The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Yay! I finally finished a book after a whole six months. It's slow going for me to not have finished a book for that long, but I partially blame that on reading a really long book (Smiling Proud Wanderer) on the side. So this is the first completed book of the year!
After reading and liking 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, I decided to try out another one of his books and this one had the summary that I thought was the most interesting.
The story is basically about this common, everyman, Toru Okada (nicknamed "Mr. Wind-Up Bird" by his quirky neighbor) who encounters a bunch of weird characters and supernatural situations while looking for his missing cat and - later on - his missing wife.
The book is one of Haruki's more famous ones, by which I'm kind of surprised. It's nowhere near as good as 1Q84 either in plot of execution. Although Wikipedia tells me that the English translation cut out some chapters for length and also reordered chapters around. I wonder if that messed up the flow of the story a lot.
In general, I like some parts of the story: the supernatural elements that occur and are unexplained, the dreamlike description of some sequences, some side stories and characters. But there are also a lot of things that start to grate after awhile. For example, how every women seem to want Toru, even his quirky underaged neighbor. It's a little weird and icky. The descriptions of sex (thankfully not with the undereaged neighbor) are also a little weird and icky. And various people with supernatural knowledge and power just show up and know things...is just a little too much.
I do like Haruki's writing style in general so I would probably continue reading his other works. But I did think this books isn't as good as the critics and reviews made it out to me. It started out fairly well, but as the story went on, it just got too much with the quirky characters, the various spiritual people that just knows stuff (plus their side plots), and the icky descriptions of sex. Looking back, maybe that's why it took me so long to finish this book. The first half I probably read really fast while on the cruise and it was good and interesting. But I do think the second half was fairly slow to read.
After reading and liking 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, I decided to try out another one of his books and this one had the summary that I thought was the most interesting.
The story is basically about this common, everyman, Toru Okada (nicknamed "Mr. Wind-Up Bird" by his quirky neighbor) who encounters a bunch of weird characters and supernatural situations while looking for his missing cat and - later on - his missing wife.
The book is one of Haruki's more famous ones, by which I'm kind of surprised. It's nowhere near as good as 1Q84 either in plot of execution. Although Wikipedia tells me that the English translation cut out some chapters for length and also reordered chapters around. I wonder if that messed up the flow of the story a lot.
In general, I like some parts of the story: the supernatural elements that occur and are unexplained, the dreamlike description of some sequences, some side stories and characters. But there are also a lot of things that start to grate after awhile. For example, how every women seem to want Toru, even his quirky underaged neighbor. It's a little weird and icky. The descriptions of sex (thankfully not with the undereaged neighbor) are also a little weird and icky. And various people with supernatural knowledge and power just show up and know things...is just a little too much.
I do like Haruki's writing style in general so I would probably continue reading his other works. But I did think this books isn't as good as the critics and reviews made it out to me. It started out fairly well, but as the story went on, it just got too much with the quirky characters, the various spiritual people that just knows stuff (plus their side plots), and the icky descriptions of sex. Looking back, maybe that's why it took me so long to finish this book. The first half I probably read really fast while on the cruise and it was good and interesting. But I do think the second half was fairly slow to read.