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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin (Translator)

4.20 · rating details · 41,034 ratings · 4,177 reviews

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds...more

Paperback, 607 pages

Published September 1st 1998 by Vintage (first published January 1st 1994)

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Nov 07, 2010

Paul rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: novels

I had been wondering where my cat was when the phone rang. It was a woman offering to have no strings sex with me. I made some non-committal remarks to her and put the receiver down. I hate those cold callers. I had nothing to do that day, or any other day, so I walked down the back alley and fell into a desultory conversation with a random 16 year old girl who had a wooden leg and a parrot on her shoulder. She suggested I help her make some easy money by counting bald people. That sounded abou...moreI had been wondering where my cat was when the phone rang. It was a woman offering to have no strings sex with me. I made some non-committal remarks to her and put the receiver down. I hate those cold callers. I had nothing to do that day, or any other day, so I walked down the back alley and fell into a desultory conversation with a random 16 year old girl who had a wooden leg and a parrot on her shoulder. She suggested I help her make some easy money by counting bald people. That sounded about as good as anything else to me, after all, as I have already explained, i had nothing to do. At all. And I was doing it. It was kind of a cool period in my life when i wasn't really doing anything. I didn't have a job, I had become estranged from my family and for some reason I could not quite put my finger on, i had no friends. So we counted the bald people for a while and then we stopped. We went back home, or should i say, she went back to her home, and I, of course, went back to mine, where I prepared a simple evening meal consisting of grated cucumber, a little olive oil, half a smoked mackerel and a pot of basil. I didn't put the tv on because I didn't have a tv because if i had had a tv i might have switched it on and seen something on it that was actually interesting. Then the cold calling sex woman rang again and this time she said that she couldn't quite tell me how she knew this but she knew something was going to happen to me but she did not say when it would. I decided to rehang the curtains in the front room. But not right away. Maybe later. I picked up the novel I was reading. It was a long one by a very modish Japanese writer called Haruki Murakami. It was about this English guy called Paul Bryant. He was kind of dull but all these weird unexplained things kept happening like he was a magnet for all the weirdness around. I don't know how to explain it. Neither did he. Neither did Haruki Marukami. I read for an hour and found I was on page 303, which in my paperback edition, was the exact centre point of the novel. I put it down. I had a feeling that in this novel things would continue to happen but the things would all be made of blancmange, a tasteless gooey substance which looks a little like wallpaper paste but isn't. And the people in the novel would all be not really real but also not really not real, if you know what I mean. My arm felt slightly tired holding the book. I shifted to a different reading posture on my couch but it did not help. The strength went out of my arm. I do not know why. As you may have noticed, I do not know anything at all. I struggle to recall my name on most days. The novel fell from my hand. I had the feeling I would never pick it up again. I did not know why I had that feeling, but I was pretty sure that I had it at the time I was having it. Although later, I was almost sure I had no memory of it. When I looked up a completely naked woman was sitting at the table eating a slice of thinly buttered toast. I asked her who she was and she said she was not at that point in a position to be able to divulge that information. She asked if she could borrow my car. I explained it had been taken by my wife who had left me two weeks ago. This did not seem to phase her. I noticed that her body was almost the same as that of my wife. She had two breasts, two nipples, and although the table was obscuring the lower parts of her anatomy I was sure that the rest of her was also not dissimilar. She consumed three pieces of toast and told me in a cool voice that I would never see my cat again except possibly in a place that began with the letter H or has a H in the name somewhere. She borrowed my wife's smart summer coat and a pair of her stilettos and left after about 15 minutes. It began to rain but I did not notice. I thought about paying my electricity bill.

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Apr 20, 2009

Ben rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone open to the odd. Those that can handle mixed, random plots

Shelves: favorites, good-fiction, read-in-2009, war, like-magic, romantic-love-and-hate, transformative-experience

WATER IS GOOD!

You, the politician with the psychopath eyes on the T.V.! I hate you!

Russian scheming

Where the fuck is my cat?!!! And why did I name him after you Mr. Psychopath EYES!

War
Blood
Death

Zoo animals?

My dreams are wack, yo – but WAIT! Are they really dreams?! No way man, I totally did it with her for real.

Skinning people alive

Wacky woman with the Huge red hat, tell me! A...more

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May 05, 2009

mp rated it

Shelves: reviewed

A part of me wishes that I hadn't read it yet so that I could still read it for the first time and be mesmerized.

