This is the very first book by Murakami that I have had the pleasure of reading, and I must say that I enjoyed it to an immense degree.

I have perused reviews of several of his other books (not specifically for this one), and thus had a certain understanding of the author and what to anticipate.

Perhaps I was in the perfect frame of mind for a long and engaging read, and this particular book, which was published in 1997, truly met my expectations.

I became completely immersed in the unfolding drama, with all of its surreal elements.

I could definitely identify with the young Okada, who quit his job and then found himself at a loss as to what to do with his life.

At the beginning of the story, he is on a quest to find his wife's missing cat. From there, he encounters a strange and diverse array of characters.

When his wife leaves him, Okada is faced with a real mystery. Why did she leave him? And will he ever manage to find her cat?

I found myself most intrigued by the former Japanese soldier, Lieutenant Mamiya, who shares the story of his experiences while serving in the Imperial Japanese Army.

Similar to Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-5," Mamiya becomes a prisoner of war (for Billy, it was the Germans who captured him, and for Mamiya, it was the Soviets).

Both men, as captives, endured a harrowing descent into hell.

In this book, Mamiya's story is a side story, and I longed for more.

Will I read more of Murakami? Without a doubt, yes. However, I am not sure which one I would choose to read next.

My sincere thanks go out to Vintage International for gifting me with this copy of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle."

This is the first book I read of the old man. At that time, I was urged because everywhere I went, I would meet people who were crazy about him. I didn't know if it was a trend or not, but it made me very itchy to find and read it. At first, I didn't know which book to read, so I decided to be an observer on Tiki for a while. Finally, I chose this book because I saw that it was... out of stock:3

After reading this book (and then about 7 or 8 other books), I also vaguely guessed why people were crazy about him (really crazy, not the kind of fake crazy): his stories are very addictive, although they are often a bit absurd. It's probably similar to the fact that people are addicted to Facebook:3

The old man probably doesn't have much:3 He writes and rewrites, adds all kinds of tricks, the plot is random, the characters are random, on a rainy day, he plays football and laughs, on a sunny day, he turns to smoking:3 In general, the characters of the old man are best only to be met on the written pages, not to be met in real life, it's very troublesome:|

When I was young, I was also addicted to Yahoo, Xonefm, blogs, forums, etc. But since there is Facebook, almost all the joys of youth at that time have bid farewell. But I think Facebook can be controlled (because after all, it is a very fast-paced place and after all, I will soon be able to control it by some powerful methods), while controlling the old man is a bit difficult:v. I'm also a bit addicted, but I'm not sure if I dare to admit that I'm a fan of his. In fact, I like the old man in a so-so way. I like the love that everyone has for him, and I like the fact that people read his works many times:3

A friend wrote somewhere that I don't remember clearly: Murakami is a pile of shit, and I, on the other hand, am calmly enjoying it all day long:3

Read again on 29/12/2016

Haruki Murakami weaves a solitary world.
He stands alone and far away from everyone.
His works are like a unique maze, leading readers into a realm full of mystery and imagination.
In his stories, the characters often find themselves in a state of isolation, facing various challenges and emotions.
Murakami's writing style is细腻而独特, with a touch of melancholy and a hint of magic.
His words seem to have the power to touch the deepest part of our hearts.
Whether it's a story about love, loss, or the search for meaning in life, Murakami always manages to present it in a way that makes us think and feel.
He is a master of creating atmospheres and emotions, and his works have a lasting impact on those who read them.
In a world where connection and communication are often emphasized, Murakami's solitary world offers a refreshing and thought-provoking perspective.

When I embarked on this reading journey, it initially appeared that this was a more straightforward narrative by Murakami compared to the other works I had perused.

The narrator, Toru Okada, presents as a rather peculiar protagonist. He is lacklustre and passive, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his marriage to Kumiko is gradually disintegrating.

A missing cat serves as the catalyst for his interactions with the diverse cast of characters in the novel. There is Young May Kasahara, his neighbour, and the sisters Malta and Creta Kano, who are somewhat like mediums or seers.

For me, the most captivating segments of the novel were the wartime and postwar memories of Lieutenant Mamiya. However, there are other plot strands that are as surreal as one would anticipate from Murakami.

I'm not entirely certain that I was able to fully connect all these strands, which made the reading experience a bit unsatisfying. Nevertheless, I definitely derived more enjoyment from Kafka on the Shore and After Dark.

