The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel

I wanted to review this book just after I finished it, but I could not. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is just too much, and I mean that in the best way. Still, I really want to try and capture my feelings for this text (now six weeks past).

Murakami's story is actually dead simple: the main character's (Toru Okada) wife (Kumiko) leaves him and he spends the remainder of the book trying to get her back. At its core, this is just a love story. But this simple narrative is really a vehicle to deliver many introspective quandaries into subjects like true love, financial stability, social conventions, Japanese history, the concept of reality and ultimately, the meaning of life.

Each of these vignettes gets tied into the larger quest narrative but the tangents are so detailed and rife with symbolism that the reader must carefully reflect upon Murakami's intentions. Ultimately, the story that unfolds about Toru and Kumiko is secondary to the lessons I felt that author was trying to convey. And the imagery Murakami uses is bold and otherworldly: viscous scenes from the Chinese-Japanese front in WWII, the depths of the human psyche explored in a well, psychic-voyeur sisters transfixed by water, a zoo slaughter retold as parable and scars that allow characters to heal the sick. Each of these wild stories reveals another cloaked opinion from Murakami, all so interesting they beg you to keep reading but force you to pause and reflect at the same time.

Yes, you could literally view the book as individual acts in a well composed story, complete with a climax and denouement, but that's not doing this work justice. I'll be a bit bold here and suggest he first wrote the vignettes and then strung them together with the love story. But a true literary critic I'm not, so don't ask for specific reasons here; I just felt as if these side stories were so well composed that they were where the real meat of the book resides.

I loved this book and have never read another book that forced me to think more deeply - and broadly - about the opinions I hold. But I don't feel this is a book for everyone, and should especially be avoided by those new to reading and those that need a prescriptive text to follow. I also feel you need a certain amount of life experience to appreciate what's going on here (travelers and nomads may find that this text has a particular pull with them). Many of these stories could be viewed as mirrors into which the reader reflects upon their own lives and deep seated opinions - the mark that this is truly a work of art. Give the Wind Up Bird a shot, but be patient and keep an open mind.

More reviews at mybooklust.wordpress.com.

Arguably the most well-known book by Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the seventh novel of his that I've read. I was reasonably impressed by it, though not as blown away as a good number of people seem to be.

The book carries the tone familiar to all the books of his that I've read. The world within this novel is surreal and dreamlike; and while much of the book is rooted in reality, there are distinct aspects of the supernatural or the fantastic mixed in. The fact that this is common in most of his work is the reason why he isn't my #1 favorite writer. My favorite book of his, and the one that will most likely remain my favorite of his, is Norwegian Wood because it's based solely in reality.

Now, that small criticism aside, Wind-Up Bird is well worth-while. Although the plot is slow at times, the text is stimulating and easy to fall into. It's thought-provoking in ways that most other novels I've read recently are not. At one point I had to put the book down in order to consider a question that was posed: one of the protagonist's young friends, May Kasahara, ponders whether humans would bother with philosophy or religion if they knew without a doubt that they were immortal (I'm convinced that yes, they would, but perhaps someone else is of a different opinion).

An interesting thing to note about this novel is its insight into a side of World War II that few Westerners could know anything about unless they made a special effort to study it. Much of the book is focused on the Japanese Manchuria campaign, and having once been a history major some moons ago, I found it fascinating. I may have to do some more reading about it in order to satisfy my remaining curiosity. If you're not into history, don't let this aspect of the book deter you from reading it; the parts that focus on the campaign are just as well-written as the rest of the book, less textbook than period novel. So no fear!

One thing that keeps me coming back to Murakami is his use of rhetorical devices. His metaphors and similes are always fresh and original, not cliché. For example, at one point the protagonist is describing how he couldn't stop thinking about something, how he was "thinking about it over and over, like a cat watching the rainfall." Notice he didn't write "like a broken record player;" instead he invoked a new and equally fitting image, and he does this consistently. It's most welcome and refreshing. (By the way, I just spent the last minute trying to come up with a simile for how refreshing it is, but decided I'd just embarrass myself.)

All-in-all, a great 645 pages!

Reading a Murakami novel is like stepping into a lucid dream. The setting, characters, and events are realistic yet eerily off center. Anything can happen. Unlike Isabelle Allende or Gabriel García Márquez, Murakami doesn't write magical realism; rather, he's the very definition of Kafkaesque. Which is why I love his books so much. They transport me into another dimension, and even though they are very long (I believe Wind-Up Bird was around 900 pages), I find them gripping.

I'm not even going to try to summarize the plot. There are simply too many nuances. Instead, I will say that it was the characters - both good and evil - who made this such a compelling read. The main character himself (the narrator, that is) was vanilla in all regards. But because he was a passive person, at least at the start of the book, he made the more interesting characters stand out more.

Like I said, the book is very long, and at times, it did drag. Even so, there is something about Murakami's plain style that I find gripping. For some reason, even the simplest of actions (making tea, feeding a cat) take on great significance.

Although I greatly enjoyed the book, I gave it four stars because the ending didn't satisfy me the way that 1Q84 did. It wasn't that I felt disappointed so much as I wanted more of a bang. Even though Murakami's style is subtle and a super-charged ending would have been out of place, I still felt something was lacking. Too many unanswered questions remained. I felt that 1Q84 had a much more satisfying conclusion. Probably, if I'd read Wind-Up Bird first, I wouldn't have thought this, but overall, I didn't care for this book as much as 1Q84.

Still, this is an outstanding novel and definitely worth a read.

Despite is length, despite its bizarre plot elements, and despite the cultural references that are undoubtedly difficult to translate properly, at the heart of it, 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' is an examination of fate, and how we arrive at the precise moment and circumstances in which we find ourselves. Several times in the novel, the protagonist Toru Okada reflects on these causes and conditions, idly tracing a mental image of the interlocking characters and events that come out of the past to influence his present. In most fiction, the reader might expect past events to have a one-to-one correlation to the present day - like clues to a mystery - but Mr. Murakami is more elliptical than that. Toru Okada's past - Japan' past - is not a separate thing, instead it is an inherent part of his identity.

Summarizing 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' is not easy - it may be most sufficient to say that Toru Okada, who has been content to allow life to flow over him, is more or less prodded into an active role when his wife leaves him. Along the way he is buffeted by a large cast of characters, many of whom - as in real life - have a rather ambiguous purpose in Okada's life, entering and exiting the narrative in manner that seems unusual in a work of fiction. There is also a supernatural element to Okada's story, one that starts insignificantly, but grows in importance until it becomes the factor that enables Okada to resolve the chronicle.

Mr. Murakamis is a detail-oriented writer - his style was difficult to get interested in at first, though after a few chapters, I became enmeshed in the storyline. This carried me through the third book (the novel is composed of three books), when I felt as though the magical resolution was at odds with the realistic beginning. It's as if the author promises one sort of story, but switches horses midstream. As with anything, different readers will accept this device according to their own preferences - it isn't as though it's handled poorly by Mr. Murakami, but that some might object to the stylistic impulse that put it there in the first place.

Overall, 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' is entertaining on both a superficial level and also at intimating deeper ideas about heritage and identity. To do this, in part, Mr. Murakami examines Japanese history during the occupation of Manchuria in the late 1930's through the end of the war, and these accounts, coming as they do from a native Japanese writer, are fascinating. During the 'Chronicle', what Toru Okada discovers about this aspect of his country's past seems only tangentially related to his problems of the present - what I find interesting is the suggestion that these events are an inseparable part of his own personality. To try and reduce it any farther would bring it to the level of platitudes, and I think Mr. Murakami achieves something more than that, or at least injects relevance into ideas grown meaningless with overuse. That's what good poets do too, and which makes the book certainly worthwhile.

Yet for me, this 'Chronicle' doesn't impart an overwhelming sense of enthusiasm for tracking down the rest of Mr. Murakami's work. I wouldn't avoid it, but neither would I make a special effort for it. Along with the supernatural elements that I thought were distracting, it also seemed as though there were simply too many subjects that the author wished to comment on. In a book blurb I finally happen to agree with, the Washington Post refers to 'Chronicle' as Murakami's "ambitious attempt...to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice". I would certainly recommend 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' to readers of serious fiction though, if they have not formulated their own opinions yet about Mr. Murakami - in this case at least there is reason enough to suspect that many readers will enjoy it far more than my tepid evaluation indicates. I'd consider it time well spent in a place I'll probably not revisit.

What I like about this novel is that it is unlike any book I have ever read ; it is more like a dream and what Murakami does with the plot is what Fellini does with film when I watch his movies. They go places, they take routes that most of us would never go or even dream existed. I am bothered by the negative reviews ; this book is alive and creative in ways that others could never be. There's no accounting for taste, as the Romans said. You know how those Romans were, don't you?

After reading, I wanted to dig an elaborate well to climb down when I wanted to think, and I did think a lot after reading this book. Are there answers? No, Murakami offers possibilities. Some complain of May Kasahara. I thought she was lovely, and I adored the ending. I felt it had a bit of Salinger-esque to it. May brought life to Mr. Wind-up Bird, and she had a wonderful place in the book.
This book is dreamy, surreal, and original. When Murakami publishes a new one, most of us here race to purchase it. Why? It's inexplicable. He's interesting. He takes us to places we'd never otherwise go. He does not go A to Z, either. Thankfully . He will travel from A to Malta to the bottom of a well to a Dunkin' Donuts to someplace far away and quiet.
If you want to be illuminated and you are open to a journey, this book is for you.

The search for a pet cat morphs into a surrealistic personal odyssey, which along the way, reflects on topics as diverse as modern love, the cult of personality, the nature of evil, and some graphically disturbing Japanese operations in East Asia at the end of WWII. In THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE, Murakami takes us on a journey inside the psyche of a seemingly unremarkable, unassuming, and unambitious man, Toru Okada..a man whose world is suddenly rocked by the mysterious disappearance of his wife Kumiko, a woman who apparently has been having an affair, but is in reality, hiding away in a self imposed exile because of a terrible secret involving her malevolent brother. On face value THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE is a detective story, but on a deeper level it is a love story and a moral tale, with diverse elements, and memorable characters, all inextricably linked in a mosaic that is in equal measure, disconcerting, supernatural, humorous, ironic, and profound. Conceptually daring, and often disorienting, it describes a world where the past bleeds into the present, where dreams bleed into reality, and where the power of mind reigns supreme.

Those who loved Murakami's NORWEGIAN WOOD might not appreciate the strangeness and complexity of this novel, but in truth, THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE is a stronger and more interesting book, a work that is as beautiful and enlightening, as it is enigmatic and troubling. Murakami's style is hard to define. There are elements reminiscent of Kafka, Borges, Vonnegut, and DeLillo..melded together with a characteristic Japanese sensibility and sensitivity to Nature and the human condition. I highly recommend it.

This book was fabulous in parts. It had a lot of the Murikami elements that I love so much: Simple enjoyment and preparation of food; Commenting on what people wear / great fashion sense; Enjoying being in the moment and just observing what's up; Weird mystic/spiritual time travel and mysterious links between characters; Likable everyman semi-slacker protagonist; Fun choices in music and general Japanese/US pop culture connections.

I love all the stuff above. And there were very interesting flashbacks to Japanese involvement in World War II in Manchuria and fighting with Russians, etc. But it was too long and rambling. I heard that the English translation was pruned, but I can't see how it being longer could have helped. But maybe so, because some of the most interesting characters, e.g. the weird creepy spy guy that also shows up in 1Q84, seem to just fall away without any resolution at the end.

Sooo, I'm giving 4 stars because Murikami is a joy and the good parts are great. I've also read "Norwegian Wood" and "1Q84" and both also had some rambling parts, but I'd probably recommend "Norwegian Wood" most of the three. Gotta love the cover designs of 1Q84 too and it has probably the best linkages with the modern world. So anyways, read some Murikami - he's awesome.

I finished reading Murakami's novel about a month ago and it was with some relief as it had taken me two months to get through the damn thing. After reading "Hardboiled Wonderland..." I was very anxious to read what is considered his masterpiece, "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle". I had not anticipated diving into such a deep book, every fifty pages was like a novel unto themselves as events and the main character's thoughts filled every nook and cranny of the pages.

Just as in Hardboiled, nothing really made any sense as characters came and went and dreams intertwined with reality, only the experience became more intense, more surreal and more terrifying. However, in Wind-up the characters have more detail, more colour and nuance. The teenage girl engaging and frustrating, brilliant and idiotic, innocent and murderous. The madame is painted in hyper-realistic detail yet remains mysterious and incomplete, a mix of prostitute and mystic who recounts in omniscient detail of her childhood in occupied Manchuria and has a mute son who is meticulously perfect at everything and is a computer genius. There are a half dozen other characters of equal complexity and we haven't even begun to write about the protagonist, the hero, adrift in the modern world without purpose or meaning, content to cook and swim and listen to classical music but who spends his time trying to reach out from the bottom of a dried up well through the fabric of reality to a dream world where his lover is possessed by a daemon.

I must admit that reading this novel was an emotionally wrenching experience; exhausting like a marathon or an affair with a crazy person. I don't know if I have the strength or the courage to read another novel like this. One thing that I would note......SPOILER ALERT.......and I may be wrong about this.....but by the midway point of the novel I was certain that Kumiko and Noboru were involved in an incestuous relationship and kept waiting for the protagonist to realize what had become so obvious to me, yet this fact was never acknowledge in the novel so that I have come to wonder if I was wrong or if it is some Japanese cultural thing that I don't understand.

Writers that come to mind?......well Vonnegut and Nabokov, Gene Wolfe and Phillip K. Dick, Henry Miller, ......all my favorites......in many ways, Murakami seems very North American to me in his sensibilities, it is not surprising that he has lived in the States for a long time now. I do not have a clue why he chose to name the book after the wind-up bird though I suppose it could be viewed as simply a euphemism for the protagonist who is called mr. wind-up bird by the crazy teenager May.

I fear that this review will only make sense to someone who has already read the novel and turn off potential readers.......fear not!....Kafka said that great literature is like a hammer smashing through ice.

I came into reading Wind-Up Bird knowing the hype...or, at least, knowing that some sort of ill-defined hype surrounded the book. I had read some of Murakami's short fiction and found it good enough to warrant delving into his novels. Everyone I asked told me to go with Wind-Up Bird. Turns out two of those people didn't even finish the book.

It had promise. So, so much promise. I refused to quit, found ways to reject the idea that the considerable time investment was worth it and that those unread books on my shelf deserved to wait. The writing was middling, but I blamed that on the inherent loss in translation. The verisimilitude of some characters's speech was admirable at first, but by page 500 had grown stale and even annoying. Their characteristic Murakami quirkiness did not have that many pages' worth of endurance either. And never before had the absence of plot irked me. Great works of fiction don't need plots, but the characters damn well better progress or regress in some fashion. Stuff happens in the book--cats disappear, wives disappear, peculiar skin blemishes appear, malevolent and benign psychics play at the central character's consciousness, wigs are sold, vague diseases receive vaguer cures, there is an ill-fitted detour into Japan's invasion of Manchuria (one of the book's brightest spots, if only it carried more weight)--but in the end it amounts to little more than nil. That's fine--or would be, if the book offered a fulfilling style or discourse into human nature in compensation. But aside from "married couples don't really know each other" and I guess "the past is never past" allusions, there's little to go on here.

That's the worst part. Murakami is skilled enough to project profundity. This is a work of an author that will one day produce great art, but at this point is not yet actualized. Instead, here he hints at something profound, of something that doesn't necessarily make sense but can stir the reading spirit or, dare I say, the soul. But instead of skillfully managing that promise, Murakami pulls a literary Damon Lindelof and stumbles under the weight of his own ambition, admirable though it is.

My first attempt at some Murakami so I thought I'd start with a short(ish) one. As much as you can look back at points in this book and be very aware that you've just read 50 pages in which basically nothing has happened, it's oddly captivating. I found myself caring more about every one of the bizarre characters that showed up more than I expected to and appreciated that by the end I could pretty much check off every unanswered question the novel threw at me with several little lightbulb moments through the last part of the book. Do I fully understand what I just read? Nope, I don't think so. But I think I enjoyed it enough to be okay with that.

Not terribly bad, but not terribly good either, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is definitely a strange read, if anything. It's got its fair share of weird sex and grotesque murders, but while the name of the game is to "enjoy the journey," I found there to be very little actual journey to enjoy. A man's cat disappears and from there, the story takes us through the lives of various interesting characters - none of whom ever really make much of a dent in the story itself. In fact, it's right about the time that the main character, Toru, meets the first of the eccentric cast that the plot begins to lose track.

Like a braided rope unraveling, the plot twists away from the interesting characters and their stories fizzle away without any kind of closure or even a sense of purpose. From the abundant psychics to the death-obsessed sixteen year old girl, the cast of characters seem to fall to the wayside once their tidbit of backstory has been revealed in large expository chunks. They literally fade from the story - never again making an appearance once their role as pseudo deus-ex plot points has been filled. And once they're gone, we're left with the main character, who is almost too "everyman" to handle. Pages and pages are filled with his aimless thoughts, most of which give us little to no insight into who he actually is, focusing instead on how he feels about light rain or some other triviality.

The book's saving grace (and the reason I kicked up my rating to three stars from the two I was thinking of giving it) is because of the originality within Murakami's presentation of magical realism. He took what could have been one of the most mundane stories imaginable and thankfully added some metaphysical aspects to it that held my interest through its unnecessarily long page count. In addition, the backstories of the cast of characters were riveting - particularly that of the veterinarian and of the haunted soldier. Their glimpses into the atrocities of war and of the hollow humans that emerge from such terrors was ridiculously intense and kept me turning the pages at a reasonable pace.

By the end, only a few of the loose plot points are tied together, the rest left to the wind in what turned out to be a largely unsatisfying way. If you watched "Lost" back in the day and felt that the ending was a cop-out, then just wait until you hit page 607 of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

This is my first Murakami novel, and as such it is a new genre to me.

The story of a man's struggle to find out where his missing wife has gone takes him into a journey that jumps back and forth between imagination and reality. The characters' life stories seem to parallel and, in some strange way, influence the outcome of "Mr. Wind-Up Bird" as he struggles to find meaning in his dreams for his quest.

It is a compelling story, and one that could have been a bit more grounded by tying the loose ends together at the end of the story. In a sense, this is somewhat of a fantasy or fairy tale that leaves the reader wondering what is real and what is real only in the mind of "Mr. Wind-Up Bird" (the name given to the main character, Toru Okada, by a teen-age neighbor).

The resolution, I felt, was too brief and leaves the reader wondering (imagining) what really happened to his wife, and how she was influenced by her brother. Other story devices (the "blue mark", mysterious lady on the phone, the isolation well, etc) are, in themselves, psychological prods that lend a mysterious tenor to the book. Unfortunately, the story does not provide a satisfying resolution. If this is a "fairy tale" or fantasy, then it seems to just miss the mark. Perhaps that's the author's point after all - sometimes we just don't know.

There are other little things that bothered me, such as the fact that Okada seems a bit too Westernized for being Japanese and that the story at times seems to ramble or take too long to make any progress.