It is quiet difficult for me to describe what this book was like. It is surreal and psychedelic. It is mysterious, something out of this world. You just need to stop questioning things and let yourself get carried away. It begins with a seemingly ordinary day in the life of a very ordinary man. But things only gets strange and stranger from there - dreams spill into realit...more

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Jul 14, 2008

Kelly rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, owned, 20th-century-postwar-to-late

I absolutely adored the book upon starting out. It is exquisitely crafted, with each seemingly casual word chosen to illustrate the world into which we have entered. It is a lonely world full of half finished stories, abrupt departures, missed connections and deep silences. "Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird," lives on an alley with no exits, in a borrowed life that he could never afford to live without the kindness of his uncle. He's just quit his job, as he has no idea of where to go with his li...moreI absolutely adored the book upon starting out. It is exquisitely crafted, with each seemingly casual word chosen to illustrate the world into which we have entered. It is a lonely world full of half finished stories, abrupt departures, missed connections and deep silences. "Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird," lives on an alley with no exits, in a borrowed life that he could never afford to live without the kindness of his uncle. He's just quit his job, as he has no idea of where to go with his life, but is dissatisfied with its current course. He lives with a wife that he never seems to really speak to, in a routine existence in which she is often late or absent, or spends her time repressing everything she chooses to say to him. Murakami meticulously illustrates this quietly painful existence in all of Mr. Wind-Up Bird's movements, whether it is missed phone calls, a wasted dinner, or a frozen statue of a bird never able to take flight. This sort of language kept me going throughout the book even when I lost my patience with other things.

Mr. Wind-Up Bird's relationship with May Kashara was my favorite part of the book. She is something of a wise child character, able to distill what Murakami is only hinting at into a more obvious, if odd and seemingly quaint statement. She is a wonderful character who brings light and movement to the pages, and pushes the plot along, if only in Mr. Wind-Up Bird's head. I kept looking ahead, if only to find out how long it was until she appeared again.

What I did not like? The endless repetition of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo, of the prophets who "just know," when something is going to happen, of the endless discussion of the "flow," and various other points of odd zen claptrap that really pushed me out of the story, and the reader entirely out of the reality. I think a part of the book's charm is that it hovers so close around the edges of reality, and gradually, this book just seemed to leave that behind. I appreciated the message of a bundle of stories all being woven together, stories that stop and start as people pass through them, are read and discarded as they are of use. But this went far beyond the borders of surreality into geniune, 'WTF?' territory. Perhaps I missed something, and I sort of regret it, but it was really... just a lot to push myself through. That entire middle section with the extended stories of Cinammon and Nutmeg, and the increasing weirdness of Creta Kano, the side stories of Lieutenant Mamiya, etc... I really really lost patience with the book and almost gave up several times, because that's how I thought the rest of the book would be. Many odd people professing they "just know," things and are able to solve things with special powers! What? No. The introduction of random characters and tales that are really not material to the plot, or necessary to the points that Murakami is making, etc.

Thankfully, the tale wound back down into a more manageable area towards the end. I'm glad I finished it, if only to see the end of May Kashara.

I wish I had loved this more consistently that it turned out that I did. I wish I could give it 3.5 stars. I'm sticking with the definition of the stars in terms of "liked it," or "loved it." I was somewhere schizophrenically in between, depending on the section of the book.

Ed Note the 2nd: Page 375- I was really, /really/ starting to lose patience with this. And 100 pages ago, I would've said that you were crazy if you thought that I would say that 100 pages later. The same rounds of psychic weirdness and cliched Zen claptrap was reeeally wearing thin. But now the plot is moving again, and the philsophy is combining with things /happening/, and I'm okay.

Ed Note: I'm just starting book two (about 175 pages in). I'll say this. It is a book for which I automatically picked up my pen after the first page, and I've been underlining and circling like crazy ever since. There is so much to explore with this surreal trip through back fake-alley Japan, both in terms of writing technique and theme. At this point, I'm just still fascinated by Murakami's brutally surreal, utterly complete world creation. More to come.

I have never read a Murakami novel, and this has been recommended to me as his masterpiece. Seems like a good place to start.(less)

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Jul 10, 2007

Erika Jo rated it

The book jacket recommends The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as "dreamlike and compelling" which I initially understood as cliche review talk. But several hundreds of pages in, I realized I really did felt compelled to read it, compelled during work, compelled on the subway, compelled during any free moment at home.

As a Chronicle, and a meta-aware one at that, part of the compulsion results from not knowing what the hell will happen next. In three "books", a chronologic...moreThe book jacket recommends The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as "dreamlike and compelling" which I initially understood as cliche review talk. But several hundreds of pages in, I realized I really did felt compelled to read it, compelled during work, compelled on the subway, compelled during any free moment at home.

As a Chronicle, and a meta-aware one at that, part of the compulsion results from not knowing what the hell will happen next. In three "books", a chronological recording of daily events slips into an out-of-order, out-of-narrator's-field-of-vision controlled orgy. The book moves, notoriously, from banal episodes of cooking pasta, searching for a lost cat and dull domestic chats to unsyncopated sliced plot randomness - anonymous sex-calls (desire), visits from Manchurian veterans (memory), the disappearance of the protagonist's wife and subsequent appearance of at least five memorable, distinct, bizarre characters - a "cheerfully morbid" teenaged girl, a set of sensual psychic sisters, and a mother-son team of healers, one of whom does not speak a word - to finally, battling mythical-real creations, dreamt lucidly in a haunted-comforting well (or are they?). The narrative tone remains tranquil, logical and sound throughout.