Toru Okada has recently left his job at the law office. Now, he spends his days alone in the house while his wife, Kumiko, goes to work. One day, while cooking, he gets a strange phone call from a woman who claims to know him. However, he can't recognize her voice, and this unexpected turn of events leaves him confused. Kumiko is worried as their cat has disappeared recently. Usually, the cat comes back home after wandering off for a while, so Toru decides to go in search of it. During his search, he meets and befriends the neighbor girl, May Kasahara, who is staying home from school after having an accident. May and Toru spend time together, watching and waiting for the cat to return. Things take an even stranger turn when Kumiko tells her husband to consult with Malta Kano, who helps people and whom Kumiko knows through her brother, Noboru Wataya. Toru hates Noboru Wataya and is further confused by this development. What's more, when Kumiko doesn't come home one night, he sets out to search for her and gets caught in a complex web related to Noboru Wataya.

This was my first Haruki Murakami book, and I truly enjoyed it. It has definitely become a new favorite. I have a great liking for magical realism, and I adored the writing, the characters, and the themes explored in the book. I really liked May and her obsession with death and her struggle to understand it. I also loved many of the ideas about relationships that emerged. Additionally, I simply love mysticism and books that are more on the ideological side. I think it was incorporated very well with the plot, and the way things unfolded throughout the book felt extremely natural, which, in my opinion, is not easy to achieve. The writing was excellent, and I loved the repetition and the way many things in the book occurred again and again. I can't quite explain why it appealed to me so much, but it just did. I also liked the way things were tied together. I love it when story lines work together like interlocking webs of events and ideas.

The only aspect I might be a bit uncertain about is the ending. It felt abrupt compared to the rest of the book. Also, things weren't really clear, and I don't think we received a satisfactory explanation for what was actually happening. Maybe that was the point, but I'm not intelligent enough to figure out why he might have done that. Does anyone have any ideas?

Here’s my pathetic attempt at writing a review after struggling for close to three hours:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is not just a book. It's like a pendulum that takes the form of a book. Staring at it for an extended period is sure to leave you in a hypnotic state.

To be honest, I really don't know what else to say. I'm not even certain if I grasped everything. I mean, of course, I understood each and every sentence, but I can't get rid of the feeling that there's something deep and profound concealed in every line. This is one of those books that you simply can't read continuously because things become too disorienting too quickly.

Here's what I do know: I absolutely love it. Don't ask me why because I can't explain it. It's just this indescribable pull that the book has on me.

This is the second book on magic realism I've read this year - the first being Gabriel Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. While One Hundred Years.. felt somewhat unreal in a way that made me a bit skeptical, The Wind-Up Bird.. felt surreal in a way that seemed incredibly believable. It's as if the strange events and characters in the book could actually exist in some alternate reality.

This is a rather weird review, I'm aware. But then again, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a weird book. It's a book that defies easy categorization and understanding. And yet, that's what makes it so captivating.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go on a hunt for the rest of Murakami's books. I'm eager to explore more of his unique and fascinating literary world.

This talented writer is surely a contemporary myth of the East. He knows how to stage with his pen scenes and images that are fantastically real, from which it is impossible not to be charmed or drawn into the magic of his storytelling.

Undoubtedly, it is an enjoyable and interesting "dialogue" novel that I would characterize it as.

The main character, the "tortoise" (hero and narrator), suddenly loses his wife who disappears mysteriously, but it is not clarified (like many other things) whether she finally left him.

From then on, a simple, monk-like man, kind-hearted and easily influenced or fatalistic, starts the monologue of loneliness and maturity, traveling to the firm fountains of himself.

He begins to face his daily life -searching with desperate idleness for his lost partner- the truth of the things he experiences, his fantasy, his dreams, and his sensations as a driving force for learning and self-awareness.

Slowly and fascinatingly, the whole plot of the book draws you in with magic and unwavering interest into situations full of emotion, love, and fantastic storytelling that surprises and strongly attracts you with the aim that you can unfold with him this bundle of emotions and sensations.

At some point in this narrative journey, however, you think that you fell asleep and lost the end of some events or complex stories that, although they had plunged you into the mystery, suddenly seem disjointed, scattered, and cut off.

Perhaps this is the methodology and writing technique of the author (I am reading Murakami for the first time), but I would like to know about the unknown who initially calls asking for a ten-minute sensory sound - about the Kano sisters who play with the keys of the mystery - about the end of the human-eater Boris and the lieutenant Mamia - about the abilities of Ginger and the black mark.

Perhaps they were left on the periphery for the reader to draw his own conclusion?

Perhaps the central axis was not the side stories but the metaphysical beings of our hero and his end as a mature and purified one?

Different and very significant situations?

These allegorical-metaphysical-telepathic and arbitrary points are also the reason for the *** as a scale of evaluation.