One of the bright spots in the work is the teenage neighbor, May Kasahara, whose character is (I thought) well developed as the novel progresses. In fact, this is probably the only character that I really cared about, and one of the main reasons I kept reading until the end.

Anyway, judge for yourself. Happy reading!

Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a wonderfully written, complex and confusing tapestry of bizarre characters and cryptic metaphors. Perhaps I'm not quite smart enough to piece together everything Murakami is trying to say in this epic volume (it would take hours of outlining and highlighting for me to decrypt this book fully), but that's okay because I'm not writing this to spoil the book anyways. And while I can't claim to know everything the author was trying to say, there is plenty in the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that everyone should be able to take something from it.

Despite the fact that as the book starts it gives no hint as to where it's going, I was immediately engrossed by Murakami's characters and writing style. I had no idea what direction the book was taking and none of the events seemed to be leading toward anything substantial, but I didn't care and read on anyways. The author's style is simple but elegant, the dialogue very straightforward and strange, and each characters unique and... well also strange. I'm sure some of the strangeness comes from the fact that Japanese can't possibly be translated into English precisely, but it's also apparent that Haruki Murakami has his own unique and rather odd writing voice.

At face value, the premise of this book is really simple: the main character, Toru Okada, is searching for the cat that belongs to him and his wife Kumiko. As he searches for it, he meets strange characters that help him on the way. Soon, his wife disappears as well and he ends up on a search for her instead. So if you take it all literally, the book is about Toru meeting a variety of characters as he's looking for his cat and his wife. Wind-up Bird isn't a book to be taken at face value, however, which is why the book is 600 pages and not much shorter. As I read on, I realized that it was hard to determine how much of this book is meant to be taken literally and how much was figurative for something else Murakami was trying to say entirely. Upon finishing it, a lot of these puzzle pieces seemed to fit together, and yet a lot more seemed to have no place at all. I suppose I'll have to lend this book to some people who are smarter than myself who can help me analyze it more thoroughly.

One thing that was consistent throughout the book was the plethora of enjoyable allies (and in one or two cases, enemies) that Toru Okada meets. These characters, to name a few, comprise of a psychic prostitute and her psychic sister, a marriage councilor/war veteran who may also be psychic, another war veteran friend of his who's lived an entirely lonely and empty life since returning from war, a fashion designer/healer and her mute son, a neighboring teenager who seems to understand the human condition, an evil brother in law, and many more... The only characters who seem to be "normal" in this whole mess are Kumiko and Toru himself.

This however is where I think the book is most deceiving. As he meets these seemingly random characters, it seems that each one represents a different aspect of his wife, himself and their marriage. The psychic prostitute Creta Kano seems to represent his wife physically and sexually, Lt Mayima who lives an empty life since coming back from war in Mongolia seems to represent what Toru is afraid of becoming should he lose his wife, Noboru Wataya (both Kumiko's brother and the cat they named after him) seem to represent the rift in their marriage; their cat left just before Kumiko did and Kumiko's brother was always opposed to their marriage... Most characters seemed to be a facet of Toru's life. One character I can't quite find a place for in this scheme is May Kasahara, Toru's eccentric teenage neighbor. May is easily my favorite character and her dialogues with Toru were the book's most entertaining passages to me. If anything, she seemed to ask all the questions and bring up all the topics that Toru normally wouldn't have thought of or brought up himself, so perhaps she represents some suppressed portion of his psyche and imagination. I had my pencil handy when I read those sections so I could underline some of the hilarious and genius things that May's character said.

Throughout Wind-Up bird there are certain themes that Murakami keeps coming back to. Loneliness might be the most prevalent theme throughout the book. Toru is afraid of being without his wife and the character Lt. Mayima's life of loneliness seems to be a foreshadowing to Toru if his life doesn't change. Understanding is another theme here. Murakami references on numerous occasions that no matter how well you think you know someone, they will always truly be a stranger, and yet he also conveys that you hardly need to know someone for anytime at all to know everything important about them. Fate and destiny plays a role here as well, which isn't surprising considering the number of psychic characters there are giving premonitions. Dreams are also a major piece of the puzzle that is this book, in how they are interpreted and differentiating between them and reality. And of one aspect of the book that continued to surface was the wind-up bird itself, which shows up at random intervals, revealing it's strange creaking call to various characters and yet is never truly seen.

There are still many questions I have after finishing it, such as: what purpose did the wind-up bird serve and why did it appear when it did? What exactly happened to Toru in the well? What was behind the story of the boy and the tree? Rather than frustrate me, these questions just keep me fascinated, thinking about the book more and more, even as I write this review.

This is the first of Murakami's work that I've read and I definitely will be reading more. Perhaps it would have been better to read another book or two of his first so I could get an idea of his style before tackling Wind-Up Bird, but I have no regrets. The book is insightful, humorous, imaginative and just all around enjoyable. Do I recommend this book? Yes, but only to those who would have the patience for it. It's long, cryptic and doesn't tie up in a nice package at the end (my only personal gripe came in discovering that there are two chapters from the original Japanese version that didn't make it here). But for readers of Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut and other eccentric authors, Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle might be right up your alley.

This story unwinds like a dream. It is a seriously philosophical book that considers the nature of good and evil, the nature of fate and environment, individual ethics and responsibility, the impact of a nation's history on an individual, and the unresolved and ever changing relationships of people and their cultures. It is told in dream sequences mixed with metaphorical sequences, all tied together with a loosely told tale of a small mystery. It is fascinating. All the characters are introspective and totally immersed in their own guilt, or remorse, or pivotal events. They communicate with each other inconclusively, leaving the reader to fill the gaps and draw conclusions. Murakami does not climb on a pulpit and preach to his readers. You are left to understand that events and your fellow man will have their way with you. You will be defiled, permanently changed or altered by life, and that your ethical goal is to reassemble the variables and live on, preferably on an island with someone you love.

Of course, I should have read this much earlier.

I kept this book on my shelf for quite a few years but was intimidated by its weight. I think also that in the back of my mind I associated its length with the likelihood that I would be stunned with boredom, my forehead banging repeatedly onto the surface of my desk, and with a string of spittle falling barbarically from the corner of my lips. By the time I began actually to read "Wind-Up Bird," its pages were literally moldy by consequence of my travels across the humid environments of the Pacific in the years since I had bought this volume at a Japanese bookstore in Southeast Asia.

I should have read it the day I bought it, because this novel was engaging and thought provoking in some very unexpected ways from start to finish. Its subject-matter may be obscure to most, but its focus on the contemporary history of the Pacific and the startled confusion of Modern Asia since the Second World War will evolve, in my view, into one of the most important cultural influences of the 21st Century as it really unfolds (and not how we were told the future might unfold back in 1950). To reduce this to a phrase, it is my view that the epicenter of the 21st Century will be the Pacific. What has been ignored--the battles and epics in Manchuria, the recomposition of Asia, the shifting of physical wealth from East to West, the struggle to modernize, and the manipulation of conflict among and as between Korea, China and Japan, with India and Africa becoming fields of contention--will begin to seep, then to seethe, finally to dominate the events that will define the course of the Next Age.

Or something like that, anyway. You get the idea. History is non-linear. The future is always a surprise.

Having acknowledged that this is a significant book of a certain weight, I will also concede that it has difficulty in converting its mass into a more substantial gravity. This was both good and bad. The good is that it was entertaining. There is license that accelerates into titillation, but this never reaches the speed of graphic and prurient pornography; and that to my mind was a good thing. The same can be said of the violence with which the plot-theme is speckled (with blood). As for the bad, which isn't it all that bad really, what I sensed was that certain and various esoteric elements of the story were reduced by the entertaining banter into side-bars to the plot-theme, when in fact they were likely quite important to the novel and, in fact, provided the novel with its potential for gravity. For instance, there is a leitmotif of conspiratorial ritual sex that bubbles throughout the story. However, by the end of the "Chronicle" this mystery--with its connections to Malta and Crete--rather than rising to an epiphany or disclosure instead simply emits a few rays of light that function ultimately only as gloss.

And the gloss is a foggy one.

There is much more to that line in the plot-theme. We see the outer edge and shadow of what is lurking, but the grand reveal is never forthcoming. (Or did it just fly above my head?). And this leads to the conspiracy that is an overlay atop the conspiracy suggested in "Wind-Up Bird". As with Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," there is missing content in Murakami's "Chronicles". In the English translation, apparently 25,000 words or thereabouts have been massaged away. I'm given to understand that this content appears in the original Japanese language volumes. So, I suppose I now have one further reason to improve my abilities in Japanese.

To wind this up, I think "Wind-Up Bird" works as merely an introduction to Murakami's deeper thoughts. It is, however, an important introduction. The issues and concerns buried or lost (or misplaced) within "Chronicles" will likely serve as the foundation for a Next Age in the literature of the World, with its new brighter lights emerging from the vicinities of the Pacific, which we sitting comfortably in New York and / or its near analogs in the West have been unwilling and unable to see. Murakami has already done much to validate the work of writers and other fakirs from Korea, Malaysia, China, Middle Asia and Latin America. Murakami is more "modern" than we can know because he is a writer of the Next Age living among those of us in the present still wallowing in nostalgia though Evelyn Waugh is quite thoroughly dead.

I haven't quite figured Murakami out. I bought Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and gave up on it after a few stories. Some of them were just too surreal for me, and didn't make any sense. But just as I was about to take it to a used book shop, something compelled me to give it another chance. Perhaps it was because the writing was so interesting, even if I didn't understand everything that was going on. Perhaps I was just determined to understand. Whatever it was, I finished it and it ended up being my favorite short story collection in some time. And it pushed me to try one of his novels. Having heard it was the best, I tried The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle first.

Not surprisingly, I'm also ambivalent about The WBC. Even though Murakami doesn't always stay within the confines of reality, his stories are almost always engaging. The WBC begins with the protagonist, unemployed Toru Okada, receiving a call from a mysterious woman as he makes spaghetti and listens to The Thieving Magpie. Soon, he is receiving a call from another strange woman named Creta Kano, who is something of a seer and has been hired by Toru's wife Fumiko to find their lost cat. And the mysteries only multiply from there, as Toru meets more strange characters and makes more discoveries as he tries to fill his days and find their cat. Soon, things turn serious though as Fumiko disappears and Toru is forced to go into some deep and dark places to find her, both literally and figuratively.

Murakami kept me riveted with this ever expanding web for about 250-300 pages. But then things got a bit stale. After about 400-500 pages, I felt like the novel was collapsing from its own weight, filled with information but going nowhere. It began to drag. It began to go to places not so interesting. Yet, it picked up towards the end, and somehow Murakami managed to pull it out. somehow, I finished the book satisfied. I still don't know how he does it.

I can't say Murakami is for everyone, but can say that everyone should at least give him a try. If you've never read him before, I would recommend his short stories as a starting point. If you like them, give The WBC a try.

My first encounter with murakami was with his short stories in the New Yorker magazine, which have been published as a collection in "The Elephant Vanishes". Some of his stories (like "The Second Bakery Attack") were so good that I had to read more. This was my first full length Murakami novel, and I am so glad I found it!

Overall, the plot was really compelling and suspenseful, which built up a powerful tension through most of the story. One unusual event leads to another until things have changed so much since the beginning of the story that it almost seems like a different story halfway through.

Additionally, Murakami's ability to describe a scene is captivating. In this book, this ability manifests itself in both positive and negative ways. On the positive side, there are many unusual scenarios and places that the author describes vividly in a way that really brings the story alive.

On the other hand, the long beautiful descriptions of the scenes and characters made me really impatient at times when the tension of the plot was building, wishing that he'd get on with the story. This is not really a complaint, but merely a recognition of the tension Murakami succeeded in building with his mysterious and beautiful world.

My only reservation in recommending this to all comers is that the style of the story is very unusual with its gruesome tangents, weird characters, multiple story arcs, and mutable reality. I can imagine that some folks would get frustrated by these things. However, for me and the people I have recommended it to the unusualness of the story and the realism of the characters all made the book even more appealing.

If you like lazy books (the action rolls out slowly) then this might be for you.

I found the focus curious, but nevertheless, kept reading.

A man finds himself out of a job and in the role of domestic supervisor at the home he shares with his successful wife. Each day brings a new curiosity - what happened to the cat that's disappeared? Who is it that keeps calling on the phone and trying to get him to talk about sex? Why does his wife bring up NOW the fact that he doesn't seem to know her at all?

Now that I've finished the book, I think that it can be seen as a metaphor for anyone who is in a relationship with someone and doesn't feel like they really know the person. Are they holding something important, a part of themselves, back from you?

When Okada's wife finally reveals (but not completely) the horrible reason she felt blackness inside her, we feel relief.

Yes, the book has a "dreamlike" quality, but isn't that how it feels - surreal - when our world turns upside down and isn't how we know it?

Sometimes, every day occurrences, and yes, serendipitous interactions with others do more to reveal what we didn't know about our significant others than years of living with them.

A strange woman called. And the domino of events began tumbling into Toru Okada's uneventful existence. The missing cat. The disappeared wife. Then, a cast of bizarre characters walked into his life. A teenage neighbor who didn't go to school but likes to talk about life and death. A lieutenant who related the atrocities during his Manchurian tour in WWII. A medium whom his wife, before disappearing, had employed to find the cat. The medium's sister who was a "prostitute of the mind." Noboru Wataya, his evil brother-in-law, who lived a double life. Nutmeg Akasaka, who would help him rescue his wife from the brother-in-law. And what's this annoying wind-up bird?

He would spend time talking with the teenage, May Kasahara, about the human condition. He would hide in the well for hours to sort out his thoughts. And while dreaming in the well, he would walk through its wall and defeat the evil that was Noboru Wataya.

Outlandish characters, non-linear plot, surrealist environment. Who needs realistic fiction? Haruki Murakami is a great storyteller. Expect the bizarre characters, expect the twist in the plot, expect to be transported into a dreamlike world.

A strange woman called. And the domino of events began tumbling into Toru Okada's uneventful existence. The missing cat. The disappeared wife. Then, a cast of bizarre characters walked into his life. A teenage neighbor who didn't go to school but likes to talk about life and death. A lieutenant who related the atrocities during his Manchurian tour in WWII. A medium whom his wife, before disappearing, had employed to find the cat. The medium's sister who was a "prostitute of the mind." Noboru Wataya, his evil brother-in-law, who lived a double life. Nutmeg Akasaka, who would help him rescue his wife from the brother-in-law. And what's this annoying wind-up bird?

He would spend time talking with the teenage, May Kasahara, about the human condition. He would hide in the well for hours to sort out his thoughts. And while dreaming in the well, he would walk through its wall and defeat the evil that was Noboru Wataya.

Outlandish characters, non-linear plot, surrealist environment. Who needs realistic fiction? Haruki Murakami is a great storyteller. Expect the bizarre characters, expect the twist in the plot, expect to be transported into a dreamlike world.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tightly woven fabric of innumerable dimensions. Starting as a simple, prosaic story, new characters are regularly introduced whose connection to the story gets ever more tenuous and disassociated in time, relatedness and purpose. Suburban Tokyo to Manchurian wars to toupee making.

I am quite sure all these threads are woven together in the end, but having reached the end, I am still working many, perhaps most of them out.

In some ways, this is a little frustrating -- it's not an easy read, and even more challenging that Murakami's more recent 1Q84, which was also brilliant,and shared many themes.

Yet with several minor exceptions, the stories within the story are of themselves rich and compelling which makes for a satisfying experience.

Wind-Up Bird has all of the complexity and depth of Faulkner or Dostoyevsky yet manages to provide a readable, and sometimes even light and quirky prose. This is a book worth reading.

And now, back to figuring out what it all means!

This is the second Murakami book I've read, after IQ84. The underlying themes of death and rebirth, identification of the self, parallel conscience, alternate realities and merging worlds are similar. Murakami's worlds are complex and peopled with interesting characters and their stories. I could not put this down and want to start reading it all over again as I feel the nuances of the story will reveal themselves on repeat readings.

Strongly recommend.

This book left me so confused while I was reading it that it was difficult to understand what world the characters were in and what forms of the characters were in. Don't be misled - I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. I am fairly convinced, without giving too much away, that the Kano sisters are different forms of the Wataya sisters. I gave this four stars because I felt parts of the story were left unfinished. After reading a review that stated parts of the Japanese novel were cut from the English novel, I can understand why it felt disjointed at times. I wished to learn more about Nutmeg and Cinnamon. The novel introduced me to a new word: thoroughgoing. I also think the prophesy/warning "Beware of Water" is so wonderfully vague and foreboding. Water is everywhere and it sustains life. Should we be wary of everything or is that too cynical?

My first Murakami story was 1Q84 and I was really impressed about the way Ushikawa was portrayed and described. Lo and behold, it's because he's in other Murakami books as well! That was a really fun surprise for a new Murakami reader. I have since learned that other characters appear more than once in his body of work, which makes me that more excited to read the rest of his novels.

Finishing this book is much like looking at your real life. You wake up one morning realizing how you got here, but you have no real idea what is going on. Is it fate that got us here, is it a compilation of our (and history’s) choices, or is it some surreal combination of both? Murakami’s existential take on the meaning of life and his philosophies on memories and time will make you think and will change you.

We walk into the book while Toru Okada is making spaghetti. He has what he thinks to be a regular nondescript life. He lives on a quiet street in Tokyo, has no job, is mostly a loner and spends most of his days reading while his wife works. When their cat goes missing, Okada ventures out into the neighborhood to find him. Okada’s life then begins to shift in subtle ways. He starts receiving phone calls from a breathless, unnamed woman. He meets and befriends May Kasahara, a teenage girl who works in a wig factory and who is obsessed with death. His wife employs a bizarre psychic named Malta Kano and her sister Creta to help find the missing cat. He begins having bizarre dreams where he is visited by Creta, a former prostitute – are they really dreams or an alternate reality? His wife disappears and we meet her brother Noboru Wataya, a ruthless talking head economist/politician, all style and no substance, with shadowy obsessions. Okada meets Lieutenant Mamiya, who relates a long story about his role as an officer during the Japanese occupation of Manchukuo in WWII and how he saw a man literally skinned alive. Okada becomes involved in a strange business venture with Nutmeg Akasaka and her adult son Nutmeg (who doesn’t speak) because of a blue mark on his cheek that appears after one of his dreams. Okada becomes obsessed with a dry well in the courtyard of the “Hanging House” in his neighborhood and often spends days alone sitting in the bottom in the pitch darkness with the cover closed. All the while a “Wind-Up Bird” sings its strange song of fate in the distance, propelling people to and fro throughout history.

If all of this sounds weird to you, you are not alone. The plot summary may sound confusing, but the writing is very straightforward and draws you in quickly. First one strange thing happens in Okada’s world, then another, and then suddenly you realize that everything has changed yet still fits together in a new and bizarre way. The writing is simple, but the ideas it presents offer magnificent depth while dreams, memories and reality seamlessly shift into one another.