This sort of magical realism reminded me of Marquez, but the novel has a distinctly Japanese tone. Descriptions of environment (the cawing of the wind-up bird) underlines action and pivotal points reflect the imperialist (and defeated) political history unique to Japan, from the bombing of Nagasaki to the forgotten, crushing campaign in mainlain China and Mongolia against Soviet forces. What is the fate of a country? What is the fate of a man? What is the range of this book sitting placidly in your hand?

In this case, a likeable thirty year old Everyman (as he's been cast), one Toru Okado with an almost freakish amptitude for following strange requests from his wife, and his new compatriots, is just trying to find a little direction after quitting his lame paralegal job. Sometimes a person needs to slow down entirely to see where to go. I could be convinced of the Buddhist undertones of this notion, although I must say, I would really love to read a critical analysis which could contextualize and develop these piercing hints, dropped like so many breadcrumbs. I don't know, maybe Toru Okado should tell his story in a novel, etc.

Muraki develops memorable characters, to say the least. Though the book is written in first person (or maybe because of it), others' motivations are almost never fleshed out, are almost crap shoots in a dramatic, unseen fate. Everyone is imbued with a sense of mystery. The "dreamlike" component of the book plays out on the streets this way. I'm having a hard time articulating the strength of the characterization, especially when I must point out the similarities between some, purposely meshing into another, a most enchanting connection between the young man who does not speak and the narrator.

There were slow parts, but as in The Name of the Rose, these philosophic, or mostly in this case, historical digressions create a constellation of meaning. As the main character in the book, the reader is faced with piecing together disparate symbols for an underlying satisfying, if somewhat frustrating experience. I've read a few reviews after I turned the last page (still in a dreamline cogitation for closure) which criticize Murakami for dropping the ball at the end, for not fully "wrapping up" the loose ends, for even conning the reader. I think it presses us to find our own meaning, to be wrapped in the enigma of the everyday we are presented when we put the book down, when we return to the fiction of reality as we know it. (less)

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Sep 12, 2011

Dan rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

Jobless, Toru Okada spends most of his days searching for his missing cat. Until his wife goes missing as well. Why did she leave? Did she ever love him? And can Toru navigate an ocean of strangeness to get her back?

Back when I first joined Goodreads, one of the first things I noticed was how a novel I'd never heard of, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, got so much praise from Goodreaders. Was it hype? Or worse, was it just hipster bullshit? You know what I'm talking about. "I...moreJobless, Toru Okada spends most of his days searching for his missing cat. Until his wife goes missing as well. Why did she leave? Did she ever love him? And can Toru navigate an ocean of strangeness to get her back?

Back when I first joined Goodreads, one of the first things I noticed was how a novel I'd never heard of, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, got so much praise from Goodreaders. Was it hype? Or worse, was it just hipster bullshit? You know what I'm talking about. "I only read novels that have been translated from foreign languages. Now let's go watch a foreign film and pretend to understand it."

At the insistence of a Goodreads compadre who seems to have deleted his account since I bought this, I decided to plunk down my money and give it a shot. What did I think? I dug it but don't start fitting me for skinny jeans and a distressed faux-vintage t-shirt quite yet.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a very breezy read, surprisingly so since it was translated from Japanese. It tells the story of Toru Okada's disintegrating life, from his quitting his job at the law firm, to the family cat, Noboru Wataya, named after his wife's brother, going missing, to his wife Kumiko disappearing one morning. From there, things get stranger by the minute. Toru gets entangled with a sort of psychic therapist, Malta Kano, and her sister Creta, as well as striking up an unusual friendship with the unusual girl next door, May Kasahara. And that's before the really weird things start happening.

Weird books are my bread and butter so the weirdness didn't impede my enjoyment one iota. A lot of crazy things happened and the book held my interest the entire time. The writing is wonderful. I felt Toru's emotions as he felt them and I found his reactions to be really believable. When I read Kumiko's letter about why she left, I felt as betrayed as Toru must have felt.

Like I said, I dug it but I didn't love it. There were a lot of weird things happening and a lot of it was never resolved. While I enjoyed the WWII digressions, they felt unnecessary to me. I guess my main beef was that I didn't understand what all the hype was about. Sure, it's very well written but it doesn't have a lot of substance to it, not for being 600 pages long. It reminds me of Douglas Coupland and/or Neal Stephenson once they had achieved the editorial freedom to write whatever they wanted to. Not once did I contemplate taking days off work just to read it, nor did I feel like it was a life changing event.

