1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1) in What's the Name of That Book???

Jan 11, 2012 jo rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: east-south-east-asia

i'm 100 pages from the end but i won't finish this. i've been assaulted enough. oh why why why do we let books assault us so? because they show themselves to us in sheep's clothing, and we trust them. this fuzzy, sweet muzzled sheep cannot possibly brutalize me -- can it? can it?

this book is relentlessly brutal. the narrative is stretched to its stretchable maximum. there is no good reason for this. i suppose that, if you are a murakami fan and like to hear the sound of his voice, there will be i'm 100 pages from the end but i won't finish this. i've been assaulted enough. oh why why why do we let books assault us so? because they show themselves to us in sheep's clothing, and we trust them. this fuzzy, sweet muzzled sheep cannot possibly brutalize me -- can it? can it?

this book is relentlessly brutal. the narrative is stretched to its stretchable maximum. there is no good reason for this. i suppose that, if you are a murakami fan and like to hear the sound of his voice, there will be some pleasure (even intense pleasure) for you in his enormous wordiness, but the rest of us wish he had exercised some restraint.

there are many long and wordy novels. i have read my share. but the words, even those contained in lengthy and boring passages, make sense. i have been waiting for the meaning of this book to show itself to me. i have been willing to read 800 pages of it. so take it from me: there is no meaning. there is no depth. this is an entirely undeveloped love story/religious cult story/crime story passing itself off as a deep book about time, reality, truth, good and evil. the truth of the matter is, murakami has nothing to say about any of these things. i think he has nothing to say about anything worth 5 mins of my time. it's taken me more than a week to figure it out. woe is me.

you should read this book only if you find pleasure in murakami's voice. there is nothing else in it. nothing goes anywhere. funny looking characters are funny looking for no reason and moons multiply in the sky for no reason either.

add to this the insult of the awfully bad sex that spreads itself all over this book like sticky semen (thanks m. for the image). most of the sex scenes are, you guessed it, meaningless. one or two are violently disturbing and gratuitously exploitative.

i disagree with the people who say murakami cannot write. oh he can write. he just doesn't have anything important to say. his only contribution to the reader's imagination is his own vision of things -- their slowness, their bizarreness, their extremely slow unraveling. unfortunately, this vision is pretty much valueless. you won't learn anything from this book. it will leave you depleted and empty, or at least as empty or full as you were when you started reading it -- that is, if this lengthy rumination about the pretend meaning of things doesn't yank your soul from you. my soul is just about all yanked. i'm abandoning this book to save my soul. ...more

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Feb 20, 2023 Jennie rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction

I tried. I really, really tried. For 600 pages I tried. At first I thought it was going to be a little weird but in kind of a William Gibson-meets-Mark Halprin kind of way, but then it just turned into this absolutely interminable slog of various beverages, sex scenes, food prep, more sex scenes, cryptic speeches, more food prep, more beverages, hyper-sexualized descriptions of a seventeen-year-old girl, more food prep and beverages, more sex scenes, more cryptic speeches, and, of course, (view ...more

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Oct 26, 2011 Michelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I would say it's closer to 3.5 stars. I was disappointed in some aspects of this novel, but at the same time, I had to keep reading it. Very original plot elements, which I loved, but most of it didn't pan out to mean a lot. The end was also too simple and sudden considering the weight of the book. I would like to read more by this author, though. ...more

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Dec 19, 2011 Arthur rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Reading this book over 6 months was pretty interesting, as the book covers a similar span of time. I felt that I got to know the characters very well and experienced the mundane passage of time along with them. The supernatural/magical-realism elements were fascinating and not over-explained. Overall I liked the book better than Kafka on the Shore even if it didn't quite hit the heights of Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Hardboiled Wonderland. Highly recommended. ...more

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Jan 03, 2012 Heron rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Someone told me that this book would linger with me long after I had finished it. I cannot help but think this will be true. Like the man in the cat town and Aomame in the year 1Q84, I am drawn to the mystery and beauty of this circumstance, but not sure it would be safe to stay for long.

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Feb 03, 2013 Rachel Piper rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction, own

Great beginning, but things started dragging in the middle, and there wasn't much of a resolution. What did I just spend three weeks reading? Awkward sex descriptions, bland conversations and pervy descriptions of women's breasts? ...more

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