Sitting in the dry well with the lid closed, for instance, may be real, symbolic, part of a dream, or all three. Some see it as a confession of faith. "The break between people and me is now total. I don't even have a torch with me. This is like a confession of faith. I mean to show them that I am trying to accept the darkness in its entirety." This focus on the individual (and the main character’s lack of ambition) runs contrary to traditional Japanese culture. The author's characters can all be seen as "strange," not fitting into any traditional molds. This may be why author Haruki Murakami is so popular in Japan.

Murakami blends Surrealism, Magical Realism, and Existentialism with themes of humor, loneliness, alienation, and revelation in a very postmodern way to get under our skin without us realizing it or even understanding what exactly is going on. It is almost like written Jazz, his words dancing on the page and making unexpected connections in an exhilarating mental journey. He mixes autobiography, music, mystery, metaphysics, and sex together in a unique way that is wonderful and will keep you thinking.

Professor Jay Rubin, a Murakami translator and biographer, sheds some light. “Over and over I have heard people react to reading Murakami as though something has happened to their brains. It changes you. It makes you see time differently, it makes you feel differently. The message is a really simple one, that life is what you make it. All of reality is in your synapses. The best thing you can do is just keep learning about the world and whatever meaning it has is meaning that you assign to it.”

Several passages in the book stood out for me as memorable quotes. “From the bottom of a well you can see stars in the daylight,” “If it wasn't for death, we wouldn't have to think about the complicated things in life,” and "There is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for."

I could have done without the detailed description of the massacre of zoo animals during the war in Manchukuo, but it did drive home a point. We get jaded about the killing of humans in war, but when the killing is of innocent animals caged in a zoo we turn away, sickened and horrified. "It was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if on the battlefield one might end up being killed oneself."

As for the loose ends at the end of the story, I see them as paralleling life. Life is full of loose ends, or at least ends that we think are loose. They may actually be threads that others pick up, assign meaning to, and intertwine into their stories of the future without our even knowing.

“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” is intensely interesting and profoundly existential. Although it may not be for everyone, I found it fascinating and impossible to get out of my head long after finishing it. Very highly recommended.

Okay, I know I'm going a bit backwards here, as my first Murakami novel was 1Q84, but I feel like I was a little better prepared for this one. These books are sagas. Not just easy beach reads. I know this now. I started reading it expecting surrealism and odd plot twists. And, just like 1Q84, I kept reading because I wanted to figure out what the heck was going on. Although this book tended to pose more questions than it answered, it still wraps up nicely. And even though the protagonist is under a different name, I felt like I had already met Toru before, when he was named Tengo; at least in my mind's eye he was similarly characterized. I probably could have done without entire pages of this book-namely all the depictions of war and torture, but I realize that they had only added to the overall texture of the story. I'm very much enjoying my forays into Murakami's bizarre worlds and am very much looking forward to reading another.

A fantastical, fantasy novel, frustratingly detailed in many parts, cutesy at times (bordering on childish). This novel is certainly engaging only in the way something so imaginatively weird can be. It has no moral or meaningful purpose other than 'entertainment'. The scenes from WWII are horrific in parts. I found myself wondering how an author could describe the details without flinching (maybe Murakami did). I cannot honestly recommend this novel as a 'must read', for I think I could have spent my time and energy in a better way.

As a long-time reader and admirer of Murakami's, I must say I really enjoyed this book. It's his biggest, widest ranging, and I would certainly rate it his best so far. If you are a newcomer to this writer, then you are in for a real experience!
However, coming to the book with a knowledge of his previous work, I must admit to being a little disappointed at the extent to which he recycles his ideas. You could easily argue the case that this book is not much more than a re-working (expanded and improved) of Dance Dance Dance. The plot is the same (man searches for mysteriously disappeared lover), the atmosphere is the same, the central concerns of the uncanny in everyday life and the feeling of reality gone disturbingly awry are the same. Even some of the characters are the same: the intense and rather warped teenage girl, the slickly charismatic bad guy, the passive, unflappable hero who stumbles blindly towards the centre of the mystery. And the central location to which the main character is inescapably drawn seems to be more or less the same luxury hotel as in the earlier novel.
But this is what Murakami does. Each novel has the same main character going through more or less the same experience, and the unsettling worldview that emerges becomes more reassuringly familiar with each trip through the same territory.
Where Murakami breaks new ground here is in his excursion into Japanese history, unearthing the forgotten Manchuria campaign. I actually found this to be the least successful aspect of the book. Far from trying to confront Japan's wartime record honestly and clearly, he creates a sensational little story of a cartoonishly malevolent Russian soldier with his animalistic Mongolian sidekick, against which foil the nobly suffering Japanese characters appear almost saintly. While I am sure that atrocities were committed by the Soviet army, as by all sides in the conflict, and that many ordinary Japanese did suffer terribly at their hands, I can't help feeling that Murakami's account could have done more to show both sides of the picture. The execution of the 'baseball team' by the Japanese lieutenant is perhaps intended to serve this purpose, but it is of a wholly different order to the subhuman barbarity attributed to the enemy.
Plus, the whole Manchurian episode seems to me to be grafted on, rather artificially, to the main story, with which it has little connection. Compared to say, Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse Five', where the fantasy elements of the novel combine much more effectively and disturbingly with the historical WWII narrative, I'd have to say that Murakami's novel comes across as considerably less powerful.
So, after such a relentlessly negative review, I'd like to urge you to buy this book and read it, because it is most definitely worth it, especially if you don't know his earlier novels. I've mentioned only my reservations about the book, for the good points, see all the other reviews...

Sometimes books can be exactly like beautiful, perfect pieces of art; created with skill and finesse and care and brilliant ability to the point where the reader might feel they are holding the equivalent of the Mona Lisa in their hands. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is one of those magical novels that many readers consider to be a perfect work of art; it in fact represents the best this bestselling Japanese author has to offer. His other works employ elements of his mastery, whether its compelling fully-rounded characters that are just fascinating to read about; or a great storyline that sucks you in from the very beginning and keeps you going until the very end; or strong themes that force the reader to think more on the story they are reading, and what meaning and resonance it might have on their own life. But The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the pristine of example employing all these attributes in a perfect work of fiction.

Our unusual and flawed hero is one Toru Okada, who begins the story with a simple quest: to find his lost cat. Okada is unemployed while his wife, Kumiko, spends her days busy at work at a publishing house and he sees her but briefly in the early mornings and late at night before they go to sleep; it is clear that their marriage and relationship is on shaky grounds. Okada challenges himself to find this cat that has gone missing, spending his time searching up and down the streets of this ordinary Tokyo neighborhood. While there is no cat in sight, he soon befriends a most enigmatic teenage girl named May Kasahara who is a classic Murakami character with quirks and unusual characteristics that just make her fascinating to read.

As time passes, no cat is found, and then Kumiko suddenly disappears and Okada finds himself now searching for his wife as well as his cat, as he burns through his savings. Before he knows it, he finds himself unavoidably inveigled in circumstances and experiences that grow weirder by the chapter, as he finds himself sitting at the bottom of a dark well looking up at that small circle of light and sky. Along the way he meets more unusual characters, such as Malta Kano, named after the island of Malta, who has been asked by Kumiko to help find the cat. Then there is her even stranger sister, Creta Kano, named after the island of Crete, who is essentially a psychic prostitute.

Eventually Okada discovers the reason for Kumiko’s disappearance, and has to deal with her weasely and despicable brother, Noboru Wataya (whom they named the cat after), who is a political celebrity well revered in public circles. Okada also meets and begins working with Nutmeg and Cinnamon Akasaka in a most unusual business, as he hopes to find an answer to the strange blue-black spot on his cheek that won’t go away. And finally there is Lieutenant Mamiya who befriends Okada after the passing of a friend in common, and begins to tell him stories of his experiences during the Japanese military efforts in Manchukuo, sharing his own similar experience of spending a long time at the bottom of the well.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the type of lengthy book that can be interpreted in so many different ways, with readers getting different ideas and thoughts and concepts from it; the same reader may even reads it multiple times over a long period and see different aspects and stories in a different light. No matter what preconceptions the reader has as they begin reading this very special book, they will be transported to somewhere they never imagined existed by the very skilled hands and mind of one Haruki Murakami.

Originally written on May 17, 2012 ©Alex C. Telander.

For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site: [...].

By any standards this is an extraordinary book: beautifully written and, by extension, translated, that records, as the title suggests, in a linear account, a man's search for his wife who, mysteriously, absconds from his house and his life with no apparent prior warning. Along the way we are treated to an account of another man's experiences fighting for the Japanese army against the Mongols, Chinese and Russians in Manchuria before and during the Second World War and introduced to an increasingly bizarre range of characters that progressively enhance the dream-like quality of the narrative: so much so that, ultimately, the reader begins to ponder the nature of reality, time and space. However, if this was the author's intention it is only partly successful. True, the writing is magical but the frequent `punctuations' disrupt the flow of the narrative to such an extent that it becomes easy, in the end, almost to lose interest in the protagonist's quest for his missing spouse and, consequently, any curiosity as to her eventual fate. And yet, Murukami still manages to enmesh the reader in a web from which he or she cannot become extricated until the final page: Okada, the bereft husband is everyman and no man, he is apparently insignificant yet curiously sought out and sought after; of little importance in the lives of his acquaintances yet seemingly pivotal to all the events that gradually unfold. Perhaps it is the very ambivalence inherent in the character of Okada that provides a clue to understanding the strange allure of the book. Or perhaps it is simply its ability to stay in the consciousness of the reader long after its apparent end.

If I have to pick out the best Murakami book, this would be it. At first, when I received my copy, I was rather intimidated by the number of pages. My reservation was with Murakami's ability to sustain my attention for that long. The book opens with the mysterious phone call and that sets the tone for the rest of the book. However, how many weird coincidences or unpredictable plot points can a book have without tiring out the reader?
The answer is many. Murakami will show you that his talent for writing something so puzzling and enganging is for real. The book swims in and out of a variety of stories about the supernatural. Each small story forms a node and when all the nodes are connected, you have a three-dimensional structure that is almost impenetrable. Impenetrable because you will not have the answers by the end of the novel, but at the same time, you will be content not to look for them. I certainly didn't feel deceived for not being able to complete the puzzle. Instead you will just gape at the complexity of the novel and the efforts it takes to conjure up such a structure.
At the heart of the novel lies the story about the Japanese spying mission into what would be Manchukuo after the Japanese occupation. I think Murakami handles this very well. In light of what the world knows about Japanese atrocities, being a Japanese himself, it is definitely not an easy task to avoid the pitfalls of glorification or condemnation. Instead, the soldiers are presented as humans, neither good or bad, just ordinary humans encapsulated by extraordinary events.
The only downside I can see to this novel is that it reaches stagnation at certain points and I strongly feel that the narration could be sped up. Overall, it is nothing short of a masterpiece that might earn him a Nobel Prize in literature one of these days.

Murakami s latest, the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, distantly echoes Douglas Adams Dirk Gentlys Holistic detective Agency, in that both novels seem to begin with the search for a lost cat, a search that blooms and expands across immense landscapes, that encompasses luminous and dangerous characters, that invokes a brooding, sullen man who threatens to completely devastate human civilization. Yet to say Murakamis and Adams tales are alike is to claim Tchaikovskys Roccoco Variations and Shostokovichs Cello Concerto are the same because both are Russian cello music. Murakami takes a darker path in both body and soul. The hero, Okada, spends much time brooding in a dry well, borrowing deeper into his mind? another world? Okada is searching, first for his cat, then his wife, all the while opposed by his ominious brother-in-law, a man apparently capable of rape without touching, of dominating souls. Okada s only help seems to flicker from the memories of Japanese soldiers once stationed in China. Compelling persons, the capricious May Kanasawa, the Kano sisters, Nutmeg and her silent son Cinnamon, flit through Okadas life, thier mystery never fully explained. The long terrible shadow of Japans involvement in China, and later Russia, increasingly affects Okadas present day life, though how is never quite clear. Murakami explains nothing clearly, much of the seeming action is almost offstage. This can be extremely frustrating compared to more action-driven novels, yet Murakami seems wise not to dwell on it. Yet the fact remains that this is not a book to read once, that the odd details keeping the reader returning to double-check. What happened to the stone bird sculpture in the vacant yard? Or the fate of the elephants in the Chinese zoo? Where had Okadas cat been for a year? Small things, yet I wondered if Murakami made their answers central to the larger questions. I dont know if I enjoyed the book, more is evoked that actually revealed. The novel had grown from the short story The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesdays Women, essentially the first chapter; the book ends on the opposite image from the short, the lost cat now found, the mans wife lost for now. (The reverse of the Adams book, where the hero gets the girl, but alas! the cat dies.) Not a conventionally happy ending, not really satisfying, but it WORKS.--though what Murakami meant by *wind-up bird* is never explianed at all. Perhaps it could be anything--or nothing. Compelling and irritating by turns, Okadas search for his cat and then his wife take him through the *souls darkness* of previous novels. Murakami writes in the dark, yet knows where he is going.

Alice remarked "curiouser and curiouser" as she fell down into 'wonderland' and encountered the strange and the surreal. In 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' our hapless, bland former Japanese white color worker (or 'salaryman' in Japanese) finds himself entering his own wonderland, which happens to be right in his own neighborhood. No, he doesn't say "curiouser and curiouser". But this reader certainly did ... and smiling all the while.
Haruki Murakami has created a truly bizarre, original and thoroughly enjoyable story involving metaphysics, the paranormal ... and just plain "wow!". He touches many areas (war, politics, meaning of life) in an elaborately interwoven plot - it would be impossible to explain it all in a book review. However this book vaguely reminds me of the many Philip K. Dick novels where the author suggests that people can share the same mind space (dreams, thoughts, soul). However 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' is not a science fiction novel per se.
While I thoroughly enjoyed this novel it does have some flaws. Murakami failed to produce closure, or at least satisfactory closure, on several of the many subplots (and associated characters). The book seems to end with many unanswered questions. Murakami-san should have been slightly less ambitious on the scope of this novel and perhaps focused a little more attention on cleanly wrapping it up (as much as this reader didn't want it to end!). However all this is not a real bother; I'm still busily recommending this novel because of its shear audacious originality.
Bottom line: a unique piece of brilliance which should catapult Haruki Murakami on to the 'must read' lists of fans who appreciate unconventional fiction.

Reading the Wind-up Bird Chronicle was like walking thru a very large art gallery (slash) house of mirrors. In this gallery, each work of art is loosely connected to the one next to it (sometimes), and the gallery itself is like a big fun house with moving floors and distortion mirrors where a whole lot of freaky, weird stuff is happening. I thought if I could make it thru the 600+ pages, the meanings of these mysterious elements would be revealed in the end. I finished all 600 pages, and in the end there was no explanation for any of the weirdness, no explanation for the odd characters, weird events, strange objects...

However, I gave it 4 stars because most of the works of art (like Lt. Mamiya's story) are great stand-alone pieces , interesting in their own rights. I also enjoyed the variety of literary forms. Although the protagaonist is very pop culturesque, I also appreciate Murakami's high-context style of writing.

This is my 2nd Murakami book. I read Colorless Tzukuru Tazaki and enjoyed it immensely. This one is just plain weird and sometimes unpleasant. After 250 pages I just didn't want to go on. Still, Murakami is undoubtedly a gifted writer and I'm going to give Norwegian Wood a try next.

When the narrator of a Haruki Murakami novel--always male, 30ish, unnamed, hip, Japanese, westernized, Tokyo-dwelling, and beset with relationship problems--hears his wife tell him she's leaving him, or finds out his business is falling apart, or learns that his colleague and best friend is an alcoholic, he reacts with a surprising degree of equanimity. But when the same narrator finds himself forced by evil international agents to search in the snow country for a magic sheep with a star on its back, or receives a unicorn skull in the mail wanted by the Japanese mafia, or enters an office building on an assignment and finds himself escorted by a voiceless woman down a tunnel into the ground filled with waterfalls and flesh-eating monsters, he reacts with the exact same degree of equanimity. Murakami's heroes have been criticized for being too stiff and emotionally detached from their often shocking surroundings, but the fact is that his narrators have always fit the author's central theme--the staggering uncertainty of everyday modern life, and the bravery we exhibit just by stoically facing it.
In "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," however, the narrator decides to fight back for once. In this sense, the book seems to represent a turning point in the author's career. Rather than watching his cat walk out on him, his wife walk out on him, his very identity walk out on him, the narrator (who's given a name for the first time in a Murakami novel--Toru Okada) decides to fight back and retrieve what he's lost. Not surprisingly, he doesn't fight back by physically assaulting the strange posse of psychics, faith healers, and ghosts that swarm up around him and tease him with clues about the disappearance of his wife (with the exception of one violent baseball bat attack he commits against a creepy folk singer who offered a bad omen in the early days of Toru's marriage). Instead, the narrator fights back by thinking. He fights back by hiding away in an abandoned well in the neighborhood and forcing himself to reflect back on the early days of his marriage, on the reasons that he and his wife got together, and on the reasons that might have driven her to leave him. In this sense, the narrator's self-imposed thinking sessions constitute a kind of "metaphysical psychotherapy"--therapy that's designed, not to cure some mental condition, but to help him regain his identity and to reaffirm his very existence.
The novel's atmosphere is daringly dreamlike: Characters walk through walls, get skinned alive, shoot zoo animals in their cages during WWII, have sexual intercourse with each other in their dreams, and grow strange purple bruises on their faces. Most of the supporting characters (e.g., Malta and Creta Kano, Nutmeg and Cinnamon Akasaka) remind me of the characters in "One Hundred Years of Solitude"--vivid and lifelike, yet identifiable by a single, exaggerated personality trait (e.g., Malta's composure, Creta's physical hypersensitivity, Nutmeg's perfectionism, Cinnamon's orderliness).
This isn't a novel for overly literal-minded people. It's the type of book that gets at truths in the most indirect manner possible, so that the reader may not fully understand what has happened until after finishing the book, so that the narrator may not even fully understand what has taken place until the story is over, so that even the author himself may not have known quite where he was going with the book until he was nearly finished. Overall a colorful, ambitious, haunting, and even terrifying book, and highly recommended.

I could go on and on and on about this book. I read it over a year ago in one night lying awake sleeping on a friend's floor in Reykjavik, Iceland. (I was a proud Seattle resident back then.) I have read a plethora of contemporary Japanese literature, and a lot of it takes on the surreal, disconnected, and often crazy tone of Murakami's work, but Murakami is the master. I bought this book in Iceland, where books are a million times more expensive as in America, so that says something. When I wander the bookstores of Iceland now that I live here, I contemplate buying other books of his (on impulse), but it is more of a value to order books via the store from here... but I digress. I mean to say that Haruki Murakami's work is worth the money you pay for it. As one of the reviewers on the book jacket stated, the book "takes a baseball bat to your brain." And it does.
As other reviewers/readers have said, you will not even notice the length of this book. It flies past with momentum. Today, a year later, I am still thinking about it.
Toru Okada seems to be wandering through his life, and instead of him making things happen, usually things happen to him. The plot of the story and various analyses of it are well documented here in these reviews. I won't be repetitive. I will simply say that this is a FINE work (by "fine" I do not mean the lacklustre "how are you? I'm fine..." sort of definition.)