That's about all I can articulate about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at this time. Good, not great. Not as pants-shittingly awesome as I've been lead to believe. Definitely still worth a read, though.(less)

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Jun 02, 2011

Ian Graye rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, to-re-read-soon, exert-yourself, mura-karmic-wonder-land, to-read-soon

Original Review: February 22, 2011

Sins of Fascination

Pending a more formal review, here is a song that I pieced together by way of dedication to the book and Paul Bryant's excellent parody on GR.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/122...
The song careers all over the surface of the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" and "Paperback Writer", so I probably owe them and you an apology, but it seemed like an apt way to celebrate Murakami at the time.
...more

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Aug 13, 2008

Valerie rated it

When I tried to write a review of this book, it came out sounding like this:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a beautifully written, complexly woven book that takes us into the life of Toru Okada, who quit his ordinary job and seems to be waiting to see where his life will take him next. However, a series of events occurs that turns his life upside-down, and although he continues to let events unfold around him, what develops thereafter is anything but ordinary.

Beautifully wr...moreWhen I tried to write a review of this book, it came out sounding like this:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a beautifully written, complexly woven book that takes us into the life of Toru Okada, who quit his ordinary job and seems to be waiting to see where his life will take him next. However, a series of events occurs that turns his life upside-down, and although he continues to let events unfold around him, what develops thereafter is anything but ordinary.

Beautifully written? Complexly woven? Give me a break. I don't know why it was coming out like that. I mean: turns his life upside-down? If I came across this review, I'd be rolling my eyes.

But for some reason, I found this review to be very difficult to write. First, I can't summarize the story. It is beautiful, and it is complex, but I'm going to leave the explanation of the plot to the little GoodReads button that you can click up next to the book. I just don't have the hours that it would take in this instance for me personally to recreate that. It's just so long and involved that it's hard to condense.

I felt that reading the chronicle puts the reader in Toru's shoes, as many of the more surreal events force you to suspend disbelief and simply get carried along by the story. You have to be able to go with the flow to enjoy this book. Many colorful and eccentric characters are introduced, advancing the narrative with their own tales and adding a lot of subplots. It seems like it could become too much to keep track of, but each one was so well-crafted that they drew me in and kept me interested. I found many of the subplots (and secondary characters) to be far more interesting than Toru's own story.

My only complaint with this book is that I felt like it left many of those stories hanging or forgotten. I partially attribute this to the surreal nature of the book - I didn't really expect everything to be revealed - but also to the fact that it was simply too much to wrap up. At a certain point toward the end of the book, I found myself doing a lot of: but hey, whatever happened to so-and-so? And what about this part of the book that was so important at the time, but then just stopped being discussed? And what about...? The sum of all the parts of the books didn't completely add up for me.

But this is the kind of book that when you finish, you want to discuss it with someone, compare notes, and ask questions. I like it because not only did I enjoy reading it, but it also made me want to pursue those questions further. It's not necessarily a hard book to read, but it's definitely a lot to wrap your head around.

I'd give it three-and-a-half stars if I could, but I can't, so I'm going with: three.(less)

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Sep 18, 2007

Dave rated it

So before long, you find yourself 340 pages into this book, and you have no idea what's happening.. Rather, you understand all you have read to this point, but still can't determine the direction Murakami is taking you in.

Still, the book is compelling. You can't seem to put it down. Meanwhile it begins to invade your dreams.. in much the same manner that Toru's (the main character) dreams are invaded. You start having dreams about strange women and empty wells.

So c...more

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Jan 28, 2012

Kevin Xu rated it

Shelves: re-read

The first 300 pages was really good, but from then it turned noway to the end I had no idea what any of it really meant.

This book is about a married couple in their early 30s, in which it focuses on the husband. It deals with their day to day life with the main character meeting some strange characters. Then one day out of nowhere his wife leaves him. Through out the novel, it gives the background story to the characters.

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Dec 06, 2008

Imogen rated it

· review of another edition

Y'know what? I give up. I'm never going to finish this. I don't think Murakami's a hack, and I know that everybody except me thinks he's a genius, and I also understand- or, more specifically, have had it angrily explained to me- that my dislike for Murakami has to do with me being an American asshole who can't see through her own cultural imperialism enough to appreciate the way Japanese people like Murakami write novels. I acknowledge all these things.

But at the same time, nothing ...more

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Aug 06, 2008

Sandi rated it

Shelves: 2008, literature

I’ve heard so much hyperbole about this book and this author that I was expecting it to be mediocre. However, “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami actually lived up to the praise that’s been heaped upon it. It absolutely falls into the category of Literature with a capital “L”.

