Review of of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

This week the New York Times had a review of Haruki Murakami's new book (I forget the title). By sheer coincidence, I just finished reading one of his books from a few years ago. I read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

I have to admit that for no real reason I had pretty low expectations of this book. It just didn't look all that interesting. But it really wasn't too bad. Murakami is imaginative and is able to tie together a complete plot. As stories go, this was enjoyable. I assure you you will find nothing deep here, but it is rather amusing. It is about one Mr. Toru Okada and the odd sequence of events that make up a few months of his life. It all starts with his cat getting lost and then just gets weird. His wife becomes rather distant, he has strange meetings with old men, fortune tellers, and teenage neighbors. He hears stories of people's lives and starts hanging out on the bottom of a dried up well. We are taken to World War II and battles with the Soviets. We hear stories of horror and intrigue. It is all wrapped up quite nicely, and the characters, while barely developed all have distinct personalities.

There is something very non-western about much of the novel, which is quite charming. Superstition, the dream world, and fortune play central roles in the novel. Much happens, and the writing is decent. I suspect that a tiny bit gets lost in translation, but it is hard to tell with a language that is as foreign to me as Japanese.

While I would not go so far as to hail Murakami as one of the great writers of our age, nor would I hope his works make it in to some cannon of great literature of the world, it was a good read. I really do not feel like my time reading it was wasted. However it really does not speak to me in any way that I feel the author has any special understanding of the world. He tells a good story. That's it.