This book had the elements of a successful love / horror story with war stories thrown in. It was Toooo long by a couple of hundred pages, disjointed, and the end was dumb and horrible and a total let down, after spending like about 40 hours of my life. Don't believe the rating.

This is, to put it simply, the best book I've ever read.
I haven't stopped thinking about this story since I finished it. Murakami has a beautiful and engrossing writing style. This story is complex, dreamlike, and one of the most immersive pieces of writing i've ever read. If the synopsis intrigues you, you are in for quite the story.
Easily my favorite novel of all time. I just ordered "Norwegian Wood". I have to read his other works.

The opening chapters of this book brought the same feeling to me as the original film of Point Blank. Why? Well, despite their superficial differences both works exist in that world of listless summers, dry concrete, abandoned houses and dusty derelict gardens, and journey through the heart of the modern city (Tokyo/Los Angeles), yet a city that seems strangely empty. Echoes of J.G. Ballard here too. Toru Okada, the novel's hero, an aimless happily unemployed everyman, has little in common with Lee Marvin's relentless single-track hitman however. Only wanting to drift, cook pasta and love his wife, the collapse of all these simple domestic pleasures, prefigured by the loss of their cat, pitches him into a wierd underworld of ill-fated war heroes, psychic healers dressed in 60s fashions, a corrupt politician who happens to be his hated brother-in-law, a strange cynical teenage girl (a kind of anti-Lolita) and more. These characters inhabit an impossible dreamspace, swirling under the surface of the sluggish Tokyo summer heat. Okada's happy mundane world becomes filled with threat and dangers glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, but is also opened up to directions that had never before seemed possible, as this space begins to infiltrate and merge with his own reality.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle features bizarre and memorable characters and, so far as can be determined in translation, a dense realist descriptive style. Its tales of love misplaced and hopeless coincidence echo those of the great Italian writer Italo Calvino, and the sprawling muinutely detailed journeys of George Perec. In his treatment of the fear and uncertainty underneath the superficial order of Japanese society, and an acknowledgement of the long shadow cast by Japanese militarism in the first half of the Twentieth Century, Murakami has much in common with Kobo Abe. He has clearly influenced younder writers like Banana Yoshimoto in his obsessions with new age eccentriciy. As also mentioned, there are hints of Ballard and Nabokov too.
This is all very well, and all very brilliant, until about two thirds of the way through when a major change in the feel of the book occurs and Murakami appears to lose control of the plot (such as it is) and the book ceases to be deep and intriguing and starts to be aimless and baffling. If only Murakami had managed to sustain the book to the end this would have been a masterpiece. As it is, it is still well worth reading, and an exceptional display of imaginative and magical writing.

The best part of Murakami's "Wind-Up Bird Chrnoicles" is that at its core, it's a love story. Boy loses girl; boy wants girl back; boy goes after girl. It's the last part that's the doozy: Can you imagine going down a well to get your wife back? Or sitting on a bench day after day because your uncle thought it was a good idea and would sort of "clear your head"? Or dealing with mediums named Malta and Creta, Cinnamon and Nutmeg?
Don't let me fool you, though. The book holds up remarkably, thanks to Murakami's powerhouse storytelling and and that we never lose the protagonist's main reason for doing it all: for the love of his life. It's delightfully simple and complicated at once, a paradoxical condition that should be very familiar for previous readers of Murakami.
I was reminded of "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" as I read this book. Both works are about lost love and a split between reality and imagination. "Chronicle," though, has a much darker side; the Manchurian passages are harrowing accounts of humanity gone badly wrong. If you are a New Yorker reader, you may have already seen parts of the book ("The Zoo Attack" and "Another Way to Die").
In short, you can't go wrong reading "Chronicle" -- it's a fine addition to the growing list of Murakami's literary triumphs.

If one asks if this book is strange, a simple answer would be ,"yes." Hut, it isn't. Yet, it appears as such. Starting from the title, you can only interpret it to mean: a factual written account of important or historical events in the order of their occurrence of a nonliving toy ornithological being.

Yet, the book constantly has references to the ornithological muse, its song, and the backdrop that song delivers to the world of a perplexed young man whose wife suddenly departs from him amid the overwhelmingly thunderous city of Tokyo.

Murakami, an author deserving of his own trademark, is a Japanese author whose English counterpart may be Stephen King. The great world of tranquility is his greatest device. After leaving work for self-imposed unemployment, the protagonist Toru Okada enters the delirium of boredom - a life filled with ennui and naps. For us, intermittent naps could lead to wake ups and recall of our dreams in partial format. For Murakami, whose writing is no less surreal than a remembered nap, the majority of this novel reads like a chronicle of one man's dreams touching upon many unique topics: toupees, WW II abusive Mongolians and Russians, torture, exile camps in Siberia, extreme cold, spiritual healing, and more.

One jump to another in a journey reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Alice, Okara chooses deep wells instead of rabbit holes for the quest. Beneath the ground and hidden from public view, the protagonist not only escapes reality about him, but reality itself when going down the well. Like a rocket ship, the well is an instrument where he can transgress one world to the next.

Maybe what amazes me about a book like this is the ability to lead you on those jumps. Passing through 600 pages of science fiction is not my ordinary reading. But, when having completed this novel, I realize the numerous jumps were a fresh awakening from my other reads. Nothing seems "obvious" and the idiosyncratic characters which make this book can deliver the reader into great contrarian dialogue and classic Japanese never-effusive monologue.

Perhaps the greatest gift this writer has is to lead you to the cave, but never turn the light on for you. Many of the events are not completely explained. And, that is a good thing. Your imagination can build on the foundation of the book's narrative - a foundation of very impressive imagination. This is what this reader likes most about this writer in his numerous novels. The common denominator appears to be the writer's ability to step into the mysterious world of slumber. Among all the novels read by this reader from this author, this is the favorite.

Maybe I should be hard on this book because it was somewhat abstract and I finished it with questions I still wanted answered, but I just can't be. The fact is that I had too much fun taking the journey to be upset that I wasn't exactly sure where I'd been.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is just as strange as its title would suggest. It is the story of a young, unemployed, married man whose wife leaves him unexpectedly and mysteriously. His questions about her disappearance and his inability to get satisfactory answers lead him down a strange and surreal path that a man with more attachments might not take. Along the way he meets several people who act as his guides without ever disclosing to him the full meaning and purpose of his quest. He needs them and they - somehow - need him.

In the end, I think that Murakami strikes a perfect balance between providing just enough answers to your questions and leaving just enough to the imagination so that you can connect a lot of dots on your own and you really spend time thinking about the book when you aren't reading it and when you finish. I think that's the mark of a really good story.

I read this book two years ago and it is still with me. This is the only thing I have read by Murakami, and it blew me away. It is long, but never felt long. It has the epic scale of something Tolstoi or Dickins might have written, but with a Japanese flavor. The story is about one man losing his job, then his wife--she just never returns from work one day--and the lengths he goes to find her, and in doing so, what he finds in himself. To achieve this, though, Murakami covers all of modern Japan from before the Second World War to the present. He takes us through the real and the surreal, the public and the private, the political, religious, and social issues of modern Japan. He juggles (successfully) at least 10 major characters at once. While the main character, Toru Okada, is so familiar to Western readers that he might as well be an American, the backdrop against which he lives his life, as painted by Murakami, is uniquely Japanese. So I, as an American, could sympathise with the troubles of Mr. Okada, while at the same time learn much about recent Japanese history (who knew the Japanese fought the Soviets in Mongolia in the 1930's?). And Murakami deals with almost as many plot elements as he does major characters and all but two (the baseball bat and the story of the young boy watching the two men under the tree outside his bedroom window at night) come together flawlessly in the end. This was one of the best books I have read in years, which is especially gratifying since I bought it on impulse without knowing anything about the author. I would compare it to Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children in its attempt to encompass much of modern Japan (as Rushdie does with India) within a unifying narrative. And hats off to the translator for giving us a very readable book in English.

I bought this book with the hope of getting a little more insight into the Japanese mind after having read Yukio Mishima's "Patriotism." Mishima's story was astounding in its setting of the mood and mindset of a Japanese military man who had gotten involved in an action that had failed. It was terrifying in its descriptions of the sucide scene.
I have to say that the experience of reading Murakami's book was both rewarding and frustrating. The book is very engrossing (I kept turning the pages) as it keeps promising to reveal something of worth but then it fails to keep the promise. I got the feeling that Murakami has found a formula for writing books (sex, mysticism, ESP, unresolved personal relationships, etc) by means of which he can grab a lot of readers. For what he had to say, the book could have been half as long and I thought that the business of flowing through walls was pretty silly (I'm an engineer which may explain my problem with the book.) The ESP-like episodes were a little easier to take. I think that leaving it up to the reader to decide what the "alien" thing is inside people is a cop-out. It may be, however, that the telephone and internet sex generation will assume that the sex in this book fits right in to their notions of normality.
The author is gifted in his ability to describe the relationships between people. I wish he had stayed with the relationship between Toru Okada and his wife, Kumiko. In the end, he seemed to have made Kumiko into a half-dozen people which may have been his intent but it was unsatisfying to me.
I was also left wondering if Murakami's modern Japan is so unlike the Japan that Mishima wrote about. If the names were changed and the type of food eaten were not mentioned, one would think he was in America most of the time. Is this just his formula for widening the readership of his work or does it truly reflect modern Japan?
My final comment is that he does not really do much for the Japanese in terms of bringing them to understand the crimes committed against Asia - the atrocities he mentions are relatively minor and committed by both the Russians and the Japanese.

Wind Up Bird is wild, astonishing, undisciplined and brilliant. Murakami, who once managed a jazz club, has written the novelistic equivalent of a Dizzy Gillespie composition.

Toru Okada, a very average guy, quits his job as a paralegal. In short order, his cat disappears and his wife Kumiko walks out on him. Toru wanders between his Tokyo house, the yard of his teenage neighbor May and an abandoned manse with a haunted history. Out of Toru's circumscribed ramblings emerges a novel about fate, love, evil, individual responsibility and historical accountability.

Toru meets an old soldier who recounts atrocities he witnessed in Manchuria, Mongolia and Siberia during World War II. Like W.G. Sebald's Natural History of Destruction, Lieutenant Mamiya's story shows us the suffering of those who perpetrated imperialistic evil. Even though it's not central to Toru's predicament, Mamiya's story is told at great length and gruesome detail, as though Murakami is bearing witness to a horror most Japanese are more than willing to forget.

Then we have Malta and Creta Kano, two psychic sisters who invade Toru's mind and his erotic fantasies. Toru also throws in with Nutmeg and her son Cinnamon, two alternative healers. Kumiko's brother Noburu is a professor turned pundit turned politician who personifies an invasive, soul-destroying defilement. Unlike the specificity of the wartime atrocities, Noburu's evil is vague and formless, but it seems to drift over Toru and the other characters like a cloud of Sarin gas.

Although there are compelling set pieces in this novel (Boris the Manskinner, Creta Kano's psychic prostitution) the plot elements don't cohere. Several key story lines get dropped or peter out. In particular, why Kumiko left when she did, what went on between her and her brother, and the specific type of psychological breakdown it led to remain frustratingly vague. After asking us to take a 600 plus page journey, Murakami should provide a few more answers and a few less inchoate psychological descriptions.

Murakami is chasing down something important here, which is the necessity of standing up to evil and the powerful social forces that make it difficult to do so. These social forces permeate individual minds and break down ego strength. Each main character struggles to find the inner resources they need to surmount shame (a much stronger emotion in Japanese culture than western cultures) and to take their proper place in the world. I'd give Wind Up Bird five stars for ambition and three for execution; it's too loose, too long and ultimately too vague in describing its characters' responses to defilement. There's certainly enough brilliance sprinkled throughout to make it worth reading, but be prepared to forgo catharsis.

a confession: I do not know much (anything) about Japanese literature and I cannot speak japanese. The Wind-Up Burd Chronicle was apparently much longer in the original Japanese version, and I wish the entire thing had been translated.

After several pages of this novel, I wondered why I was reading it. I was not engaged and it seemed like the heavy book, paperback though it was, might fall from my hands. But then something happened: I entered Mr. Murakami's world and had a hard time comimg back out. It is difficult (impossible) to categorize this novel. Murakami can write about simple events in an intoxicating way. It is too earthbound to be a fantasy, and yet it is a fantastic, surreal journey. Some of the scenes in Mongolia during the war were among the best historical writing I have ever read. And there are some very powerful erotic passages also. Try fantasy, science fiction, mystery, add irony, add water and shake well. There is also something very musical about the Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Read it and you will probably agree with me. It is very powerful and evocative work and I regretted that it came to an end. Maybe I should learn Japanese...

When I was 12, Madeleine L'Engle's fantasy, "A Wrinkle in Time," effected me in a way no other book did - bridging the gap between childhood stories and grown-up novels. Like "A Wrinkle in Time" the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a fantastic tale in which a certain amount of the story occurs in places that are not of this world. We are given to suspect that some of these places might be in the protagonist's mind, or, they might not be. Set in Tokyo, this is the story of a young married man named Toru Okada whose cat and wife both disappear (under different circumstances). The reader follows Toru as he searches for them both (as well as his search for "self"), and in the process encounters oddly "re"named mystics, an endearing if somewhat depressed teenage neighbor girl, an old war veteran with horrible memories from Japan's engagements in Manchuria, and a megalomaniacal brother-in-law (by far the scariest character in anything I've read in a long time). The tale gripped me and was a great read. Murakami does fantastic things with both the physical and psychological details and has a way of drawing in the reader to feel (s)he is in Toru's head.

Haruki Murakami writes an excellent book. Often his plots are cleverly twisted, incorporating allegory, social-commentary and political satire: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is no exception to the rule. This convoluted, Kafkaesque epic is perhaps one of the best novels Murakami has ever written. It is a metaphysical portrait of a man searching for identity in a time of social and political crisis: war, sexuality, an election, a man-skinner and a missing cat are the fiery ingredients that make this book so intriguing. Ultimately, Murakami offers a truly unique experience that challenges the reader both intellectually and emotionally: it's a one of a kind novel.
The plot revolves around the humble Toru Okada, a mild-mannered man whose wife is becoming more distant from him every day. The book opens when he receives an explicit phone call from a woman that seems to know a lot about him... also, his cat has disappeared. These two events (especially the phone call) act as catalysts for Toru to embark on a spiritual, metaphysical journey of self-discovery (I'll concede that that sounds a little cliched) that finds him in the middle of a dangerous political situation. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is an exciting, challenging novel that keeps the reader in suspense right to the very end.
Murakami writes extremely fluently and his words translate to English seamlessly with the help of translator Jay Rubin. His writing is subtly humorous, allegorical, yet uncomplicated. It is the culmination of his many literary devices that makes The Wind Up Bird Chronicle such a masterwork. Ultimately, this is a novel that delivers a rollicking story and a challenging text: quite a rare find these days, in the almost infinite supply of novels that makes finding a truly excellent book so hard to locate. Brilliant work Mr. Murakami.
(For further Murakami DEFINITELY read "A Wild Sheep Chase" as well as "Norwegian Wood")

With over 200 the store reviews, and much critical material available on the web (see [...] for example) it is difficult to say something about Murakami that hasn't been better said elsewhere.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, like all Murakami's books, is very absorbing, flows like a long, complicated dream, a good mystery or science fiction novel. The fact that the world inhabited by Murakami's characters is, like the characters themselves, somewhat peculiar adds to the interest.

The World War Two scenes are very vivid, almost cinematic. Murakami himself says they are fictitious and imaginative, but based on research.

The plot, while intriguing, doesn't make much sense and isn't resolved very well. The fact that the English translation leaves out large chunks of the Japanese original may account for part of the problem, but plot, so far as I can tell, is not a big issue for Japanese writers in general. And Murakami, in spite of his familiarity with and use of Western culture, is very Japanese.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in great modern literature.

I can literally count on one hand the number of novels I haven't been able to finish, and while The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle isn't one of them, it's radiantly clear to me now, after the fact, that it should have been.

This book is about as interesting as tupperware. As interesting, actually, as a comparison to the interestingness of tupperware.

Look, there are fiction writers able to conduct prose with a spare style and language and still be every bit as technical, scintillating, and artful as their peers that do not; Murakami is not one of these writers. In fact, he appears to be largely devoid of talent itself, and very nearly as empty of insights—or at least of the ability to manifest them in his work.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is exactly what many readers will assume it is before they even reach page fifty: a waste of time. I saw the thing through to make sure that was the case, that I wasn't being unfair. But it's transparent by the end, if not well before, that Murakami had no idea what he was doing with the plot, what emotional or psychological extractions he could really, tangibly make from what he had written, was writing. The non-personality of the protagonist, Toru Okada, is never redeemed in any way despite Murakami's attempts to wrestle with it; the many isolated chapters taking place (in epistolary, monologue and other forms) from the P.O.V's of secondary characters really add nothing to the core story other than dress it up through a gesture of meek vanity to appear more complicated and worthwhile than it is. Not only that—not only are the connections it draws obvious and surface, but the novel spends its last breaths explicitly drawing these out on the reader's behalf, the author apparently not confident in an audience doubtlessly consisting of people mostly much smarter than he is, so that the reader in the end barely even has a mystery to hold onto that would at least tempt them to spend a further five minutes of their life paying attention to the book, which betrays the fact that it isn't worth such attention from the beginning. (And by the way, the blurb on the back of the book is incredibly misleading: the most intriguing element it describes doesn't even appear in earnest until the last hundred pages, and in a manner hardly worth the anticipation.)

In other words, Reader, when you're still more or less fresh into the story and questioning if this book will be worth it: it won't.

Murakami is only endearing in the way that a relative's or friend-mostly-by-proximity's thoroughly unimpressive but nonetheless committed doodlings are; you compliment them because you don't have anything against them, of course, or their exercising their ingenuity or creative muscle in some way, and because you have no fear whatsoever that the world will be inflicted by the dissemination of their "art". Except, Murakami's has disseminated, and there are ostensibly enough people out there with crushed soda crackers in place of brain matter that will be interested in this, too interested, despite the fact that the rest of the population consists of people who could do a better job, have a better dry run at art generally than Murakami does specifically.

No, it won't be worth it. There is no "it".