If there isn’t a literary category called “Japanese Gothic Surrealism,” then Murakami has invented it. I think one could spend months pulling apart and analyzing this novel. It has so much symb...more

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Oct 17, 2011

Lou rated it

· review of another edition

Great read enjoyable and easy to read this was my first Murakami novel. He writes of contemporary Japan,urban alienation and journeys of self-discovery. In this book he combines recollections of the war with metaphysics, dreams and hallucinations into a powerful and impressionistic work. I love his prose, makes you thinking deeply into its meanings and i think many readers will grasp different understandings of what he means but thats the beauty of his work this is truly a monumental work of fic...more

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Sep 23, 2008

Yulia rated it

Shelves: by-and-of-japan, read-to-me-by-frank, constant-reader-books

From my comments on Constant Reader:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was actually written while Murakami was a writer-in-residence at Harvard, where his translator also worked conveniently. According to an interview with Jay Rubin, as soon as Murakami would finish a section, he would give it to Rubin to translate and Rubin sometimes offered his own advice and critiques (he didn't care for the Kano sisters).

After finding out the book had been edited for the English edition, I we...moreFrom my comments on Constant Reader:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was actually written while Murakami was a writer-in-residence at Harvard, where his translator also worked conveniently. According to an interview with Jay Rubin, as soon as Murakami would finish a section, he would give it to Rubin to translate and Rubin sometimes offered his own advice and critiques (he didn't care for the Kano sisters).

After finding out the book had been edited for the English edition, I went on a mini wild sheep chase (short of learning Japanese and reading the original myself) to find out what passages or details had been censored. Perhaps a scene between Toru and May unfit for Americans? But after finding an interview with Jay Rubin, I learned that the answer is much less salacious: Rubin says it was merely a matter of redundant passages that he removed to tighten the text (Japanese writers rarely undergo the editing process that American publishers require), not an issue of specific content that was inappropriate.

It'll come as no surprise for those who have started this tome that Murakami writes without having laid out a plot first and just goes where his imagination takes him. This sometimes makes for frustrating passages, but it also leads his readers into literal and figurative terrains they wouldn't otherwise come across.

And ultimately, it's the quirky beauty of his details and similes that have always made him such a joy to read: for example, the utterly identifiable and senseless argument between Toru and his wife about blue tissues and patterned toilet paper, or the debate with May Kasahara about why six fingers is any less irrelevant than four breasts on a woman.

As I suggested in the regular CR thread, Murakami raises more questions than he answers in his books and often presents us with mysteries that simply can't be solved.

Another thing that struck me when I first read Wind-Up Bird was how May's parents and Toru weren't very surprised by her simply not going to school. But in a society where about 1% of students do just the same, stop attending classes; in a country that mastered the art of cram schools to prepare students for entrance exams into more challenging schools and high schoolers for entrance exams into better colleges, where admission to an elite college is meant to set you on the right track for getting a career; and where ruthless bullying is sanctioned by teachers and parents as part of the trials of coming-of-age, it becomes less surprising that some students simply opt out of the school system. It's become an increasing phenomenon, even an epidemic, in Japan, termed hikikomori, where kids and adults refuse to leave their room and are simply left food and/or an allowance by their helpless and sometimes abused parents (in Japan, domestic violence refers usually to kids beating their parents). Obviously, as she left her room and spoke easily with Toru, May wasn't a hikikomori, who are often male, but it did explain in part the seeming normalcy and comfort with her not going to school.

It occurred to me only a last week that perhaps it was Toru himself who best embodied the hikikomori mindset, not only in leaving his job, but in his long seclusion to and meditation at the bottom of the well. That made it more understandable, to me at least, why Murakami might have made his protagonist refuse to act for so long: however frustrating it was to read and endure with him, it may have been psychologically necessary for him to shut himself off from the world.

Another CR member made a good point about the cultural differences in our Western notion of being active and the Buddhist notion of flow. I do know Toru was actively processing events and listening to clues a he seems so passive. I suppose, as a wound-up East Coaster (a far East Coaster, as Palin would call me), I wanted Toru to spring to action when the wise or Zen thing to do was to wait, watch, and listen for the truth or the wave of motion to unfold. Perhaps we should regard and understand Toru as mindful above all else.
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Nov 17, 2008

Chris rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: classics-you-should-stop-avoiding, weird-fiction

This book is impossible to describe, except in perhaps in some abstract generalities: unsettlingly surreal, disturbingly violent, fantastically illogical. One part Kafka, two parts David Lynch's "Lost Highway," this book twists and turns with the surreal logic of a nightmare, probing the fluid and sometimes random nature of identity, relationships, and personal crisis. It isn't modernist or stream-of-conscious, however, so while a logical sequence of events refuses to gel, that doesn...more

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May 20, 2009

Michael rated it

Shelves: slipstream, japan

I don't have the faintest idea how to review this book properly, a fact that will surely deny me points on GR. Inevitably, I want to compare it to Kafka on the Shore, which I found more affecting but equally well-written. The story is, or should have been, one great cathartic journey; the ending was not what I expected or was looking for, though. Murakami is a wonderful storyteller, and every page is rich with theme, subtheme, and depth. He is often accused of being too sentimental, but I don't ...more

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Aug 23, 2008

Matt rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, cpl

Throughout reading this book, I kept coming back to an idea that I have been toying with for awhile. Please note that the experimental group here consists mainly of my wife and myself and a few random observations, so massive sampling error may be afoot. I'm also sure that I am not the originator of this line of thought, but I have not encountered it elsewhere as of yet.