Undoubtedly, it is worth reading.....perhaps less realistically and from another perspective, these projections seem truly important.

Good reading.

A Bulky Volume

This is a rather bulky volume consisting of 860 pages. It tells the story of Toru Okada, a 30-year-old man who is in search of his wife Kumiko, who suddenly left him. It's not just a simple quest but also, in a sense, a touching love story. The seemingly soft Toru proves to be a tough and persevering individual. Along the way, the weirdest things happen to him. He is accompanied by curious characters who tell him quite bizarre life stories, giving the book a very surreal undertone. Regularly, I had the feeling that I was reading a Japanese version of Franz Kafka or John Irving, and the end seemed to remind me of the last pages of "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoyevsky, a strange combination indeed.

In many reviews, it is said that there is too little cohesion in the book and that it is just too long. This criticism is only partly correct. I had a difficult time with the magic-realistic story lines, especially in the third part. However, generally, most stories and twists are a wonderful illustration of how bizarre and complex human reality actually is. The protagonist, Toru Okada, in the end, succeeds in bringing most of the story lines together in a theory that gives everything its place, but he himself admits that he doesn't know for sure whether it's sound or not.

I particularly liked Murakami's writing style. Maybe it's a weird metaphor, but his writing felt like 'running water', so natural and simple. This is related to the dreamy character of much of the scenes. But according to me, it's especially the personality of the main character Toru that provokes this feeling. He looks at the strange events and people around him with an open mind and quiet thoughtfulness, carefully trying to find his way in the labyrinth and then making a decisive choice and sticking to it. In this way, Toru reminded me very much of Hans Castorp in the "Magic Mountain" of Thomas Mann.

What is striking is the special attention that Murakami gives to sensory impressions. Sounds, smells, colors, and flavors are constantly cited as very relevant details. And then there are the powerful scenes and characters that Murakami has to offer, like Toru's stay in the well, the weird sisters Crete and Malta Kano, the horrible skinning scene of a Japanese secret agent by a Mongolian, the wonderfully uncomplicated 16-year-old May Watanabe, and so on. Perhaps the book is a bit too long, but I have really enjoyed reading it. (my rating: 3.5 stars)

There was a lunar eclipse tonight.

As the moon was gradually consumed by the earth’s shadow, I, too, was overcome by this intense feeling of pain. It wasn't the physical kind of pain that one can easily identify and locate. Instead, it was a more profound, what one might call a ‘spiritual’ pain that seemed to penetrate both my mental and emotional states, bringing with it a sense of deep suffering.

I was sitting at the local Starbucks, lost in the pages of a book, surrounded by a sea of strangers. I had no idea what to do. I felt this sharp, stabbing sensation that I was losing something of utmost importance, that a part of myself was slipping away from my grasp. In reality, all that was happening was that I was coming to the end of my reading of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

If nothing else, this entire experience felt like a dream. I had my own reality, but every time I opened the book, I was eager to enter the dreamlike world it created. Dreams have their own unique charm. They are not bound by the rules and logic of the real world, yet they always seem to make a strange kind of sense and often teach us valuable lessons about ourselves. This novel had precisely the same function for me. I wanted to stay in this dream forever, never wanting to wake up and face the harshness of reality.

“It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort.”

Remember that Kelly Clarkson song ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’? After I finally managed to get over my initial pain, I felt the usual sense of relief wash over me. As I finished reading the novel, I was filled with a complex mix of emotions. I had been through the wringer, feeling devastated and broken, but in the end, I was left with a strange sense of emptiness. I closed my copy of the book, closed my eyes, and tried to think of nothing. My mind was completely blank, filled only with darkness. I didn't feel stronger at all. In fact, I felt weaker than ever. The pain had taken away a part of my being, but I knew that I was still me, no matter how diminished I might feel.

“Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on,” words spoken by Lt. Mamiya. But he will later learn that he was mistaken. There are no such things as truly empty shells in life. There are only shells that have been reduced, damaged by the experiences and hardships of life.

I guess this is how I see this novel more than anything else. In life, things break. But the beauty of it all is that broken things can often be restored. Of course, they will never be exactly as good as new. And just like things, people are also like that. We break, we suffer, we try to put ourselves back together again, but we are never the same as we were before.

Like Lt. Mamiya, like Mr. Honda, like war veterans who have survived in spite of all the gruesome and terrible things they’ve encountered, they are often considered as shells of their former selves. But somehow, against all odds, they still manage to piece together a life of some sort. They will never return to their pre-war versions, but Lt. Mamiya eventually finds Creta Kano and her baby, and Mr. Honda starts a family. One becomes a high school teacher, the other a sage.