Nevertheless, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go read Norwegian Wood. If almost anyone can do better than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, as I say, then there's a chance Murakami can too, and has already. By how much, I'm not sure. (And I'm not holding my breath.)

the best book i have read in a long, long time... i read "the elephant vanishes" a few years ago, and adored it, but never picked up anything else by mr murakami. for some reason, when i heard that this one was a hefty 600 pages, i ran out and bought it... and basically inhaled it. exactly what i wanted to read... complex, but very straightforward too... when i read the stories in "the elephant vanishes", i felt like i was reading the thoughts of the smartest 5 year old in the world... "the wind-up bird chronicle" gave me the same sort of feeling, but in a more expanded sort of way... not a page of the book seems to be wasted... he has thoroughly explained an incredibly complex worldview in a very, very clear way... it seems like he must have drawn many charts and graphs before actually beginning writing... he has done with this novel what it seems like peter greenaway would like to be doing with film (and mr murakami isn't a bastard! [i am guessing]) yes... like mr greenaway's "the falls", but NICE. in conclusion, I LIKE THIS BOOK... I AM MAKING MANY PEOPLE READ IT... bye

I've read all of Murakami's works available in English and this his best work ever--which is saying something as he is a truly gifted writer who possesses a vivid imagination, a unique, compelling writing style who delivers consistently first rate fiction on a regular basis.
At heart this is a book about the societal schizophrenia that characterizes modern day Japan-a country that revels in it's ancient history and heritage but cannot admit or cope with it's 20th century history and shame, that basks in economic success and power while enduring political decay and corruption, that is obsessed with its racial homogeneity while steadfastly denying the attendant alienation and anomie that is engendered by the forces of conformity and sublimation of personality the obsession creates.
Murakami's genius is his ability to express and convey this reality through, on the one hand, the most ordinary and mundane protagonists imaginable and allegorical illusions derived from the most mundane of surroundings. In this case the former is Toru Okada, the sort of fellow who perpetually seems to be involved in the contemplation of his existence while, say, cooking spaghetti.
Toru doesn't get around much even though he's trying to find his lost wife, his lost cat-basically, his lost life. He nevertheless does get around enough to meet an unusual cast of characters, each of whom represents an aspect of Japanese society-whether it be disaffect war veterans, alienated teenagers or powerful-and powerfully corrupt-politicians. In fact most of Toru's travels are to and through so-called alley, blocked at both ends, That serves as a microcosm of Japan itself and is littered with other ordinary allegorical detritus--the statue of a bird looking sadly unable to fly, and the unidentified wind-up bird that creaks invisibly in a nearby tree, the a dry well Toru spends so much time meditating in, a house abandoned because of a series of tragedies and so on.
This may not sound like it adds up to much of a story, but, in fact, it's a cauldron of stories-a mystery, a surrealistic fable, a deadpan comedy, a military history, and a love story-all of which work on their own and all of which blend into the whole.
This is not an easy book to read-yet it's impossible to put down. What more can you ask of a novel but thoughtful literary entrapment? You get it here in droves.

You can find the plot and characters detailed in many other reviews, so let me cut to the experience of reading the book. Toru Okada, like the reader, waits for information to come to him, whether it's a titillating phone call, clues about his wife's disappearance, or insight at the bottom of a well. We scramble to make connections, to go deeper, to see the pattern, and are constantly distracted by new incidents and ideas. Many have noted that Okada is a passive character, but that makes us connect to him since we are reading. Like him, we are most active in our dreams or in that netherworld where we're not really sure if we're acting or imagining. The book is most alive at the psychic level, which encourages this faith that if we can make the deep connections, if we can find psychic wholeness, that we'll do the important work of combating the evil represented by the telegenic politician, Noboru Wataya. I have no idea why so many readers feel the book is unresolved - there's a violent climax in which the narrator takes heroic action and returns to the world with a stronger self. What more can one ask of a story?
While I was reading the book, I felt myself splitting in two - there was the reader moving quickly through the prose, reacting viscerally to the shocks and jolts of the narrative, and a deeper self, struck as by a tuning fork, waiting for revelation. Okada goes beneath the surface of the mysterious world of war, consumer goods, and music to the place where he finally sees the true face of his enemy, confronts his fear of the flashing knife, endures real wounds from psychic battle, and is healed by unseen tears. I emerged from the well of the book with a similar sense of hope and integration. Some strands of narrative remained unwoven, some ideas seemed outside the provisional pattern I constructed, but that's the way it is in this life. I read many books more than once, finding richer webs of meaning each time. Murukami provides pleasure on so many levels - historical, musical, cultural, literary - that I trust him to be many steps ahead of my first reading of this masterwork. I've read his early novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, his recent South of the Border, East of the Sun, and his non-fiction examination of cults and culture, Underworld, but this novel was the most satisfying of all because of its breadth of vision and sheer ambition. It requires attention, but it rewards deep reading.

It's impossible for art to replicate "reality"- reality is too bizarre, too horrible, too chaotic and meaningless to contemplate, especially if we consider the 20th century. MY reality, where my dreams seem more real than the ordinary day (the ordinary day of the sunlight on the grass, the distant sound of a car,one's son leaving the toilet seat up, the smell of burning toast wafting in from a neighbour's house),whereas MY reality is vivid and repetitious, sometimes scarey, sometimes joyous, and always lurking just beneath the surface. In other words, I would believe, quite normal. The first person character in Mr Murakami's book, Mr Okada, through whose eyes we witness his epic journey which begins with his search for his missing cat, has some surreal experiences with a faceless man, down a well, with a baseball bat, in the dark, in the light, in the heat, as a listener to some horrible and vicious war experiences, as the subject of some explicit and detailed sexual experience, he seems almost a Don Quixote or Woody Allen type character, lost in a maelstrom of events, more acted upon than acting. Mr Murakami makes the ordinary extraordinary, or juxtaposes the ordinary with another ordinary but different event making a surreal situation of it. I didn't find the jumping from one thing to another thing a problem. I found his prose exciting, and funny, and possessing a delighful clarity. I still find the opening a laugh, but I can't explain why: " When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's THE THIEVING MAGPIE, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta." Maybe it's because everything SEEMS so right, the reader knows that that phone call is going to bring some sort of problem. And it does. Over 600 pages, it is a novel that explores at the one time the history of modern Japan, and the experiences of one modern man in it, where fear can quickly follow laughter, where life seems both a puzzle and a fascinating and exciting journey.

When reviewing a book, I have three criteria. First, what is the author's intention? You can't apply the same standards to say, a suspense potboiler that you would to a work of serious literary fiction. Second, how well did the author succeed, given his/her intentions? If a work presents itself as serious literature, I'm going to be a lot tougher on the writing than if it's a suspense book best enjoyed while waiting for my plane to take off. The third criterion, for me, is the most important and also the most subjective: how much did I enjoy reading the thing? What were my reactions along the way? How do I feel about the book after I've finished it?

Murakami's WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLES is a tough book to evaluate by two of these measures. I think that the author had in mind to make a statement about the nature of modern Japan, its dysfunctions, how they arose from the past, from repressed atrocities, how those even on the most intimate of terms can be complete strangers to each other...but honestly, I'm not sure if that's what he meant at all. How well did the author succeed, given his/her intentions? Who can say? As other reviewers here have commented, there are so many unanswered questions and unresolved relationships at the end of the novel that one wonders if Murakami knew his own intentions.

But third...how much did I enjoy reading the thing? A lot. I was entertained, engrossed, transported. If the ending felt a bit unsatisfying and unresolved, I was more than compensated by the richness of the journey. Sections of this book are so evocative, so affecting, that they provided enough rewards for this reader to make the trip a worthwhile one. WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLES held my attention as I read it and resonated in my head long after I closed its covers.

I'm not sure what to think of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. It's either a work of staggering genius or nothing more than smoke and mirrors. I am still pondering whether or not the novel has something to say and if its message is a coherent one. Do all the themes, symbols and metaphors make sense? Is this a novel pretending to be more profound than it truly is? Is it possible that its themes, symbols, and metaphors are empty facades; scattershot, incomplete and incoherent? Or am I just not a sophisticated enough reader to interpret them correctly?

I suppose you'll have to read the novel to decide for yourself.

What I can say is that the novel has a mesmerizing quality and that some aspects are positively riveting. There are a number of `stories within the story' that are told in The Wind Up Bird Chronicle that are very powerful. The story of the Japanese soldiers captured across enemy lines and the hardships they endure is almost as gripping as the tale told by Pilar in Hemmingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. My impression is that Murakami excels in the short story form, perhaps more so than he does as a novelist. The novel itself is strange and disjointed but I found myself compelled to keep reading and I was very much intrigued by the mysteries that Murakami alludes to in the novel. It has been a week or more since I finished reading Bird and I still find myself thinking of it from time to time, considering my own interpretations of this rather cryptic novel. This for me is a positive thing. I want literature to get inside my head and if nothing else, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle succeeds in this regard.

I can't help but feel, at least to some degree, that my enjoyment of the novel hinges on how insightful I found it to be. The obvious limitation here is that if I am not able to interpret the novel correctly, no matter how insightful it may be, I won't get as much out of it as I could.

In a nutshell, here's my impression of the novel's principle themes: To me this is a novel about the relationship between fate and responsibility. The Wind Up Bird represents fate and suggests that people have little control over their lives but if fate is truly guiding ones destiny, are people responsible for their own actions? The issue of responsibility is explored most effectively through the war stories in the novel. As a secondary theme this is a novel about the ugliness in the world that scars us and shapes who we are. The author refers to it as defilement. Most of the characters in the novel have been defiled in some way and seek to purge themselves of its influence.

But in terms of grasping the intent of the novel I find myself overwhelmed by so many concepts that I am unable to process them all. Sex as a form of rebirth is a theme used in the novel. Creta Kano somehow appears in Toru's bed naked with clean feet despite the fact that she was in the bottom of the dry well and her clothes are no where to be found. There is no logical explanation for this impossible feat because it is symbolic and doesn't need to conform to any natural laws. She is naked and clean because she is being reborn through sex with Toru. But while (I think) I have a handle on this concept there are too many others that boggle my mind.

Water is clearly important. As are the baseball bat and wells. What was the meaning of the boy's bizarre dream? I assume the boy is Cinnamon and that the beating heart he discovers relates to his murdered father but that's about as far as I can piece things together. What is the significance of the cat? What about the duck people? Wigs? The list goes on and on. There are just so many cryptic clues strewn about in this novel I am left to wonder if they are a hodgepodge of partially formed ideas or do they all come together and create a whole that I am only catching glimpses of? If anyone has greater insight into this novel than I seem to have, please leave a comment and let me know.

My inability to piece this novel together and make sense of it may be the author's fault for being too obscure or for not thinking everything through, or it may be simply that I lack the mental facilities to see what is apparent to others. But aside from my inability to solve the mystery of what this novel is trying to say, I feel it has shortcomings in other areas.

First of all, I didn't feel the connection between Toru and Kumico, his wife. Toru seems stalled by his own inertia and appears to have no friends and few family connections (aside from the collection of bizarre individuals he meets in the course of the novel) and has no apparent ambition. He seems content to wile away days alone ironing shirts, making pasta, listening to classical music, reading books, and swimming in the pool. There is no evidence of a great romance between husband and wife, even in the flashbacks to when they first met, and it seems that at best they are comfortably indifferent with one another. As a result, I was never really convinced that Toru would actually be as committed to reuniting with his wife as he was in the novel.

On a similar note, Toru's brother-in-law Noboru is intended (I assume) to represent evil. He is said to have been a powerful negative influence in Komiko's life and yet he seems disinterested in Komico and her life with Toru, so long as it doesn't interfere with his own pursuits. His only interest seems to be in protecting his political career when Toru becomes linked to the Hanging House. He is clearly an arrogant man with perverse sexual issues but his portrayal as the pinnacle of evil fell flat for me.

These two relationship issues are especially relevant since so much of the novel hinges on Toru trying to find and win back his wife and confronting his arch nemesis.

On an irrelevant side note I found it interesting that Murakami's portrayal of Japanese involvement in WWII and its invasion of neighboring countries, either intentionally or unintentionally, seems to trying to absolve, if not the Country, at least the rank and file soldiers, for any atrocities committed. For example, when the soldiers are ordered to kill the animals in the zoo they are very upset and are relieved when they are absolved from killing the elephants. The Chinese people on the other hand are represented by money-grubbing opportunists who will be disappointed not to have the opportunity to harvest the elephants for its meat and trophies.

The bottom line: It's a mixed review for me. At this point, I can only give it three and a half stars. Any novel that makes me think about it after I've read it is worth at least three stars and there are some parts of Wind Up Bird that will resonate with me forever. However, unless someone can help enlighten me so that I come to appreciate how everything in this novel fits together I can't give it more than 3 1/2 stars. At this point, I'm not convinced it all makes sense. I think the novel is filled with loose strands, ideas that the author had that never really come together coherently.

This is one of the best books of the 1990's. It is difficult to even begin to describe it. It is a portrait of post-WWII Japan, a confessional of a late 20th century Everyman, and an almost Hitchcockian (or Lynchian on his better days) wild and surreal ride through the unexplainable. After reading some of his other works, the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle does somehow start to make sense, but there are still plenty of powerful and strange moments.
I don't have much to add to the several excellent reviews here, but the narratives of the WWII veteran were, for me, the most disturbing and most profound parts of the book; Murakami essentially describes pure evil in unflinching detail. The surreal becomes very real in his descriptions of unbelievable violence and heartlessness. I also found the May Kasahara letters to be touching and funny, and somehow oddly central to whatever "meaning" the book has.
One reviewer mentioned that the book was originally published in three separate volumes, and that somehow it was abridged. I think this is unlikely; the paperback version clearly has three separate sections, and says nothing about it being an abridged version. I don't think Murakami ever attempts to resolve the mysterious and strange plot (many things in life have no answers, after all), and focused more on creating a mood and an overall theme of isolation and the surreal in modern life.
This will undoubtedly be a book I visit again and again. It's hard to say exactly what it's about, but somehow it becomes a peek into an odd and fascinating world, a world that lives inside all of us.

There aren't too many writers who can deal with metaphysical issues in fiction as deftly as Murakami can. A part of the reason is Murakami's style of narrative. His prose is more American than most modern American writers. Murakami is a self-professed admirer of Raymond Carver's laconic prose and he translated Carver's stories in Japan. He also has an affinity for American hard-boiled noir fiction, and the cool, ironic first-person narrative infused with laid back, unassumingly spare prose makes Murakami's stories strangely approachable.
But more immediately impressionable upon a reader is the sheer agility of his imagination and his fearless courage. Not only does Murakami tackle stories of high improbability, he succeeds with all the virtuosity in the world. In
"The Wind-Up...", there's a main story of Toru's quest to find his vanished wife, and surrounding the mysterious disappearance are labyrinthine subplots that traverse different eras and parallel worlds. Hats off to Murakami for making the stories somehow believable! There are surreal characters that appear and disappear in Toru's life, such as the prescient Kano sisters who operate through dreams, Nutmeg and her son Cinnamon who deal with the affluent women and help them with strange 'spiritual' ailments, Boris the Manskinner, etc etc...
The stories of these characters all have to do with a metaphysical search of some kind of 'truth' that is always apparent in Murakami's fiction. For instance, the well that Toru climbs down into serves as a portal that leads to a world where dreams and alternate personalities exist. Murakami does an eerie job of making the 'unreality' seem more real and pertinent than the actual world in the novel. It disconcerts the readers and makes us question the reality of the world that we take for granted.
It is true that Murakami leaves a lot of plot elements and questions tied up and unanswered, and a lot of characters disappear without a trace. But Murakami's project is not in dispensing solutions, but in calibrating our sights to see, or strain to see what happens at the fringes of reality. It's a testimony to Murakami's mastery that the horrors, lusts, sadness, and yearning in "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" are more palpable and immediate than in any other fiction I've read recently. The characters, especially May Kahasara, the teenage girl, come to life and stay in your memory long after reading. And for all his off-hand, disarming humor and narrative style, Murakami's metaphors cut to the heart with a frightening accuracy and have the power to invoke whatever world he wants to describe with unflinching emotional honesty.
"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" deals with Toru's loss of everything he had come to believe to be the founded and accepted fact of his life. Through his tale, and his quest to regain his life, the readers will come to realize that there's something much bigger at stake than an individual quest. It's of a nation crippled by the memories of its past(Japan), and for the identity of the mankind as well. A terribly ambitious project for Murakami, and he pulls it off with an aplomb. You'll come away from the reading of this book impressed, and more importantly, deeply moved.

Murakami, a baby bommer, is fast replacing Kawabata and Mishima as the voice of literary Japan to the English speaking world. There is much to say without abandoning them completely. Dream like and gritty by turns, the story line is a wisp, an almost invisible teasing thread, that the reader chases through textured passages devoted to the minutia of a loser's lethargy worthy of Sartre. The impossibly thin thread divides and passes into layers of clear modern experiences and charcol or pen and ink drawn characters. I found myself dreaming the images Murakami creates while asleep and then when awake and alone.

And, there is the language:

"She smiled now for the first time, which made her look more childlike than she seemed at first. She couldn't have been more than fiftenn or sixteen. With its slight curl, her upper lip pointed up at a strange angle. I seemed to hear a voice saying 'touch me" - the voice of the woman on the phone. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand."

"The clock on the shelf continued its dry rapping on the walls of time."

"So this was how secrets started, I thought to myself. People constructed them little by little."

"Trotting out the technical jargon was another forte of his. No one knew what it meant, of course, but he was able to present it in such a way that you knew it was your fault if you didn't get it."

"Nowhere has everything you need."

"The minute you leave your house all phones sound alike."

These quotes came from the first sixth of the book. You will want to underline others.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, is like waking out of a hazy dream. Your not sure what you are reading, why, or if you are really reading at all. It is the type of book that defies explanation, or at least simple explanation. It is in no way a simple book.

I will not bother retelling the entire story, Murakami does it better. It is a story about change though. Are we really who we think we are type change. The book has the ability to make you question yourself by telling the story of Toru, a man that is searching.

The book carries you all the way through to the end in this magnificent half dreaming/half waking state. Toru emulates this same state at several points in the book. The reader often will question if what he/she read was real or imaginary.

This is not my favorite Murakami book, which would be Norwegian Wood. But, the book is very good and stirring. Murakami has a writing style that doesn't suite all readers and some people detest every word he puts on the page. I would encourage picking up one of his books and finding out which person you may be. This book is not recommended for youngsters due to some graphic content.

I'm typically more of the McCarthy and Melville breed, but this is an amazing book. Murakami's delicate pace worked very well here. You are lulled into safety throughout the whole book, though there are many interesting events to keep the read compelling, and toward story's end the story is scary and thrilling and impossible to put down.

There are so many elements in this story that build toward the conclusion that you just have to sit back and let them rinse around your mind. The characters are vivid and charming. May Kasahara, the Japanese Lolita, may be the most interesting among them. The Japanese suburbs are turned into a haunted and magical melding of dimensions, and you go from the shopping centers of downtown Tokyo to freezing Mongolia and Manchuria, and the story is both funny and terrifying, and it reads so very quickly.

I've read several of Murakami's books, and while I loved each one, this is undoubtedly my favorite.

Although the conclusion is far from satisfactory, even frustrating, the experience of reading this book is worth it. Murakami, regardless of his minor flaws so far in these books (he sometimes bites off too much or forgets he bit) today in literature, not just japanese lit but all lit you'd be hardpressed to find a better writer. For that matter there are so many horrible writers being published these days that it's refreshing to see one so talented fearlessly attempt many things with his works. Murakami has an incredible sense of humor also-a remarkably dry wit that lets the reader breathe as uncanny things unfold. I don't care if the skinner passage overall relates or meshes poorly with the story because it was perhaps the first time something truly scared me. Who cares if this is similar in plot to dance dance dance or for that matter wild sheep chase? It's a GREAT plot, and written differently each time. Keep it up, haruki...