***Warning! Broad, sweeping generalizations after the jump***

When it comes to literature and movies, ma...moreThroughout reading this book, I kept coming back to an idea that I have been toying with for awhile. Please note that the experimental group here consists mainly of my wife and myself and a few random observations, so massive sampling error may be afoot. I'm also sure that I am not the originator of this line of thought, but I have not encountered it elsewhere as of yet.

***Warning! Broad, sweeping generalizations after the jump***

When it comes to literature and movies, males tend to gravitate more towards physical activity. This is a world where faces get punched, caps are popped into asses, and folks get their freak on. Action verbs are being committed on a massive scale, and the world is a fundamentally different place after the fact. I've taken to calling this the macrocosm of human interaction.

Females, on the other hand, tend to be drawn more towards emotional activity. This is a world of intimate social interactions between individuals that may not always explicitly occur at the verbal level. The world is still fundamentally changed afterwards, but usually in a much more subtle way. Cultural arbiters have even been kind enough to gift us with the "Chick" prefix when the situation presented revolves heavily around romantic issues or therapy through excessive shopping. I refer to this as the microcosm of human interaction.

Once again, I realize that this does not apply to every male and female across the board. I also realize that most great works of art incorporate both of these to some extent.

So what the heck does all of this have to do with 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle'?

I believe that Murakami is dealing here with the microcosm almost exclusively. Having said that, I am really drawn to it at some level. The story is very vast, as the book spans over 600 pages. A very basic plot synopsis without spoilers would be that Toru Okada is going through some massive changes in his life. These changes may have to do with emerging psychic type powers. If this is the case, he will have to master these new abilities in order to bring about positive change in the lives of those around him. That description was so generic that it sucked the life out of the book and made it sound incredibly boring, but I assure you that is not the case.

A problem that I was having with this book and also the previous Murakami book that I read ('After Dark') is that not all questions are answered by the end of the book. However, I am now starting to come to peace with this. After all, that's how the microcosm often is in real life. Quoting my Goodreads buddy Tami, "It's the journey."
(less)

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Apr 10, 2008

Seth Hahne rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: anyone smarter than a bag of hammers

Shelves: bookclub

Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is actually probably the best novel I've read in a long time. Granted, many of the novels I've read over the last two years have not been spectacular. There was The Lovely Bones. And then The Ass and the Angel. And then His Dark Materials. And others, none of which I would recommend spending any time with.

Wind-Up Bird on the other hand was worth every moment spent burning through its 610 pages. It was mysterious, absorbing, and informative. Murak...more

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Jan 07, 2008

B rated it

· review of another edition

This novel took me for freaking ever to read. I think I started it in August? Yeah. I just finished it. Mostly because much of the book is about dreams, I think. It made me sleepy. Not that it was poorly written, not at all. The dreams were just so mysterious and sensual that it made me want to try too.

Mostly what I loved about this book was the theme that very small acquaintances can have an impact on who you are as a person, on your future. I like that. Something about kno...more

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Sep 12, 2007

August rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Lovers, painters, those who yearn to get lost in moonlight or a water well.

I took this book on a loner road trip with me through the Desert Southwest. I read it going through Southern Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona. This was the perfect landscape for me to be with this book.

I'm not going to be able to begin describing details of the book itself. It is too full, too dreamlike, too much a world of strange happenings. I can say that it is brilliant in its creativity. I felt as if I were a fly on the wall of someone's strange dream where I witnessed both great...more

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Dec 12, 2011

Kristin rated it

Shelves: i-own-it, read-in-2009, favorites, manic-murakami-madness

How can I put into words the magnificence of this book?! I CAN'T! But I'll tell you what, I'm gonna find an old abandoned well and crawl to the bottom, and then I'm gonna sit there for three days with nothing to eat and only water to drink and all I'm gonna do is think about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and how it is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read, how I want to read it again right now, how it moved me to tears on numerous occasions, how it's evocative prose sucked me in and hel...more

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Jul 27, 2009

Nick G rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'll save some space, and simply acknowledge that my feelings mirror most of the other reviews here on GR, with the underlying theme being that the book was fantastic, but leaves even the most astute readers scratching their heads.

So how to describe the book...

Ever had a very strange dream that left you with a distinctly mysterious, yet utterly meaningful, sense of being when you awoke? Yet, when you review the series of events that happened in the dream, they just seeem ...more

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May 22, 2008

Marco rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: People asleep, but the dream's ending. People coming out of the well.

Recommended to Marco by: Thom Yorke.

