe ich es nicht verstanden oder Murakami hat es absichtlich so seltsam und offen geschrieben. Nicht mein liebster Murakami!

I have an important announcement: Henceforth, when I refer to "my favorite writer" I will be talking about Haruki Murakami. He has been promoted, and no longer must defer to Mr. McInerney, Mr. Easton Ellis, Mr. Fitzgerald or Hemingway. Mr. Palahniuk, of course, plummeted with his 2008 sketch of the pornographic film industry "Snuff." This means that if two of these authors show up on the floor next to my bed, right of way goes to Murakami. This also means that if ever again in my life I am asked what bar I'd take my favorite writer to if he came to town, I'll have a new author and a new bar.

(I'm still not sure why none of my super-favorite writers are women, but we'll address that another time).

It is Murakami's Sputnik Sweatheart, just a mote of a novel, that pushed me over the edge.

An unnamed narrator is in unrequited love with Sumire, a messy girl in mismatched socks and an oversized herringbone jacket, whom the narrator (once in the novel referred to as "K") meets in college. Sumire's dream is to be a novelist, and she drops out of school to read more, write more, take long walks, and call K from a phone booth at 3 a.m. with questions like: "What is the difference between a sign and a symbol?"

Then, suddenly, the otherwise nonsexual Sumire falls in love with an older married woman named Miu, whom she meets at a wedding. (This moment is punctuated with meteorological metaphors). Sumire starts working for Miu, first part time, then full time. She quits smoking, she quits writing, she learns Italian, acquires a much better wardrobe, and the two women travel to Italy together. Sumire is a mess of throbbing loins; Miu is as nonsexual as the former version of Sumire.

K, who reveals little about himself beyond his feelings for Sumire and that he is a teacher, gets a phone call in the middle of the night. Miu asks him to come to Greece because something has happened to Sumire. She's disappeared like a puff of smoke. Dun dun duh.

The thing with Murakami is his simple, quiet voice, and the way that it just lulls like someone whispering a bedtime story. He makes such fantastic images, and his plots don't adhere to any sort of boundaries, like dreams. If Murakami wants a character to fly, he'll fly without any sort of further explanation on said flight. I'm not always sold on bending reality in fiction, but Murakami makes a case for it.

A very important thing happened while I was reading this book. For years I have been struggling with the perfect metaphor for when things are just not quite right, a little out of sorts. The old "round peg, square hole" cliche, or more recently I've used something about unaligned cogs. Gag. As soon as I read this, I saw that I had been forever trumped:

The scene: K's phone has just woken him from a deep sleep.

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

Sigh.

Magijski realizam je definitivno my cup of tea.
Postoje neke sitnice koje su me podsetile na prethodno pročitano delo "Južno od granice, zapadno od sunca",Mju i Sumire su me na momente setile na Šimamoto, ali sve to je, nakon završetka romana, zanemarljivo. I kad bi se pojavio neki šablon, ne bi bilo bitno.
Ono što će mi ostati u sećanju jeste sama atmosfera koju Murakami oživljava sa svakom novom rečenicom. Ne pronalazim adekvatne reči kojima bih objasnila koliko me njegov stil opušta.
Knjigu sam, poput prethodne slistila za dan tj. u jednom sedenju, nisam mogla da je ispustim iz ruku. Mislim da bih bila u stanju da "boravim" u svetu skrojenom od njegovih reči u nedogled, makar se ništa, apsolutno ništa, ne dešavalo u romanu.
Da me pitaju ne bih znala da objasnim, rekla bih samo - umirujuće poput uspavanke za laku noć.