This book reads as if a loving but financially-motivated and slightly above-average offspring attempted to complete his father's opus after Murakami suffered a debilitating stroke. The book seems to be a series of dreams and short-stories, many of which are fascinating, that are nearly connected into a work of genius. However, Murakami was only able to drool out of his grotesquely-tilted head while his faceless impotent son attempted to fly a kite made out of golden-hued rabbit feces and mildewed pine straw. I hope that Murakami recovers and picks up the string somewhere before the last two lobotomized chapters.....

In THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE (Neijimaki-dori kuronikuru), the famed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami presents us with a most unusual series of events. His protagonist Toru Okada is a Tokyo paralegal who has recently quit his job and is mulling what to do next. His cat disappears, and then his wife as well, which brings Okada into contact with a bizarrely morbid teenage girl from down the street, a mystic and her former prostitute sister, and a veteran of World War II haunted by what he saw in the puppet state of Manchukuo and his subsequent imprisonment in a Siberian POW camp. Murakami slowly builds up to a showdown between Okada and his wife's brother Noburu Wataya, an antagonist rarely seen but whose threatening presence is felt throughout the novel. This conflict takes place mainly through a series of psychological journeys, something like but not quite the same as Arthur Schnitlzer's Freudian novel TRAUMNOVELLE.
While THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE is entertaining and reads smoothly in this translation by Jay Rubin, it does have a number of faults. The foremost is the novel's genre. The psychological journey has always been a difficult form to write convincingly, as everyone has a different view on workings of the mind and schools of psychology come into vogue and fall out of fashion regularly. As a result, the plot of this novel will seem unconvincing and unbelieving to most readers. The novel's second weakness is Murakami's sudden lack of interest in his protagonist around page 200. Although the entire novel is narrated by Toru Okada, after a while he stops being a fleshed-out character and begins just drily reporting facts.
A unfortunate aspect of this translation is that it is heavily abridged. The novel was originally published in three volumes, but in translating the novel into English, Jay Rubin abridged the novel into a single trade-paperback volume. As a result readers in English aren't really getting the same book that Murakami wrote, and who knows how many mysteries and unclear points of the novel would be resolved if only the entire novel were available.
In spite of several serious complaints, THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE does have many fine qualities. With Toru and his wife Kumiko, Murakami gives one of the most realistic portrayals of married life in contemporary fiction. His reflections, like those of the playwright Harold Pinter, on the ultimate unknowability of one's lifelong partner are fascinating. And while his protagonist is written imperfectly, characterisation is generally quite good in this novel. Murakami's antagonist Noburu Wataya is a marvelous creation. Despicable and menacing to an extreme, Wataya is nonetheless incredibly believable and even inspires fear in the reader. Finally, Murakami's dealing with the dark secrets of Japan's occupation of Manchuria shows another horrifying side of World War II.
While I'm not sure THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE will survive the test of time and be considered a piece of great literature, it is an entertaining and thought-provoking novel. Fans of contemporary fiction would do well to read it.

I read this book whilst travelling in Africa and I vividly remember me sitting late into the night under my mosquito net breathlessly chasing the protagonist ever further into his surrealist labyrinth. The unusual character of the setting - a European reading a book in Western Africa by a Japanese author - simply added to the powerful sense of disorientation. What sticks to my mind two years after reading this book is Murakami's uncanny ability to conjure up images of great physical power. His prose is suggestive to a degree that it literally spills over into the other senses: I cherish the memory of a number of strong aural, visual and tactile impulses related to various episodes in the book. The centrepiece, for me, is Lieutenant Mamiya's epic narrative of his war-time experiences in Manchuria and Mongolia: a dark metaphysical fable where beauty and death mingle in a deeply poignant way.
I have since read no other of Murakami's books. Glossing over some of their back covers I can't escape the impression that settings, moods and plots seem to vary only a little from book to book. I'd rather stick to the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, then. It'll give me re-reading pleasure for the years to come.

Murakami certainly offers an interesting premise and he strung me along to the end of this chronicle, but once again I find myself asking what it is all about? Is it just some post-Modern exercise or is Murakami asking us to re-examine the past and how it shapes the present in ways we can only perceive in the dark?

There are a number of existential questions raised in this compelling novel, but I wonder about the "love story." Whatever passion Mr. Okada may have felt for Kumiko seemed muted, and serves as little more than a hook in this quixotic tale that seems to draw far and wide about missing cats, comely clairvoyants and a menacing brother-in-law, leading Toru to literally search deeper and deeper inside himself for answers. What follows is a fascinating range of stories that juxtapose the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, before and during WWII, with events in Tokyo, between 1984-85.

In a way, Toru finds himself in a similar situation as Bennett Marco in The Manchurian Candidate, haunted by stories and dreams that propel him to stop the political rise of his brother-in-law, and restore balance both in his personal life and the broader society. However, Murakami is careful not to make too overarching a story. He explores the concept of evil, in its most nefarious forms, and how Toru comes to terms with it. In this sense, it reminded me a lot of Stephen King's Dead Zone as Toru digs deeper into his "dark zone," to see what evil lurks behind it.

Murakami creates suspense, but this is more an existential journey than it is a traditional mystery, even if he employs crime noir elements and the steady voice of a Raymond Chandler detective in sorting through the odd trail of clues to Toru has to decipher. The operatic motifs are fun, as Murakami draws on both The Thieving Magpie and The Magic Flute in this story, and there are many allusions for the curious reader to connect, but ultimately The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle struck me a shaggy dog story. When all is said and done there isn't much to it and Toru is pretty much left where he started.

I don't know if having more chronicles, as one reviewer noted, would help. It may have filled out the characters more, as one wonders what happened to Malta and Creta Kano, but I don't think it would have shed anymore light on the story.

I've read a few Murakami books, but it seems to me that he gets the best combination of a recognizable everyday life hinting at the mystical in his longer short stories. I'd once read Murakami's 20-page short story "The Wind Up Bird and Tuesday's Women" from The Elephant Vanishes. At the time, I thought that story wandered into an environment it was barely interested in exploring, and after reading the all 600+ pages of Wind Up Bird Chronicles, beyond just well-explored, I feel properly brain scrambled from returning out of the well of Murakami's strange ideas. To me, Wind Up Bird Chronicle is the most arresting of Murakami's novels that I've read, but that's only barely a compliment. The enduring best quality the book has is its ability to try and figure out its secrets - its strange mystical sidetrips and characters who show up to fill 20-30 pages with their unique stories. You truthfully never know where the book is leading you. At 600 pages, there's much that's sensory overkill, and many people on here have plenty of theories for the strange, strange directions the book wanders to. For me, I see a story of one man, disillusioned by his life, recreating order and finding meaning, observing with curious trepidation along the way. It's more than that, of course, but as a storyline, I truly felt the need to let it play out, even if that "playing out" wound up taking me around 6 months to wander through before I finally saw the other side.

Wow. Even if you've read everything Murakami ever wrote, you can't pass on this one because it is at once everything in his past books as well a a totally new experience. Though the book may seem intimating, Murakami's genius lies in his accessiblity and universal themes despite the Joycean range of motifs, writing styles and avantguard literary techniques. I think a fair parallel can be made to Joyce's work on many different levels. Much the way Ulysses brought together many earlier details from Portrait of an Artist, Stephen Hero, Exiles and The Dead, so too does Murakami pull all the threads together from earlier works. I read this book in one LONG sitting because I was totally riveted. It's the kind of book that makes you want to go back and reread all his earlier works to shed light on those as well. If I'm not mistaken, the early short story collection The Elephant Vanishes provides the opening for Wind-Up. Don't miss this -- he will become your favorite author!

Imagine a book containing historic fiction, erotica, mystery, suspense, romance, fast-paced, mind-bending and literary. You add those together and you get The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Not only does the author fit the many genres into the story, but he does it very, very well and without force.

This is one of those books you try to savor and read in small sips. I have the soft cover and it's all ripped up and stained from hanging out in the backpack and coffee shops. It had to go everywhere just in case I had a minute or two to read on.

The vocabulary alone kept me entertained. It was so fresh and rich and very original, no cliches at all. In terms of vocabulary, this is a great example of what one can do, and this is saying A LOT. Many writers get stuck in overly used language and never understand why they don't expand the world they are trying to create. But Murakami, to me, seems to be the measure of what can do with words and simple language.

The many streams of story-line and characters will be an all-you-can-eat buffet for University English course study. Yet this book is written in such a simplistic fashion that any level of reading comprehension can walk away very happy after reading this book.

Every person I tell to read this book usually calls me back after a few chapters and thanks me. Yes, it's one of those books you drop in your friend's hands and rush them off to the cash register at the book store; or you ship them a copy.

Toru Okada has been married for 6 years when his wife Yokimura asks him to find her lost cat. Soon after he begins to look for the cat, his wife also mysteriously disappears. In looking for both, he encounters such strange characters as Malta Kano, a lady in a red vinyl hat, Creta Kano, her prostitute daughter, May Kasahara, the girl in the alley, and Lietuenant Mamiya, the former Japanese soldier who delivers a box and remains to tell a gruesome war story. Mr. Okada decides to ponder his state of affairs deep within a well on the abandoned property near his house and the story proceeds from there.
As in other Japanese fiction, THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE is a novel of complex ideas told in simple sentences. This story of epic proportion has multiple elements that make reading a pleasure...including mystery, puzzling characters, friendship, history, symbolism, brutality, revenge, spirituality, and a sense of justice. It can be read at many levels, interpreted many ways, or enjoyed for being simply a story of two different world which intersect at different points in time. The driving force behind the novel is the search for how seemingly unrelated occurences will later converge. Compelling the reader to move forward at an ever increasing rate of speed, the plot will not release its grip until the very last sentence. Then it only does so with a warm feeling of friendship and a hope that good will always prevail over evil.

Loved this book. First book in a while that has intrigued me to the point I can't stop thinking about it. The story is really well written, the characters are all extremely complex, and the historical portions are fascinating. It's a truly dreamlike story and I will never forget it.

This book haunted me all the while I was reading it. I would go and hide and read it, frequently when I was supposed to be doing something else. The basic plot involves a twenty-something unemployed middle-class japanese man whose wife apparently leaves him unexpectedly. Ultimately, plot becomes irrelevant, although the mystery of her disappeareance is a powerful thread that runs through the tapestry of the rest of the novel. This is a wild book. Steeped in mysticism, spirituality, and the ghosts of recent Japanese history. Every character has a doppelganger of sorts, and reflects certain aspects of the other character's soul. There are disturbingly erotic passages, and some very graphic violence, although never gratuitous. Unfortunatley, the truth of the past century is graphic, and the author dosen't pull any punches. The book obviously contains many references to the various religious movements of the past century in Japan, including Shinto. After reading it I wish: a) I could speak and read Japanese; and b) that I knew more about Shinto and how it led to Japan's military agression in WWII. However, I think I know a lot more about the Japan and this topic than I did before I read the novel. This is a world-class piece of literature, and as such imparts as much in the manner of its telling as in the content. As a result, reading a translation has some limitations for the reader, and I would love to read this gem in Japanese. This is one of the best books I have ever read. The only English author I can compare it to is Pynchon, especially Gravity's Rainbow. The book is much, much better than Gravity's Rainbow, even in translation. The book ultimatley is a love story, and one that is life-affirming despite the protagonist's, and the reader's, fascinating and painful journey though the pages of the book.

I become more and more convinced of Murakami's strange worldview with every book. More than anything, I find him to be a master of creating a dreamlike atmosphere, where the strangest things become familiar, and sometimes crawling to the bottom of a well is the only thing that makes sense. Again, I am reminded of Neil Gaimen's comic "The Sandman," where average people encounter the surreal and magical with acceptance and without shock, when the mood is just right, the moon is in the sky and the cats know all of the secrets of the world.
"The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" is an excellent novel. It is not captivating or demanding or any aggressive adjective. It is complicatedly simple in theme and wording, eluding to an ocean of depth under the calm surface. Pain and joy are told in the same objective manner, from the point of view of a silent observer. Japan's aggression in WWII, marital fidelity, ..., love, nature...all of these hard subjects are exhumed, examined, and reflected upon in silent self-examination.
This is not a book of resolutions, of tied-up plots and answers. Like most things mysterious, it is all the better for the final veil never being lifted.

Don't believe all those pretentious "I got there first" beard stroking types who will try to tell you this isn't Murakami's best work. This is possibly the most gorgeous, engrossing, touching and inspiring novel I have ever read, it manages to combine all of the best elements of his previous works into a great throbbing consciouness expanding masterpiece. The subtle beauty of Norwegian Wood, the deranged storytelling of a Wild Sheep Chase and the stark simplicity of the good bits out of Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World are all here adding up to something unique and magical. Added to all this is a central character who not only has a name for once but who is also a truly appealing individual who simply oozes sincerity and integrity throughout. In its own way I believe that this book can stand up against the likes of Thomas Pynchon at his best and where Gravity's Rainbow left me exhausted and depressed at my own feeble ambitions, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle left me elated and inspired. Surely there can be no greater recommendation?

Spent the better part of a year reading this book, then putting it down for months, then reading some more. Despite its surrealism, it was very easy to immerse myself in the story, and pick up right where I left off

His writing is hard to describe, mesmerizing to read, metaphysical, funny. It's not easy to distill what it all means in the end, but the telling is gripping . . . sort of like life itself.

Here's a favorite passage:

"Anyway, it seems to me that the way most people go on living (I suppose there are a few exceptions), they think that the world of life (or whatever) is this place where everything is (or is supposed to be) basically logical and consistent.... It's like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you've got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can't tell what's going on under the cover. Maybe the instant rice pudding first turns into macaroni gratin in the darkness when nobody's looking and only then turns back into rice pudding. We think it's natural to get rice pudding after we put rice pudding mix in the microwave and the bell rings, but to me that's just a presumption. I would be kind of relieved if, every once in a while, after you put rice pudding mix in the microwave and it rang and you opened the top, you got macaroni gratin."

****************************
If you, too, are the kind of person who might be relieved at such a turn of events, try this book; you'll like it.

In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami deftly juggles the disintegration of a Japanese couples' marriage, Japan's modern wartime history, and a cast of characters that defies conventional description. His writing is entrancing, with a dreamlike pace that underlies the ominous sense of foreboding that fills every page, its mysteries will keep you reading well into the wee hours of the night, curious to find out what lurks on the next page.

It begins with Toru Okada, a recently unemployed Japanese lawyer who, at his wife's urging, goes off in search of their missing cat and winds up finding (and losing) much more.

Throughout his search, Mr.Okada encounters a number of unusual characters including a young girl, psychics, a prostitute, a war veteran and a politician. Each of these characters bear many scars (psychological or otherwise) and they all play a part in forcing Mr. Okada to deal with questions regarding his relationship with his wife, reality and his country's wartime history. Readers with delicate sensibilities and stomachs are warned, there are very graphic depictions of sex and violence throughout.

At times I was reminded of Alice in Wonderland, where the pursuit of an animal opens a Pandora's Box of unforeseen events, some of which may or may not have to do with the protagonists' loss of sanity.

There's a lot going on here and Murakami masterfully keeps it from becoming a tangled mess. Questions of love, sex, fate, loss and isolation are a constant in what can be seen as a comment on modern Japanese society.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an engaging, thought-provoking and mysterious read from a remarkable imagination, I highly recommend this book.

This book was one of the weirdest and finest books I have read. The experiences were a surreal convoluted epic that I wish hadn't ended. The story starts off simply enough about Mr. Okada losing his cat, then his wife, and then finally his own mind. In a bizarre fashion all of the odd characters and situations that Okada finds himself in are all related in some way which is eventually summed together at the end.
What was most fascinating is the elements of Buddhism, the search for nothingness to really get in touch with one's consciousness. Okada finds the strength and ability to achieve `emptiness' at the bottom of a dark well. In the well, the author puts us in touch with the most bizarre adventures in Okada's consciousness.
This is the first time I have read a book by a Japanese author. Just as each culture has their own unique style of writing (the Russians with their incredibly complex characters) this Japanese author had a wonderful surreal simplicity to the writing that made you want to never put the book down. I highly recommend the book - it is incredibly easy to read, but so complex in thought. I have every intention of reading more of Murakami!

Wow. Just...wow. I finished this novel about 10 minutes ago and I'm only now able to put it down and enter the real world again. This is one of the best novels, if not THE best, I have ever had the pleasure to read. Many people here say it, and they are all right: Murakami is a genius. Everything about this work was perfect or near perfect. It has amazing insights into the problems of existance that are as profound as any philosophical text, yet it doesn't (as so many so-called Postmodern novels do) sacrafice plot to do this. Rather, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle has, quite possibly, the best plot in any contemporary novel. No one except a psychic schizophrenic could predict what will happen next. And yet is all fits together beautifully. It reads as a literary representaion of the chaotic order of current philosophical thought. Amazing, amazing book. I haven't encountered an author who shocked me this much since Nabokov and Lolita. I know I'm rambling right now, but I can't help it. READ THIS BOOK. It will change every perspective you have on life. I know it did mine.

Argument: here’s a book everyone should be reading.

Reason: It blew my mind.
The novel explores the world of A 30 year old man, wandering aimlessly through his life in Japan. While the protagonist certainly has a strong personality, he’s directionless, and we watch as he encounters stranger and stranger mysteries, starting with disappearance of his cat and, eventually, the disappearance of his wife.
Wind-Up Bird is gripping even when it’s being quiet and contemplative. When action or horror or mystery kicks in, it’s compelling and thought-provoking. Murakami writes with elegance and ease, and the translation is also a pleasure to read.

One of Murakamis best. Rereading it for the third time, one becomes aware of more and more. The whole thing feels like a wonderful dream. I sometimes wonder what I am missing not growing up in Japan and knowing the symbolism of cats and wells, but it works even for a westerner.