Prior to reading this book I had fallen down in my regular reading. Where I was once reading at least one, but usually more books a week, I was reading a book maybe every 7 or 8 months and dreadfully slowly. Concurrent to the start of me reading this, I had just gone through a break up and things just generally felt like they were slowly beginning to come apart at the seams wherever I cast my gaze.

That's what I brought to the book. What the book brought to me was a similar experience...morePrior to reading this book I had fallen down in my regular reading. Where I was once reading at least one, but usually more books a week, I was reading a book maybe every 7 or 8 months and dreadfully slowly. Concurrent to the start of me reading this, I had just gone through a break up and things just generally felt like they were slowly beginning to come apart at the seams wherever I cast my gaze.

That's what I brought to the book. What the book brought to me was a similar experience to what I was feeling on an emotional level, and a process by which I could enjoy getting lost in a book again, and a return to not just thinking about things, but thinking about what lay under the surface of things.

I know, I know. How fucking pretentious and twee can you get.

To start on a plot description in my review would be a waste of everyone's time. There's some excellent reviews already here on the site and some of them tackle the nuts and bolts a hell of a lot better than I could. Especially since this is a book with a wonderfully quicksand like concoction of a plot.

I want to make special note of the way Murakami is an expert at listing the mundane normal activities of daily life. In all of his books, there's at least one scene of a character making some kind of rudimentary meal, having a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer, and then relaxing while listening to either old jazz records or a Beatle's album. It should come off as boring, especially in a book about people with special healing powers and dream prostitutes and exotic torture sequences in World War II, but it never is. It just blends into the fabric of Murakami's simple but lovely oneiric writing.

The book continues another masterful trend in Murakami's books that I've always loved in that, on one level, it's a very slow, patient book that does have something of a plot, but it's all over the place with a passive narrator who slowly makes his way through it, making it easier and comfortable for the reader to venture along with him (even when he's not the most excited or active of protagonists). But then there's a deeper level, what I would almost say is a kind of second novel hidden within, written in tone and emotional resonance and really composed just for your subconscious to pick up on.

In a lot of ways, I feel that I can't write a normal review for the book, or that it's hard with Murakami's dream novels. Obiviously, they're just novels, intellectual constructs to breeze through and enjoy, but they're like walking through a person's brain and reminisces, navigating through their desires and their wounds, admiring their weird little ephemera all around you. Reading this novel, for me, was much like several of the character's paths in the book: They went into a place that was strange and new, both scary and amazing, and they found something and brought it out with them. In the sunlight, while examining it, they realized that something was their's.(less)

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Jan 11, 2009

Sally rated it

Shelves: multiple-read, randomly-own, beautiful

I remember purchasing this book in about 2004. I didn't remember that I'd started reading it, but here it is, I had.
Passages are vaguely familiar, but in the nicest, misty dream sort of way possible.

Here is why I love Murakami: The passage on ironing shirts put me in the mood to iron some shirts.

Working my way through, about 200 pages in now. Feel like I fall asleep and have a really intense dream every time I sit down to read. Falling in love with th...more

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Oct 28, 2010

Mariel rated it

Recommends it for: I forgot

Recommended to Mariel by: the unbearable restlessness of being

Shelves: influential, asleepanddreaming, mysterious-and-mysteriouser, turningjapanese, rubber-ring, happyhookers

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle gave my brother nightmares. I think it gave me everlasting daymares, and an incurable restless feeling. Something I love about Murakami is the you-can-tell-them-anything voice of the narrator. I wish I had that. Well, my twin and brother are both Murakami fans and my friends too. It's not like I'll get the total blank lamp post look if I ever find the right words to say (hopefully...). Um, maybe I mean it's that something missing in me I miss. I feel restless 'cause I ...moreThe Wind-up Bird Chronicle gave my brother nightmares. I think it gave me everlasting daymares, and an incurable restless feeling. Something I love about Murakami is the you-can-tell-them-anything voice of the narrator. I wish I had that. Well, my twin and brother are both Murakami fans and my friends too. It's not like I'll get the total blank lamp post look if I ever find the right words to say (hopefully...). Um, maybe I mean it's that something missing in me I miss. I feel restless 'cause I can't ever get it. It's a struggle to keep my face pointed inward sometimes, and be open and honest and all that jive. I love these kinds of stories 'cause that's what the characters are doing. I hold my breath and try not to lose that thread. I swear, these are the only times I even come close.

This book haunts me. The prostitutes who do nothing but sleep next to their clients. Wow, that's pretty lonely. I'm transgressing now and am going to bring up other stories. Digressing, definitely. (Regressing?) I like the Regina Spektor song about rubbing up against strangers in crowds to feel some contact. Or the Judi Dench character in Notes on a Scandal who is so starved for another human's touch that accidentally brushing her hands with the vet's is orgasmic (don't like that movie, though. Too possessive and that's foriegn I-don't-wanna-visit-territory). I'm not a physically affectionate person (it took long conditioning to get over being just the opposite) and I'd see/read these stories and feel fascinated like a stranger in a strange land (seriously, mouth hung open so the flies could come flying in). The sleeping next to someone I get. What if you die in your sleep and die alone? Getting into the same breathing patterns is very intimate. Yeah, I can get into a lot of stuff in that vein...