De aceasta data Haruki Murakami ne surprinde cu un roman de dragoste cu accente politiste. Nu avem de-a face cu un detectiv obisnuit, ci naratorul isi asuma acest rol mergand pe urmele eroinei si cautand indicii logice in inlantuirea de evenimente care au dus la disparitia ei. Consider ca toata aceasta "ancheta" se refera de fapt la pierderea si cautarea de sine.
Romanul cuprinde foarte multe concepte privind singuratatea, iubirea neimpartasita, pierderea sinelui, lumea paralela, facand referire chiar si la doppelganger.
Personajele sunt atipice si oarecum ciudate, fiecare avand o lume a lui, pe care si-a creat-o in urma unei traume si in care se ascunde pentru a se proteja. A patrunde si a intelege lumea diferita a acestor personaje poate fi o provocare pentru cititor.
De ce acest titlu? Desigur ca citindu-l ne gandim prima data la celebrul satelit, la Laika, sau, mai recent, la vaccinul elaborat de catre rusi. In carte, Miu, prietena lui Sumire confunda Sputnik cu Beatnik crezand ca autorul Jack Kerouac (preferatul lui Sumire) face parte din curentul literar 'Sputnik'. In urma confuziei, Sumire ii da numele de 'iubita Sputnik'.
In ceea ce priveste actiunea, naratiunea se face la persoana intai de catre prietenul lui Sumire care ne povesteste franturi din viata ei. Aceasta se indragosteste iremediabil de Miu, o femeie de afaceri cu 17 ani mai mare ca ea si care este casatorita. Influenta ei este mare asupra fetei care se transforma incetul cu incetul, plina de speranta, ca Miu ii va putea raspunde la sentimente.
Cele doua decid sa plece intr-o vacanta in Grecia si acolo, misterios si fara urma, Sumire dispare. Miu il cheama in ajutor pe narator pentru a incerca sa dea de urma ei. Acesta trebuie sa se confrunte cu multiplele intrebari: sa fie crima, sinucidere sau ceva supranatural?
Romanul se citeste usor, creaza o atmosfera placuta cu multe referiri la muzica clasica si ne familiarizeaza cu unele obiceiuri japoneze. Desi parea de asteptat, relatia dintre Miu si Sumire pastreaza totusi o anumita limita si nu escaladeaza intr-o relatie sexuala, spre dezamagirea unora dintre cititori.
Am selectat multiple citate deoarece personajele sunt erudite si transmit o multitudine de informatii din intelepciunea japoneza care ne pot pune pe ganduri:
"Totusi, daca mi se permite o generalizare mediocra, avem nevoie si de o cantitate de lucruri inutile in viata noastra imperfecta. Daca n-am avea parte de lucruri inutile, viata noastra si-ar pierde pana si imperfectiunea."
"La urma urmei, Pamantul nu se invarte cu atata truda in jurul Soarelui numai pentru a-i face pe oameni sa zambeasca fericiti."
"Cineva spunea odata ca daca exista un lucru care poate fi explicat intr-o singura carte, atunci nu merita explicat."
"Viata mea fara tine ar fi ca albumul Best Of Bobby Darin fara melodia Mack the Knife."
"Lucrurile greu de inteles trebuie acceptate ca fiind lucruri greu de inteles, apoi trebuie lasate sa sangereze. Gloante si sange. Cand oamenii sunt impuscati, sangereaza."
"Maruntisurile pe care le gandesti cu propria-ti minte sunt mai importante decat marile idei emise de altii."

Изумително много ми хареса „Спутник, моя любов“. Страхотна, вълнуваща, опияняваща. Харуки Мураками е успял да изгради и представи всичко в тази книга по невероятно пленителен начин. Като се започне от красивите описания и лятна атмосфера на гръцкия остров (това тотално ме спечели) и се стигне до вътрешния свят на героите. Странни преживявания и събития около персонажите има и тук, и те, както винаги, придават на творбата неповторими цветове.

При прочита на „Спутник, моя любов“ книгата успя да ми донесе почти същото приключение като това от миналото лято, което имах с „Кафка на плажа“. (Четенето на СМЛ ми се случи и в много подходящо време, без да съм го планирал да е точно сега, но през някой от другите сезони можеше и да не ми допадне чак толкова, колкото сега).

Отлично произведение!



От всички прочетени книги (7 до момента) на Харуки Мураками съм с прекрасни впечатления от този автор. Все още не съм решил коя точно ще е осмата, с която ще продължа пътешествието си през тайнствената Мураками вселена, но съм се спрял на три основни кандидата: „Хроника на птицата с пружина“; „Норвежка гора“; „Убийството на Командора“.

* * *

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is, by any chance, a bad book. My low rating can be easily explained by the fact that I've already read too much Murakami.

I used to like him quite a lot, but come on, doesn't he get tired of writing the same book over and over again? Let me show you the pattern. A simple guy who likes to 1.cook 2.listen to music/read books 3. think about the meaning of life meets an ordinary girl who turns out to be totally extraordinary, which gets her into trouble soon after the guy falls for her. The guy tries to save her from something, predictably dark, but fails. The ending is usually bleak and confusing. Doesn't it all sound familiar to you, experienced Murakami-readers?

So, if Sputnik Sweetheart was the first Murakami book I'd ever read I'd most definitely be head over heels for it right now. But after Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Norwegian Wood,Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, etc., Sputnik Sweetheart just falls naturally into the plain old "more-of-the-same" category and never moves me like I expected.

“[D]on’t pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it’d even lose its imperfection.”  