Being the first Murakami book I have read, this story caught me in mid breath. It is not so much a novel, as a comprehensive, passionate account of everything that I have missed from the world. Everything that has slipped by un - noticed
Murakami engages in the beauty of simplistic prose from the start to the finish, and yet forced me to discover something under every stone, every street corner that I dared to ignore.
I was enthralled and disturbed by this Neo - PI detective story, and at the same time fascinated by his seemingly effortless ability to instill in me the gut wrenching empathy for Toru Okada that followed me to the end of the book.
This book sets the stage lights on loneliness, deceit, and a profound, wondrous imagination that blows everything else I
have ever read out of the water.

the store.com has not yet given the option of rating with half stars, or I would have given this 4.5. This is not a perfect work of fiction, but part, if not most of its charm lies in its imperfection. The only real disappointment is the lack of grace in some of the translation, but that hardly detracts from the beauty of this book.
WUBC is based on a short story from Murakami's collection "An Elephant Vanishes" (also recommended), which becomes the first chapter of this novel, but works very well on its own. In this story a man in present time Japan wakes up to find his wife has left him, with only a vague note of explanation. Prior to WUBC's publication in English, another chapter was published in The New Yorker, about WWII China (Japan is invading Mongolia, I believe), in which a Chinese man falls into a well (yes, "well" as in a deep hole where you get water) and has a somewhat mystical experience. Somewhere along the way, sympathy is found between individuals of the two cultures.
These stories don't sound like the same book, do they? Well, like many of today's postmodern novels, WUBC is a collage of many different stories which lead the reader to a more profound and universal conclusion. This, along with many ambiguously mystical (hence magical realism) experiences - the majority of which occur in wells, with the charmingly reserved and eccentric would-be detective who is the story's main character, and the (mainly) Japanese setting described beautifully from the point of view of this man to whom almost anyone can relate, makes the length of this novel well worth your time.
The writing in this is not genius, but it is a translation. The stories are simply and perfectly told. The novel as a whole is effective if effective means heart wrenching and dear, leaving that longing feeling which makes you sad that it has ended, as if an old friend had disappeared without a trace. I would read this book again, and again. I recommend that anyone with or without the slightest interest in Japanese and Chinese present and past, and/or the slightest bit of the jaded romantic in their hearts do the same.

I finished reading the Wind-Ip Bird Chronicle about two months ago. I didn't write a review at that time mainly because I hadn't decided if this one was an excellent or just very good novel. Since then, occasionaly I have surprised myself remembering some of the characters (specially May Kasahara and Creta Kanoo)and thinking about the plot. From that very subjective point of view I would say this novel is an excellent one.
Murakami has written an extrordinary complex story full of quite strange, although credible, charcters. Many stories (and maybe too many) are linked, either clearly or subtly. Symbols are used frecuently and paranormal experiences are assumed as facts. Combinig all these produces a reading that is difficult to stop despite the many pages of the book.
I'll definitively read other novels by Murakami.

Murakami takes us into a slightly skewed mirror image of the real world - familiar, yet vaguely disturbing. What begins as a tale of an unemployed husband, a lost cat and a dissatisfied wife transports the reader to the most unexpected places. Murakami projects emotions onto inanimate objects in order to take us deeper into the psyche of Toru Okada, the bemused protagonist.

One word of warning. There is a scene in this book which is so gory, stomach-turning and disturbing (in the Lieutenant Mamiya chapter) that the reader might find it difficult to a) keep his lunch down, b) sleep for a week, or c) both. Honestly, I wish I had never read this particular scene - I don't feel that ever horrible detail was absolutely essential to the story.

That said, it is a testament to the vivid realism of Murakami's storytelling that I couldn't sleep after reading the war story. His powers of description and observation are astounding.

The Windup Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on the Beach by Haruki Murakami
Life, meaning basically the human mind, is messy business. There are whole schools of thought built around the idea that as soon as you figure something out be ready for a seismic shift to reduce you again to confusion. Marriage is an excellent example. It has its ups and downs, like traveling across rolling terrain. You are neither simply along for the ride, nor can you have everything your way, and even constantly striving to keep things mutual and fair just helps keep you in the same vehicle together, making the jarring potholes and unexpected detours a more mutual experience. You never really know what's around the next bend. You can only commit to trying to make the best of it and keep flexible to minimize the damage.
In fact most life happens when we aren't looking, in the background, out of site, in the unconscious mind - which is why culture matters. It provides a reference, a shared view, a windshield we look out of together during this journey, a travelogue pointing out the meaning of sites and land formations.
And so comes my enjoyment of the writing of Haruki Murakami, "The Windup Bird Chronicle," which I'm about halfway through, and "Kafka on the Beach" which I read earlier. Having recently plunged through several works of non-fiction, my heart immediately lifted as I started "Windup" on my IPod, recalling the vistas that "Kafka" had opened.
Much of what I enjoy about Murakami is his own fascination with exotic vistas, intermingled with the ordinary, an effective antidote to provincial, modern certainties. Mine anyway. A dull way to explain this is to say he draws on prescientific sources. Primitive is a more appealing term as long as it is understood to refer to the high culture of early peoples. He draws, by my understanding, on Japanese folk thinking, pre-modern beliefs in spirits and supernatural forces. It's a mundane modern tale - a recently unemployed man struggling to cope with an excess of time and choices - in which unexplained things start to happen. The tale thus plumbs a highly developed, but to us unfamiliar world view, broadens our appreciation of a common human culture - improving the visibility through our windscreen and so easing our journey.
On top of this there is a stubborn sweetness to his characters, his damaged heroes that I find comforting. In "Kafka," a major character who introduces himself aptly as "not very bright" nevertheless recruits helpers and disciples, helped at times by the famous Japanese deference to the aged. In "Windup" a WWII veteran shattered by his experiences in Mongolia waits apparently to perform some similarly simple yet cosmic task. While each serves as subplot, events hinge on their stories of individual suffering and survival.
This mixture of real and supernatural will be familiar to fans of magical realism by such authors as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie who seem to have in common a deep regional culture being overrun by the international - i.e. largely American - one. (Just a theory that pops in my head. In any case, I find their tales invigorating). Mourning the passing of simpler times, I believe Americans themselves are in the same boat - or should I say car - and can also use the perspective offered. More than John Irving meets Dr. Who, personally I find the genre an antidote for my own too rational approach to things. Just as my wife is more sensible, if less logical, than her 4th generation engineer husband, and thus I find her company fulfilling, so we Americans can benefit from a little culture outside our own habits of thought.

Having no idea about the book or the author when it was recommended to me, I forever since have feared phone calls when cooking pasta. And from this first scene in the book, I had a sense things would never be the same. Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" bends but never breaks the concept of reality, and is a true celebration of imagination and risk-taking in fiction. Deftly aided by Jay Rubin's English translation from the original Japanese, I recommend this book to any lover of the genre. By creating a main character that is 'no one special,' Murakami allows the other more eccentric characters a chance to shine. Drop whatever you're doing and dive head-long into "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle."

After 2/3rds of the way to the end of this far too long book I could not listen for another minute to the toxic voice of several of the characters. It was not worth the additional time to get to the why of this story. Early on I found the story intriguing in the areas of Tokyo that were familiar to me as it could have been well written IF you were reading vs. listening to the audible version.

That's what this book is - an enigma. Don't get me wrong, I love the puzzling realm it takes you to, with some bizarre characters, whom you never really get to know. The disappearance of the cat and then Kumiko just add to it's mysterious qualities and maintains your interest. Once Murakami reels you in, (which is almost immediately)you're in for the long haul. But don't expect loose ends to be tied and all to be explained. This is something you must do for yourself. Days after you've finished reading it, some things will make sense while others will seem more odd than the first time. For example, I started thinking about the heart that was buried in the night by the tree. Was this Cinnamon's Dad's heart? If so, doesn't really tell me much. Toru, the leading character does change from an observer to someone who is willing to fight for what he wants. The stories told by Lieutenant Mamiya are graphic and disturbing, but well told.

All said and done, I love the tale Murakami weaves. Just don't expect a nice neat package with everything in its place. I think it's this quality that attracts me to it. I agree with the majority of reviewers - definitely a love/hate relationship with this work. You will keep coming back for more though. Trust me.

Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was most certainly an interesting read, bit unfortunately left its readers with a great number of unanswered questions. I'm the type of person who likes things answered instead of having to assume the reasons. I understand that this may be Murakami's style though.
Because of questions unanswered and having to rely on your own in depth thought to form opinions on this and that, I could definitely see this book as being one which gets reread multiple times in an attempt to build deeper understanding along the way

I'm SO disappointed by this book and in more ways than I can probably express. Like so many of the other 1 star reviewers, I had such high expectations for this book. AND THE WAY that this book was recommended, along all the other books by Haruki Murakami, I felt I just had to check them out. I was really excited to find that there were so many well reviewed books from an author that I'd never heard of. I thought I had an untapped resource for reading material that would last for quite some time.

"Wind-Up Bird..." was spoken of so highly that it had to be at the front of the line, but now that it's done:

* I'm disappointed that the story had no plot.

* I'm disappointed that I didn't like it.

* I'm disappointed that I actually finished it.

* And I'm MOST disappointed in ADAM SAVAGE!

Yes, Adam Savage of the TV show "Mythbusters."

I found out about this book solely though the podcast "Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project" #11 - Summer Reading List - 9/4/2012.

In the podcast, Adam is listing all the great books that his co-host should be reading and begins talking about his favorite authors and favorite books. He spoke about a lot that I'd heard of and a lot that I've read, but the he begins to talk about Haruki Murakami. I'd never heard of Haruki Marakami.

He lists all of his great books and then goes so far as to say that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is "Earth shatteringly great." A few seconds later, he says, "Find me someone who doesn't like Wind-Up Bird Chronicle."

You can scoff at me for basing my reading list on Adam Savage, but that was enough for me. I started "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" the next day.

I had no idea what to expect and without knowing anything about Marakami's style and was really excited.

The beginning was interesting and certainly different that books I'd read before. As the story unfolds, so many bizarre things happen to the book's characters that I couldn't wait to find how the author could pull everything together. And with the length of the book, it was obvious that there would be plenty of time to build the suspense and then explain everything and bring it all to a great ending.

Unfortunately, that never happens. Things just happen to the characters and the author seems to have just decided to tell you about them.

While quite a bit of the book is very interesting and well written, those parts just dead-end and you're left wondering why those sections were introduced.

If you like your books to have a beginning, middle and an end... characters are introduced, things happen, things are explained and then there is a conclusion... then STAY AWAY from this book.

One of the 5 star reviewers says the publisher forced Murakami and the translator to heavily abridge the story and that's why characters disappear from the book (and I'd say the plot and meaning must have disappeared too). But this book was already so long that I can't imagine this book being 15 to 20% longer. If the author and translator had no choice but to edit the story into what it is now, maybe they should have written it off as not suitable for the US market. As I look back on it, I can think of SO MANY MORE sections that could have been edited out to allow what was left to make sense. There are so many things that just happened and had no bearing on the plot and just introduced unexplained events.

Maybe this book WAS ruined in the editing and the translation. If a US TV show like "Seinfeld" was translated into Japanese and then edited down to 12 minutes, it could be ruined. If the only thing Newman ever did was walk into a scene and say, "Kon'nichiwa, JERRY," then leave, no one would think that made any sense either.

If I ever do read another Murakami book and hate that one too, at least it won't be Adam Savage's fault. I'll have to blame that on me.

To borrow from Adam Savage and The Mythbusters:

"MYTH: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a great book... BUSTED!!!"

I am glad I read this & extra glad I finished it.

There will be a point while reading this when you think "WHAT does this have to do with anything?" Just go along for the ride through the imagery. Parts have stuck with me & come to mind long after finishing the book.

This is the first book i've read by Murakami. I was in the bookshop when its strange cover beckoned me. i didn't feel like reading anything too heavy and the thickness of the book made me a little reluctant. but i bought it anyway and i don't regret it. On the surface, everything seems simple. the plot seems simple, the lives of the characters seem simple. but as you read further into the book, you can't help but get totally absorbed. this book really made me think about things...life, its meanings, japan.... such bizarre, surreal concepts arise from such a simple plot. even though the book is fairly thick, i wished it was thicker. i didn't want to put the book down, and when i finished, i wish i still had a chapter more to go. brilliant brilliant brilliant! go buy this book now!

This novel reminds me of a powerful hybrid between the great 19th century modernist novels and the paranoid genius tradition of Pynchon and DeLillo. The 600+ pages fly by as the the reader gets wrapped up in an ever tighter and more peculiar web of history, conscience, search, loneliness and love for the lost as well as pity for the many victims of cultural malaise.
Set in Japan it easily transcends geography and nationality and becomes a sort of diary of an everyman who is both, entirely common and extremely at odds with his surroundings who become more inexplicable the deeper he looks for answers to seemingly mundane questions. Definitely in the grand tradition of magical realism but not as overtly verbose! Hardly a sentence seems profound enough to quote but read in its entirety it is moving and devastating and kept me turning the pages way past a reasonable bedtime.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of the best books I have ever read. After reading Norwegian Wood, and having piqued my interest into what kind of a writer Murakami is: like no other writer I have ever read before. He is a dose of smooth jazz, a good drink on a bad day, an adventurous afternoon while stepping out from work, a fashion designers dream, falling down into a well only to be tormented and then saved by the neighborhood darling, a trek across the frozen tundra only to be killed in the most violent way possible, a satire of the most annoying cloying tv commentator you can think of, your most creative fantasy turned nightmare; all in one. Absolutely positively amazing. Sure, one can try to pin the tail on the donkey and say the book is about sin and evil and coming to grips with what happens when we confront or are faced with evil or badness and how does life turn out when it simply doesn't turn out. In the end, I personally don't think one can sum this book up. It just isn't possible. I'll bet Murakami can, and he's about the only one. Well worth the read.

I could stay in the world this book creates forever. Only once before have I had such a total response to a book. The writing, the theme, the character development, THE COVER DESIGN, the design of the section breaks, even the design of the last page with notes on the print type! I was stunned! Only Kathrine Dunn's "Geek Love" has had this effect on me.
Being a fan of Kenzaburo Oe led me to buy this book to sample more Japanese literature. Given these two authors, I am almost ready to elevate Japan to the status of Ireland in the literary world!
Whenever I put down the book, I would just stare at the cover art and think about the emotions that the section brought out in me. Kudos to Murakami and Rubin and to the designer of the book.

I guess the thing I loved most was the voice he uses to describe events. As if he's undergoing an out of body experience. He is incredibly simple yet insightful into Kumikos feelings and leads the reader on varying journeys that correlate in mystical ways. He uses his third eye to write and these stories I believe are his experiences with the universe.

What an eerily strange tale! It starts off simple enough, but before you know it, you are completely absorbed into a surreal situation where you don't know what is going on around you. But, to give credit to this talented writer, you simply don't care! You accept the absurdity, the trippy-ness, the lack of reason with complete abandon. This is not easy to do. The writing style is absolutely beautiful... the descriptions, at times lush, at others, creepy as hell!!! There is one scene that actually made me want to cover my eyes it was so gruesome -- and I'm not easily shocked! I would definitely recommend this, but only to those who are ready to surrender themselves to an alternate universe. Not for the skittish!

My second time reading this as this is my most favorite book by Haruki. I love how Haruki narrates such surreal stories in a way it sounds so plausible. Also my favorite chapter: the skin-slicing torture scene, the level of detail truly delivers the physical sensation (not that I like torturing). This scene vividly remains in my memory for 15 years.

I deducted a star from this amazing book for its being almost completely indicipherable...almost. It's ironic that the main character, Toru Okada, is always looking for "concrete" facts when his whole life seems less than real. Often falling asleep and meditating in dreams during the other times, Okada is hardly a reliable narrator. Still, this narrative technique is central to the telling of this very symbolic tale of a "disintegrating" marriage with strange paranormal ramifications.
To me, this book is a harsh, penetrating observation into the issues of abortion, war, and the fraility but value of life. But then again, who really knows? Despite the fact that the story is too vague to draw conclusions, "the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is top notch work from a high-caliber literary genius.

Haruki Murakami has always been a favorite author of mine, and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is a perfect culmination of every element of his work. He includes mystery, love, sex, politics, history, intrigue, philosophy, and more in this novel to make it a book that is nearly impossible to describe.

As Toru Okada finds himself searching for his missing cat, and soon, his missing wife, Kumiko, the reader is taken on Toru's personal journey by meeting several characters during the search. The lustful and intriguing Kano sisters, the subconsciously insightful Nutmeg and Cinnamon Akasaka, and the evil Noboru Wataya all shift the direction of Toru Okada's life in such a way that the reader finds her/himself also on this journey determined by outside forces. Through all of this though, Toru maintains his goal of finding his wife, and the delightful conclusions to this tale leave the reader questioning every aspect of her or his own life.

Just as Murakami's characters each experience the influence of a certain "something" in this novel, the reader is able to relate to a certain "something" in each of the characters. For some reason, Murakami is able to draw in his reader by using, quite possibly, the most obscure noun possible: something. It's not a frustrating ambiguity, but a helpful one. I loved it.

The common theme of defiling also forces the reader to question external forces that are unwelcome in our lives. This book manages to be philosophical without being obnoxious or trying too hard.

Also, May Kasahara. In my eyes, a perfect character, perfectly written with every flaw out in the open. I looked forward to the sections involving her.

I have a difficult time describing this book and every aspect of it, so all I can say is read it and judge for yourself. You'll be missing out on an amazing piece of work if you decide otherwise.

Engrossing, complex, and thoroughly rewarding book which I finished, as it happens, about an hour ago. Things don't interweave together as clearly, smoothly, or admirably as they do in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (the only other Murakami novel I've read at this point), and this was something of a disappointment to me, but it makes up for it in the sheer massiveness of its narrative, juxtapositions, mind-boggling parallels, etc. It's like a giant, fascinating, literary puzzle, and although the picture the puzzle ultimately forms isn't especially clear, that doesn't mean it wasn't a lot of fun to spend time with. Thought-provoking, epic, and though certainly not flawless, very much worthwhile.

I was never disinterested reading Wind-Up, and was happily wrapped up in my journey with the wonderful characters Murakami crafted. I was thrilled to find out how the multiple story-threads, symbols, and seeming inevitable clashes linked up but then...they kind of didn't.

It feels like there is a portion of the end of this book missing - and I understand a few chapters did not make it to English from the original Japanese. It's worth the read, for sure, but it suffers from a bit of the Lost factor by the end.

This is the first Japanese book I read in a long time. Ealier reading of Japanese novels gave me the impression that they are morbidly introspective and takes themselves and all the characters in their writing too seriously. I am yet to see an average Joe character who some times utter stupid things or makes a fool of himself. All characters, yes even teenagers, are philosophers who want to utter seemingly profound things for small talk. This got on my nerves and I put a stop to my acquainance with Japanese literature. Then came this Murakami book and its glowing reviews and I gave it a try.

Yes, this book is also populated solely by profound characters. They just live for doling out their existentialist wisdom and to peer deeper and deeper into their own and others minds and reveal to us what they see. Yet, this book is filled with a strange sense of freedom of imagination and quirky incidents that interests and some times captivates us. Its story is not important;one chap wakes up to find his wife missing and in his seach for her meets a bunch of quirky characters. The tone of narration varies from film noirish to detective novelistic to boy lost in the woodsish to supernaturalistic. It is never linear simple story telling and you feel a sense of wonder at the ability of the writer to put all this together and still make us keep interested and not laugh at him. For the sheer narrative originality this book is a must read and it is a remainder that even insignificant theme in the hands of a gifted writer can be made very very interesing and entertaining.

I am a Murakami fan and found this novel got off to an interesting start. The writing has a strange, dream-like quality that draws you in both by its simplicity and its quirkiness. Unfortunately, I found it to be like one of those recurring dreams that you don't understand and cannot wake up from. I found it hard to keep track of the characters at times and I also succumbed to boredom. I got so frustrated I even googled it to find out what happens in the end! No such luck! All I want to know is what happened to the damn cat!