Toru's wife and her terrifying brother. Yeah, there's nightmare material ripe for the sandman plucking in here...

Their marriage falling apart tore me apart. Really, it's not like I'm a little kid and they are my parents. No, but you were supposed to be together and with me FOREVER! The knowing what you know and then finding out that was not the same thing other people knew at all, what you were supposed to have known together (ugh relationships). It's comforting and horrifying at the same time, the no-man's island of self.

I loved not being alone while asking these kinds of questions with the answers you know are in there somewhere if you could only be quiet long enough to hear them. Yeah, the story isn't linear. But who thinks and feels and asks anything in a straight answer?

P.s. Radiohead were influenced by this novel for their music. I read once that Murakami got into Radiohead and was influenced by them (Kafka on the Shore? Maybe?). I love little trivia stories like that.

P.s.s. Murakami was influenced by Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sharing stuff like that makes me feel happy. Like a shared experience. (Since I wasn't around for Woodstock or the Crucifixion. The cat was probably there for both parties, rubbing against everyone's legs for some animal contact.)(less)

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Feb 27, 2009

Julie rated it

· review of another edition

Uh, Wow.

This book is...
Well it is really hard to explain what this book is like.
I have compared it to a David Lynch movie, but it's not exactly like that really-- it's just that there is a sense of strangeness like you are being told a story out of order and you have to put the puzzle pieces together to understand it.
He is an incredible writer, and the imagery alone is just awesome.

This is certainly a book that grabs you and takes you along for the ride...more

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Aug 23, 2008

Jason rated it

· review of another edition

this book is VERY weird...

one thing that's occurred to me is the theme of the incertitude of accurate communication between human beings...
the telephone becomes a major symbol here...
at the time in which the novel is set, the early 80's, the telephone represented an insoluble mystery...
who is it we are really talking to when the telephone rings and we pick up the receiver?...
how do we know for certain they're who they say they are?...how do we know what they t...more

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Aug 11, 2011

Zinna Eitapence rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This book took me FOREVER to read! Sure it's a long book but usually I dust off a compelling 600 pages in a few weeks, as opposed to six months.

It's hard for me to explain how I feel about this book because parts of it were so different from other parts. The book starts talking about one thing (the relationship between a unemployed man and his wife who suddenly disappears) then takes off in a completely unexpected direction and just when you think you've settled somewhere solid in th...more

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May 10, 2007

Kelly Franklin Robinson rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: japanese, surrealism-and-magical-realism

Murakami is a master of the "series of bizarre events unraveling upon an average Joe" story, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of his most complex tales. Each chapter is beautiful, strange, and engaging, fueling the imagination and stirring the curiosity.

For Toru Okada, life has been mostly simple and convenient. But he begins to receive a series of suggestive phone calls from a stranger. Then his wife leaves him, and things become more random and unpredictable, particu...more

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Apr 20, 2009

Elizabeth rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, japan

I hated this book, but then I also loved parts of it. To be blunt, it was an extremely frustrating read. At about page 400 I hit a wall--perhaps a well wall--and I had no desire to complete Murakami's opus. But after I pushed past that part, the book ramped up nicely at the end. If I had been his editor, I would have liked to cut a good 200 pages. Still, Murakami's famously detached characters were utterly compelling. The main character's passivity hit a chord of authenticity for me. What happe...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Japanese Literature: Murakami	4	32	Jan 13, 2012 09:00pm
AP Lit - The Wind...: Cycle 3: Book Three; Post A (12/20/11), Post B (12/21/11)	2	2	Dec 20, 2011 09:15pm
A 2012 Challenge:...: Wind-up Bird Chronicle - group	21	37	Dec 19, 2011 01:29pm
AP Lit - The Wind...: Cycle 2: Book Two; Post A (12/16/11), Post B (12/17/11)	2	2	Dec 18, 2011 09:56pm
21st anniversary edition loose pages	6	64	Dec 14, 2011 01:12pm
AP Lit - The Wind...: Cycle 1: Book One; Post A (12/9/11), Post B (12/10/11)	5	3	Dec 10, 2011 08:17pm
Bokt goodreads gr...: Haruki Murakami - The wind up bird chronicle	1	10	Aug 05, 2011 06:11am

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About Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described by the Virginia Quarterly Review as "easily accessible, yet profoundly complex." Critics suggest his work draws from film noir and contains elements of magical realism.

Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music ...more

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Quotes from The Wind-Up Bird Chron...

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.” — 367 people liked it

“Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it. Of course, the problem could be that I'm not explaining it very well, but I think it's because they're not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they're not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things.” — 278 people liked it

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