The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.p Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. IThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle/I is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.p If it were possible to isolate one theme in IThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle/I that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --ISimon Leake, Amazon.com/I

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2009-05-21 rating:
Well written, long, surreal, trendy but missing an ending
People speak highly of Murakami, and to some extent I see why. He clearly loves writing, and his style is fluid and fun. The protagonist gets interrupted by a strange phone call, which has you immediately wondering what is going on, and at the same time he is more worried about his spaghetti being slightly too soft! I can't do that justice - you have to read it to see how well that works. br / br /But there are problems with this novel. The main one is that it seems to me that Murakami wrote it to a Japanese audience. In this book and also in "Kafka on the Shore" the author is speaking clearly about a Japanese failure to grapple with its own history of the second world war. And because this is a Japanese writer talking to a Japanese audience, one feels a little like an interloper when listening in! br / br /The tales from the war are the best narrative in the book - and the only narrative that reaches a satisfactory conclusion. This is my second Murakami novel, and the second one where the author has created more threads than are found in Toru's spaghetti - and then unceremoniously dumps them all, leaving them unresolved. br / br /It reminds me of conceptual art, where the concept comes not from the artist but the viewer. It is like the author is saying "over to you now. Bring what concepts you like into this book". Although it also comes over as "arghh, I am bored now. Time to stop writing" br / br /This author is very popular right now amongst a 20-something literate readership. The wisdom of crowds suggests there is something here and you should read this work. But I never like the wisdom of crowds, and if there is something special in Murakami's work, I still haven't found it, so my recommendation is to leave this book alone (unless you want to be a trendy 20-something, in which case take it to a coffee shop where people can see you reading it).

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review by: date: 2009-05-20 rating:
A non stop ride into the realms of a great imagination
This was the first Haruki Murakami novel I ever read and the start of my appreciation for such great story telling. This book makes a fine gift for someone who doesent normally read novels. - I have gifted it to a number of friends and each has been mesmerised by the depth of the story and the ease that Mr Murakami presents it to you. br / br /Although be warned, it will isolate you for a good week or so until you've devoured it ALL. br /In summary - easily my favourite work of fiction on paper.

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review by: date: 2009-05-16 rating:
I feel defiled
Truly original and imaginative novel but after reading it I can't help but feel that I missed something. It may be that the links between the various stories which are unfolded within this novel are kept vague for a purpose but in the end I was left so confused that I decided to seek more information about this novel and what people were saying about it. ...And it appeared that several chapters had been left out in the English translation of the book. One reader on Amazon.com, who had been comparing different translations, estimated that 10-15% of the text had been cut in the English translation. The author and translator were allegedly forced to do this to comply with the author's contract with the publisher. It may be that reading of the full version of the translation would leave me equally perplexed but I still feel insulted by the publisher. I don't think that the remark "Translated and adapted from Japanese by Jay Rubin with the participation of the author" is indicative of omissions of such extent. In my opinion I was tricked into purchasing a flawed product. I would probably not have read this book if I had been warned of this. I would have waited for the full version or read a different-language translation of the book. This novel is still a very interesting and fascinating read, though, which leaves me with a suspicion that the original text must be brilliant.

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review by: date: 2009-02-23 rating:
Creativity and a surreal world
I have read this book years ago, and now purchased it as a gift. I have already gave this book as a gift to many people and all of them (like me) were mesmerized by the surreal world and the creativity of the writer. The story is so full of metaphors and symbols and it is built so successfully that it takes you and does not leave. I remember waiting for the evening to come so that I could finally regather my book and start reading.


review by: date: 2009-02-13 rating:
comical, seriously interwining and surreal work
Picked this book after my sister finished reading it. Muramaki seems to be quite popluar these days and this just happens to be my first book i have read of his. the book doesnt start off quite so bizzarely, quite basiclly about how he quits (or loses i forgot) the job after he loses interest in the law firm he was working in, finds his cat is missing which he and his wife picked up from the street after they were just married and becomes somewhat a symbol of their togetherness. br / br /after the missing cat then things become interesting twisted...that is the events that follow and the characters he meets are peculiar....old fortune teller, psychics, strange in laws, finding peace in the bottom of the well, convulated violence all of sudden when unexpected, battle in manchurai, a prostitue who cant feel anything, mind prostitute, typical 16 year old girl with an attitude of a 16 year old...and so on.....with in between existanilist philosophy mixed with bit of psycho-analysis, and paranoi of alienation rather than loneliness in living in the modern world, a search for for his wife is also a search for self. br / br /and somehow after reading 600 pages+ book it seems strange it feels like a short story rather then a novel, every chapter is disjointed and feels like a puzzle piece to string in together and they all connect only after finishing the book. that's why it becomes difficult to describe it someone in a brief moment. br / br /read this book, but expect some surprises and weirdness as you go along.....the wind up bird might be singing outside.... br / br / br /

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