The prose of this book is marked with a feverish, dreamily ethereal passion. As its poetry spills from the soul in an excitable, delighted aliveness, filling each word with a spellbinding potency that shimmers. It is about being forlornly lonely, untethered at sea, waiting to find a companion, which is what Sputnik translates to in Russian, on your journey of solitude. It is about feeling deeply, fervently in love with someone’s brain and being without that love being returned romantically. However, in that exacted is the fact that desire is different than the torpedo of love that immerses one so fully and acutely in another. Along its journey, it’s also tinged and colored with a magical realism that points to a different side or dimension, a getting lost in the deep throes of a dreamworld only reserved for you and anyone else you want to believe will be there.

“Still the basic questions tugged at me: Who am I? What am I searching for? Where am I headed?”  

Sumire, a current Jack Kerouac aficionado for the ways his stories get lost in wildness and wilderness, is a Japanese woman who has dropped out of school to become a novelist. She eats, breathes, sleeps her art and own trails and trials of fiction, almost wanting to become one with the worlds and souls she inhabits. K, a fellow book lover, encourages her do so in enrapturing enthuse. As he is one of her closest, most platonically intimate friends, her intellectual stimulant. Additionally, he serves as the narrator of the story, who sees into Sumire’s greatest faults and virtues. Her greatest pains and unconventional beauties. He comes to hopelessly fall in love with her even: it being hopeless because it is unrequited, ardent passion boiling up in his own soul and self that can never be recovered or retrieved the same as it was found.

“ “There’s a great line by Groucho Marx,” I said. “ ‘She’s so in love with me she doesn’t know anything. That’s why she’s so in love with me.’ ” ”  

However, their relationship is about to be even more thrown off balance into a temporarily tenuous place as Miu, an older, breathtakingly beautiful woman, an unstable element, enters into the picture and captures Sumire’s heart and soul, seizes her more mindful rationality, allowing it to be discarded in favor of the emotional whirlpool she is delightedly being pulled into. As she finds herself fully, overwhelmingly submerged in Miu. Like she is another form of fiction Sumire is trying to figure out and understand, working to get to the heart of like a deconstructing of a nonsensical, enigmatic whole.

“The beach was a little too quiet for a person to visit alone, a little too beautiful. It made me imagine a certain way of dying.”  

This story is hauntingly transfixing. It was just the ending and parts of the latter half that I had mixed feelings about and am still little by little coming to terms with, hence the four stars, as a part of me enjoyed how innovatively fresh it felt in the way that it pondered and unraveled questions of existence, but another part of me felt it went in a direction in which I felt I was gripping in the shadowy darkness of abstraction a bit. But in that process can come insightful, thought-provoking moments, I just found I like to be grounded in something tangible, too. So, I think the two can be mixed in a delectable combination.

“ “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 sea.”  

Other than that I became gloriously a part of this story that reached me evocatively, communicating sweet, complexly composed ideas and identifying types of the existential questions that alternatively plague us and stir us on our way to simultaneously understanding and never fully understanding.

" الفانتازيا ، الموسيقى ، الكتب ، العلاقات الحميمة "
من المستحيل أن تقرأ رواية لموراكامى بدون أن تجد هذه العناصر مُجتَمعة معاً ، حتى و إن اختلفت القصص و الشخصيات و الحوارات .. تجد طابع الرواية العام مُوَحَد ، بأسلوب جذّاب !

قرائتى السادسة لموراكامى .. ومن كُتّابى المّفَضلين و ما زلت أنبهر به كل مرة ♥

I suppose you could say this book is sort of Murakami "lite" - less intense in terms of non-linear narrative and the characters are a bit more concrete and the plot easier to discern. Nonetheless, it is a wonderfully beautiful book and one of Murakami's best. A must read if you are going to give Murakami a spin.


Fino's Murakami Reviews - Novels
Hear the Wind Sing (1979/1987-2015)
Pinball, 1973 (1980/1985-2015)
A Wild Sheep Chase (1982/1989)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985/1991)
Norwegian Wood (1987/1989-2000)
Dance Dance Dance (1988/1994)
South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992/2000)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995/1997)
Sputnik Sweetheart (1999/2001)
Kafka on the Shore (2002/2005)
After Dark (2004/2007)
1Q84 (2010/2011)
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013/2014)
Killing Commendatore (2017/2018)

Fino's Murakami Reviews - Short Story Collections and Misc
The Elephant Vanishes (1993)
After the Quake (2000/2002)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006)
Men Without Women (2014/2017)
First Person Singular (2020/2021)
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007/2008)

Os amigos, pode ser que eles já tenham ido embora, mas permanecem as recordações, e elas são como um fogo que arde no meu íntimo, um fogo no qual, em noites particularmente frias, eu consigo me aquecer. É isto a amizade.