Like Kumiko, like Creta Kano, they were broken, prostituted, but eventually they managed to recover. Both women will bear the scars of their past experiences, but they still have their partners who will love and accept them despite their marks.

Like a house that has been abandoned, demolished, and then built again. Of course, the house is now different. The structure, the design, everything has changed. But the plot of land on which it stands remains the same.

Like a well that has dried up, stank, been filled up, and then re-dug, and finally produces water again. It is now an old and perhaps not very desirable structure, but it has still served its purpose.

Like a cat that was lost, given up for dead, and then suddenly found. It is discovered quite emaciated, and even its tail seems to have changed.

Like a happy marriage that was broken, and then somehow restored. The couple will never be as happy as they were before. The sense of fragility will always linger. But who's to say they will never be happy again?

As I said before, things that are broken can always be fixed, though the damage that has been done will never be fully undone. But that's the beauty of life. It is an accumulation of damages and fixtures. It's about learning to live with the damages that life throws our way, and learning to fix and re-fix ourselves. That's what one should learn to appreciate.

Look, I have recovered from my qualms about parting with this novel. I did feel broken. I did lose a part of myself, a good part, I'd say. But I'm still me. I'm sure even you have lost or been broken by something in your life, but look at you now, all patched up and functioning. We all have to keep treading on.

This novel, which is about one man’s life breaking into psychedelic and chaotic pieces and him then painstakingly putting them together again, is a powerful demonstration of man’s persistence and his evolution over time. We repair the broken parts of our lives, and in the process, we end up being transformed. Life will never be the same again, but that's okay. I, for one, look forward to whatever comes next.

My dad told me to read this book and I’m afraid he’s going to ask me how I felt about it

There is something strangely compelling about Murakami's intricate detailing of the everyday as it slowly entwines with fantastical elements.

However, this story didn't captivate me as much as the brilliant 1Q84. Toru and Kumiko didn't interest me as much as Aomame and Tengo.

That being said, this was still weirdly effective. Murakami gives you a description of all the daily minutiae before gradually disassembling reality. He delves deep into the ordinary lives of his characters, painting a vivid picture of their routines, thoughts, and emotions.

It's as if he is lulling you into a false sense of security, only to suddenly pull the rug out from under you and introduce the fantastical.

Rubin's translation is fantastic as always. It captures the essence of Murakami's writing and makes it accessible to a wider audience. The language is流畅 and engaging, and the translation doesn't sacrifice any of the nuances or subtleties of the original text.

Overall, while this story may not have been my favorite Murakami novel, it was still a worthwhile read.

“Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.”

― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

A truly weird and metaphysical novel (yes, I know it might seem redundant to start any review of Murakami with such adjectives). I recall desiring to purchase this book back in 2007. However, I was poor and on the verge of getting married, and it seemed that my limited funds would be better utilized on essentials like bread and cheese. Now, I own three copies, yet I still wish I had bought it then. I still regret not making that purchase. It's not necessarily because I wish I had read it earlier. I believe I'm reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at precisely the right moment for me. But rather, I would have liked to carry that specific book with me for the past 17 years, almost like a lucky talisman (similar to what I did with Infinite Jest). And it's more than that. I actually vividly remember the very book, displayed with the bird eye out against a support beam in the bookstore. I regret not buying that exact copy.

I've now read a significant portion of Murakami's works. Well, not quite all. I still have to read: 1Q84, Sputnik Sweetheart, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, Hear the Wind Sing & Pinball, 1973. That's it. After that, I'll be done. Anyway, my point is that even after reading 11 or more previous Murakami novels, I still exit The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle feeling a bit uncertain.

I liked it a great deal and think it's an important novel worthy of being read. However, it just seemed a touch too untidy or ambiguous. I understand. The novel is constructed around ambiguity, uncertainty, evil, strange coincidences, funky time, projections, reflections, and shadows. My only criticism is that at times, the shadows seemed to overshadow the reflections (metaphorically speaking). Sometimes, after reading a page, I was left not only with a "WTF" moment but also exhausted from not knowing why it was a "WTF" moment. Nevertheless, there's no denying that the novel is huge, creepy, cool, and gives the impression that David Lynch should direct the movie (complete with midgets and nymphets). For me, it's a 21st-century novel written in the last decade of the 20th century, reflecting on the evils and history of past and present Japan.

Also, briefly, I occasionally include pictures in my reviews, but this book has inspired some of the most amazing art. Seriously, Google "Wind-Up Bird" and soak in the artsy coolness. And, yes, I realize some artists might have been inspired by wind-up birds before Murakami, but come on now.