Três companheiros de viagem. Um triângulo amoroso: um professor primário (o narrador, cujo nome só é referido por uma inicial), uma mulher intrigante (Miu) e uma jovem aspirante a escritora ( Sumire). Interesses partilhados - a música e a literatura; três histórias com um tema em comum: Este lado – o outro lado, no qual coexistem fatalmente ligados o que se sabe e o que não se sabe, o que foi e o que deixou de ser. Barreiras que precisam de ser derrubadas, pontos de apoio que precisam de ser encontrados.
Solidão, segredos, paixões não correspondidas.
Tudo ao mesmo tempo numa escrita bonita , bons diálogos, com muita fantasia e um toque surreal à mistura.

A história acaba num impasse. Alguém abandona o palco sozinho. Um final aberto algo confuso.

E aqui entro eu e escrevo o meu final parafraseando o autor: Dos amigos, mesmo daqueles que já foram embora ou que se evaporaram como fumo, permanecem as recordações guardadas num qualquer lugar remoto e, à medida que vamos vivendo, mais não fazemos do que descobrir – puxando-as para nós, umas atrás das outras, como quem desenrola um fio muito fino – tudo o que de belo ficou para trás.

Excerto:

«Eu sonho. Por vezes penso que é a única coisa certa que se deve fazer.»

عبقري.. عبقري.. عبقري

اقرأ هذا النص معي أكثر من مرة.

"غادرت الفراش. أزحت الستارة الشاحبة جانبًا وفتحت النافذة. أخرجت رأسي عبرها ورفعت بصري إلى السماء. بالتأكيد كان هناك قمر ترابي اللون معلق في السماء. جيد. كلانا ينظر إلى القمر نفسه في العالم عينه. كلانا مرتبط بالواقع بالخيط نفسه. كل ما عليَّ فعله سحبه بهدوء صوبي.
فتحت أصابع يدي وحدقت في راحتَيَّ بحثًا عن آثار دم. لم أجد شيئاً. لا رائحة دم. ولا بقع ولا تجلّط. لابد أن الدم، وبطري��ته الصامتة الخاصة، تسرب داخلهما".


هذا الرجل عبقري، تائه بين العوالم.. بل يصنع عوالمه الخاصة. تارة يجعل من الشخص أثنين، أحدهم في هذا العالم والأخر في العالم الثاني بعكس صفاته.

قلتها سابقاً وأقولها الأن.. هاروكي موراكامي هو كاتبي المفضل.

Sputnik Sweetheart was my first Murakami. If I recall well, I read it when I was about thirteen. Back then, I liked the novel, but not immensely so. I suppose my teenage self was a bit more judgmental than my present self and thought K. was a jerk. But them my teenage self didn't know what it meant to long for somebody you could never have or about the horrid heartbreak it can incite. The frustration and the pain of being friends with someone you desire more than everything. Not really. It is something you can perhaps only fully understand as an adult.

...“Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.”

Long story short, I read the novel again in 2o11 (my late twenties) and not surprisingly I liked it a lot more on the second reading. Well, K. really is a bit of a jerk at times, but he is also quite human and as such easy to relate to, and so is the object of his love. K. is in love with a young woman who is in love with another woman, all of them trapped by their own love. All of them unhappy in their own way. As Tolstoy wisely noticed, it is unhappy families that are unhappy in their own way, happy families are all the same. Murakami shows us not families but individuals who are unhappy in their own way. What can I say? I find it easy to relate to Murakami's characters, at least they are being honest in their selfishness. Everyone who is in love is selfish in his own way, for love makes us forget about everything.

This novel exploring an unhappy love triangle is written in a typical Murakami's style. I suppose Murakami is one of those authors you either love or hate, either can't get enough of or get bored of fairly quickly. It is indeed true that all of his novels are a lot alike, they follow the same patters and feature almost identical characters. Only one of them couldn't be labelled as magic realism. In general, all of this books are filled with surreal elements and long philosophical passages. If you happen to like lyrically written surreal novels, you'll probably enjoy his books.

...So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.”

Another theme that is very common in Murakami's work is that of loneliness. It seems to be especially strong in this one, as the title would imply. Sputnik satellite of the title is a metaphor for human loneliness, a common theme in Murakami's works:

...“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.”

To conclude, I do recommend this novel to fans of magic realism and lovers of cats.