I've read most of Murakami's books and I can't escape the feeling he's some sort of reincarnated Zen master standing behind me with a stick and head full of koans. Murakami plays; he recycles characters, has kinky relationships and likes the just-a-bit-lost-ordinary-guy type of male leads. I'm not sure how many times he'll keep trying to enlighten his readers (I hope for a few more novels at least) before he gets bored and probably just lives out in the country listening to jazz and cooking (oh, did I mention he has a theme of jazz and fine cooking in the books?).
Like Calvino, what you take away from the novel is what you have inside. Some literature is more like a mirror than a force-feeding of ideas. Let your patterns go and enjoy the pleasure of turning the pages over for the first time...

So much has been said about this book, much of which has been covered. For me, it is simply one of the most incredible books I've ever read. Reading it was nothing short of what I imagine the experience would be to share a dream with a stranger. Recognisable and mundane objects, interactions and events are made unreal, the past is thrown over the present with the weight a thick wet duvet, and each deep and true emotion is treated like an entire universe unto itself -- a place that can be traversed, explored, built upon or ripped apart by powerful cosmic forces. To call it magical is condescending. To call it metaphysical implies a kind of New Age pretention. To harp on the mechanics of the fragmented plot is to pit it against lesser works of fiction. It's as soft and waif-like in it's execution as it is dense and pressing in its subject matter. An unforgettable book from my favourite author.

Upon completion of this novel, I was furious. I felt as though I had been ripped off or worse, (and at the risk of sounding melodramatic...) as though someone I cared deeply for had wounded me. I branded Murakami a dilettante and moved on. However, this brash indictment didn't stick for long.

A great many people really hate this book, and an equal number adore it. I'm somewhere in the middle, closer to those who loved it then not. I enjoyed the book while reading it in spite of its occasionally tedious nature. There's a lot of dream/reality convergence, magically real oddities, and detailed historical factoids, and one has no idea what is actually occurring for quite some time. Murakami's writing is nonetheless powerful and I found myself caring deeply about a number of the characters despite the lack of in depth exposition or revelation that is so common with other novelists. It works to his advantage here, I think, as the writing is quite cinematic in scope and brings to mind a number of arthouse films that are decidedly more atmospheric than plot-based. There is an undeniable, inherent poeticism in the words that I found rather poignant, even in the context of the narrator performing simple and mundane activities, perhaps even more so in these moments.

I was unsatisfied and disappointed in bits of the ending, not because things weren't wrapped up in a neat bow (frankly, I don't see how he could have endeavored to do so without completely destroying the world he had created, and generally speaking, I'm not a fan of narratives that favor this neatly conclusive approach), but as a result of what I felt were some hastily attended to narrative points. He spends so much time establishing various elements of an incredibly complex narrative, and in such great, at times painstaking (for him, not on my end, mind you) depth, and I felt the resolution could have been tended to with the same care and detail. It felt a bit rushed, frankly. I should mention that this sentiment of mine may very well be a result of portions of the novel being omitted from American reproductions/translations.

That being said, this is an absurdly ambitious novel and I think Murakami is successful for the most part. The blending of surrealism, magical realism, and Japanese history, the switches in perspective (the point of view shifts from that of the narrator to letters sent to him from a supporting "cast" member to stories told to him by other supporting players), the noirish elements... it's all there and it's all good stuff.

I need to read more of his work before my opinion of him is cemented, but I am eager to do so, which is perhaps a sign of the positive effect his writing has had on me thus far. All in all, I'd recommend The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but perhaps not without a brief preface regarding my "issues" with it.

An excellent read. As the Bird unwinds, the seemingly mundane, becomes unusual and provocative when the ever evolving events in the life of a 'normal' man searching for a new self lead him head-on into a confrontation with the parallel world of an evil that feeds the atrocities of mankind. For those who question Man's continued course of conflict and abuse, the book forces us not only to examine these questions but what each of our roles may be in this process either as protagonist or victim. Many of the modern Japanese authors of this century are in constant exploration of the search for self, and Murakami Haruki dares to take this search into a world beyond consciousness.

Strange things start happening to Toru Okada, an unemployed, passive man in his early thirties living in suburban Japan. First, his cat disappears, then he starts receiving anonymous phone calls of an erotic tone from a woman claiming to know him. Eventually, his wife vanishes as well. As this unfolds, he starts meeting very unusual characters: May, a sixteen year old girl, Lieutenant Mamiya, an elderly officer in the Japanese-Russian skirmishes in Mongolia, Malta and Creta Kano, two sisters who are some sort of seers or mediums. I loved the three previous books I have read of Murakami (Norwegian Wood, Sputnik my love and South of the Border, West of the Sun) but I found this very long book (900 pages!) disappointing. The first three hundred pages are very exciting, but the remaining 600 pages are more and more confusing and increasingly a drag to read.

It is rare when a book echos the culture of a time and space so eloquently. Although I did not like his other works all that much, I found this lacking the forced quasi-coolness I was annoyed with in such works as "A Wild Sheep Chase." If a Zenlike Freud lay down Japan on his old yellowing couch, this book is the response... For some the wackiness is off-putting, but one should realize the richness of Murakami's storyline. Symbolic representations of symoblic figures throw some into confusion - but if you push through the confusion a coherence starts to develop and you are pulled into his strange world- it all starts to make sense (and your not sure why?!). The thwarted passions and obsessive mindset of modern Japan is laid out in ballet, barfight, brothel of a work... must read.

This was my first introduction to the author and it seemed suiting, once I got into the novel, that I read it while alone, away from my partner over the span of a brief vacation alone. For the right person in the right context, this could be a very life changing novel to which you could relate.

I enjoyed the level of mystery or puzzle included in the book, and the nicely balanced bits of history, and the author's voice-- my only beef is that I truly wanted to know more in the end, however, it seems like such a reality simply wouldn't exist and its ending is in balance with the kind of mystery and similarities to real human life this novel conveys.

Sometimes in life, you simply won't have all the information, and you'll never really know. Our minds do the best with what we have. If there were one message from the book overall, I believe that would be it.

We can all marvel at the sheer creativity Marakami wields in this book. But be warned, all ye fans of straightforward fiction.
Sure, it's fun to read. The main character is a kind of average-joe underacheiver whose life is thrown into a kind of cartoon-choas. But like free jazz, the virtuoso solos lead nowhere but confusion and . . .
In the end, unanswered questions abound. We never really figure out what the sinister "tendency" is that overcomes the main character's wife and turns his life upside down.
It's got something to do with sex and human brutality - but the plot is never resolved so we have little more than a sketch of a bizarre and twisted tale of modern Japan and the lingering legacy of WWII.
I'd recommend this book to those interested in modern Japan and to fans of literary art who might dig deeper into the book's symbolism.

It's not hard to find novels these days that deal with personal ennui, national guilt, dreams, the supernatural etc. What struck me about this is the awesomely bizarre way in which all of these forces reinforce and interact with each other here. On the one hand you get moments of an almost suffocatingly sensible domestic life, and on the other hand, bits of hallucinatory violence and surreal-ish occurrences, though the juxtaposition between them kind of breaks down by the end (which might or might not be the point). I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I've never read any Japanese fiction before, and while that did not prevent me from immensely enjoying it, I can't help but think that I really don't have the proper background to fully appreciate it. The end of the first section though, damn, has to be one of the most harrowing, emotionally draining things I've ever come across in fiction

This book has been on my shelf for a long time since I know I can only read Murakami in small doses, and this was the biggest dose of them all. When I finally decided to tackle it, I found myself to be as frustrated as fascinated, but in the long run, enthralled by the sensuous images and juxtaposition of humor, history, apology and rage. Murakami uses the natural world more effectively here than in other works. His metaphor involving jellyfish is particularly haunting and memorable. It will be a while before I pick him up again, but I know that despite the challenges put forth, the rewards are ultimately gratifying.

Odd how I only feel the need to review things that I want to rant about. Oh well:

I picked up "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" in a used bookstore and thought I'd give it a try, since I had heard so many good things about it and Murakami in general. For the first few hundred pages, things kept getting stranger and stranger for Toru Okada (The protagonist), and new characters would introduce themselves, relaying mysterious, prophetic messages and whatnot...All this was fine, as it was all part of the surrealistic feeling of the novel, but like many, I felt like at the end of the novel, very little was resolved. Murakami leaves so many dangling, unfinished ends, and that's frustrating, because I felt entitled to something more conclusive after 600 pages. Maybe it was the translation; I've heard rumors that the English version has omitted things from the story.

Besides the feeling of incompleteness, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" was so very tedious. I couldn't stand to read about Mr. Okada squabbling about his spaghetti and classical music and his feelings and thoughts about every little detail in his world for pages and pages. Plus, the narration of other characters--Nutmeg, Lieutenant Mamiya, Creta Kano, etc... at times were also long-winded and annoying. I just wanted them to get on with it! Perhaps all the tedium, detail, and description had some deeper meaning, but I never found it.

Lastly, I couldn't find myself caring or rooting for any of the characters. Toru was too passive about certain events, and everytime a character retold a story, it seemed too automatic and perfunctory. They would *say* or imply from their speech that some event in their past had really impacted them emotionally, but I just never got the feeling that they meant it (Sorry for the generalizations, but I don't want to spoil anything). Again, it just reads better in Japanese

Like I said, Murakami did a good job with the surrealism and dreamlike state in this book, and if that's your thing, then go for it. Personally, as I kept reading, I found myself getting more bored and exasperated.

The Windup Bird Chronicle is a complicated, entertaining novel that is not for the casual reader. First of all, it is over 600 pages long but, more importantly, the devices employed by the author create a world where distinctions between physical reality and a spiritual reality, or the world of the unseen, are blurred. This intentional blurring is created by taking someone from the regular, physical world [protagonist Toru Okada] and involving him in a slowly-revealing and bizarre set of circumstances that gradually draw him into that other world. The characters and events that take Okada on this journey are not simply bizarre without meaning, but begin to take on added significance, particularly in the novel's final 150 pages.
On the surface, Windup Bird is a bizarre mystery, and really more like a mystery within a mystery within a mystery as each character encountered by Okada appears at first to have something to hide. They are all extremely interesting and there is almost an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to the bizarreness that Toru encounters [this makes me wonder what Hard-boiled Wonderland must be like].
I don't want to give away too much, but I am a rather finicky reader and enjoyed the book thoroughly, even if it did get somewhat laborsome from pages 150-450. In the end, the novel is an investigation of how well one individual can ever claim to know another and the potency of belief, reality, and investigation. Of course, all of these claims are metaphorical, in my view, so you may find something completely different. I believe this is one of those love/hate books -- you either love it, or think it's all nonsense.
I would love to give it 4.5 because it is complex and sometimes really makes the reader work, but 4 seems a little shallow for something I really loved. I do plan on reading more Murakami. We read this in a graduate literature class and the reception was mixed. I should also mention that the book has a lot of very humorous occurrences/interactions and I found a lot of it to be quite funny, although the overall effect is serious. I recommend it for the serious reader. It is challenging, but I believe worth it.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of the most imaginative and strange books I've ever read. The story is set in modern-day Tokyo, and it contains historical references to the Japanese-Russian conflict in outer Mongolia during WWII, but there all connection with reality ends. The book's characters are unusual people to say the least. Almost all of them seem to be blessed with various other-worldly powers. Viewed in one way, the book is a 600+ page collection of their histories, and it is as a storyteller that Murakami excels --- his descriptions are vivid, imaginative, and quite captivating.
But what is the book about? I'm not really sure. Perhaps it is about self-reliance and responsibility. The moral is not as important to Murakami as the stories themselves, and the images and people of this book will probably stay with me for some time. Give this one a try if you're in the mood for a mind-bending read.

Haruki Murakami is a genius with a pen and fantastic imagination. WIND UP BIRD CHRONICLES is one of the most unique fiction ever written by Murakami. Murakami's central character, TORU, is a middle-class guy who is in between jobs. He is surviving on his wife's salary and spends his afternoon looking for a lost cat, cooking spaghetti and avoiding phone sex. After making through the first 50 pages, I realized that CHRONICLES is much more than Toru having a bad day. The novel describes the subconsciouness of modern Japanese mentality, which is evident from the surreal dreams that haunt Toru throughout the novel.

Chronicles is a proof that Murakami has a very personal, yet objective prospective on the Japanese routine life and gives the reader a plenty to absorb and chew on. The novel is filled with classic Freudian defense mechanisms and cultural psychology for the modern Japanese society.

Creta Kano is one of my favorite characters in the novel. She is simply what Murakami would most identify with as she is above just making the wrong choices and being in the wrong place at the worng time. She's objective, intelligent and outrageously brave.

Nobel Prize winning author Kenzaburo Oe is one of the few contemporary Japanese authors whose writing does what I believe Japanese literature -- strike that -- whose writing does what I believe all literature should do: that is, it should expose our fears and force us to confront them. Like a shamanistic bloodletting, literature should mercifully, but without mercy, cut deep into our consciousness in an effort to reveal and release, exorcise, the things in life that have come to possess us---our loves, our hates, our envies, our disdains; and afterwards, when the demons are either gone or have regained control, after the blood stops flowing and the wound hardens into a gnawing, itchy scab, it, literature, then forever stays with us and occasionally reminds us of that which we have, if not overcome, then at least managed to suffer through, as the thickened scar forever reminds the wary survivor.

Yes, I expect much from literature.

Oe's writing affects me as literature should. Though it has been many years since I have read his novels The Silent Cry: A Novel and A Personal Matter, they both are still with me, haunting me.

While I have read far too few Japanese authors, it is impossible for me not to compare the writing of those authors whom I have read against Oe's, since his is such a powerful force in my literary life.

It's difficult, maybe impossible, to compare the writing of authors of different literary genres and subgenres. How does one effectively size up an Oe novel against a Basho haiku against a Miyazawa fairy tale?

Acknowledging such difficulties, I know we still like our "best of" lists so here is a somewhat rankish list of those few Japanese authors whom I have read, ordered based on the subjective impact their writings have left on me, on how deeply they cut into my consciousness, on how thick the scar they leave behind.

Kenzaburo Oe
Yukio Mishima
Matsuo Basho
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Soseki Natsume
Yasunari Kawabata
Kenji Miyazawa
Haruki Murakami
Banana Yoshimoto

I love poetry and I consider myself a poet, but as a reader I am drawn mostly to the novel. So it's no surprise to me that the list consists of those authors known primarily for their novels. Most of the authors are dead, but the three who are still with us bookend the list: Oe on top and Yoshimoto and Murakami at the bottom.

Though his name is listed next to last on the list -- which doesn't necessarily mean his writing is bad (although I do believe Yoshimoto is properly placed at the bottom as she is a less than good writer, especially when compared to Oe) -- when discussing contemporary Japanese novelists, the first on the list to be discussed, even before Oe, at least in terms of international popularity and readership, is Haruki Murikami.

These days, Murakami's work dominates Japan's literary scene, and much of the international one, as well. From what I've learned about his work ethic his is a completely earned and deserved domination -- when working on a novel he rises at 4:00am, writes for five to six hours, runs 10 kilometers, and is in bed by 9:00 pm; he rigidly sticks to this herculean writing process and daily routine until the novel is complete.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is my first Murakami novel. In addition to the short story Town of Cats, it is the only work of his I have read.

I like THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE. I think it deserves to be as widely read as it has been. It is an intriguingly complex story with many layers, possessing much of what I like most about Japanese writing, and which, fortunately for me, is what most of what the Japanese writing that I have read is about: the sense of loneliness and despondency in the face of an ever more changing and complex world.

But it seems THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE is a bit too complex an effort with too many layers for Murakami to effectively manage.

The protagonist of the story, our non-hero, is Toru Okada, a still young but nearing middle age out of work lawyer. He is out of work by his own choosing, apparently because he has become disenchanted with his line of employment and his place in life. First he loses his cat, then his wife. During his quest for both, he finds and develops a relationship with a flirty teenager, with two sisters (one a prostitute of the mind whom he encounters in both his real and dreamed worlds, the other a prostitute of the flesh), a rich widow and her mute but spiritually communicative son, and a World War II veteran with a fantastically horrific yet achingly beautiful story to tell. To manage his downwardly spiraling and dangerously out-of-control and confusing life, Toru takes refuge within a deep well, which seems to be some sort of all consuming event horizon between his reality and his dreams.

Yeah, it's as wild and mesmerizing and frustrating (often not in a good way) ride of a novel as it sounds.

My two biggest criticisms of Murakami's novel are that it is too contrived and too insecure.

I know much of the story is fantastical and captured within a dream state, but it doesn't feel natural. No matter how bizarre and far out crazy weird a story is it should still feel natural, as if that is exactly how life is meant to be. Some of my favorite novels are captured firmly within these realms; particularly Franz Kafka's The Castle and The Trail.

We know that Murakami was greatly influenced by Kafka. So much so he entitles of one of his books Kafka on the Shore. But no matter how fantastical and surreal Kafka gets, his writing feels natural within those unnatural realms. Murakami's does not. His feels choppy, forced, and, as I said before, contrived.

I also get impatient with Murakami's lack of trust in us, the readers. This lack of trust may mean he is somewhat insecure in his own writing ability. He explains things too much. He leads us throughout the story with too much detail and suggestions as to the meaning behind what it is he wishes for us to learn from his words. Unlike Kafka who takes us blindfolded onto his bizarre journeys, abandones us deep within the remote wilderness of his unfinished tales, and leaves us to our own devices to find our way back to safety, Murakami has no such confidence in either us, himself, or both.

Maybe it's overly descriptive because unconsciously he understood that the story was too ambitious and unmanageable for him to successfully convey.

Regardless what my criticisms are, THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE is an immense success. As testimony to its international appeal, an "interdisciplinary theatre production" based upon the novel premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival. Its trailer looks amazing and captures the essence and weirdness of the story.

In the end, Murakami's THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE does not do for me what Oe's THE SILENT CRY or A PERSONAL MATTER does. While it is surreal and sometimes dark and creepy in a soulful and insightful way that I mostly enjoyed, it has no staying power. If there has been any cutting from it, it has been bloodless and superficial. Ten years from now, I foresee the novel leaving no haunting or even memorable scars on my consciousness.

This review originally appeared at bojiki.com

"Hatred is like a dark shadow. Not even the person it falls upon know where it comes from, in most cases." - Wind Up Bird Chronicles
This book is full of dreams, images, and weak, twisted characters who spend their life haunted by single, brief episodes. The images and symbols in this book alone are enough to make it amazing: the story is full of sounds and smells, and of course the list of incomprehensible symbols is lengthy. Like many great authors, namely John Irving, Murakami loves recycling characters and themes, the most obvious in this case being Toru, the main character of this novel who is nearly identical to the main character of Norweigan Wood, also named Toru. Both of these characters are mildly weak men, weak to the forces around them, including almost all of the women they ever meet. One thing Murakami's books are not about is Japan: his stories and symbols could occur anywhere. Of course there are themes and traits in the characters that are mirrored in Japanese culture: isolation, shyness, and withdrawing from society, and suicide. But don't read this as a guide to modern Japanese culture.

This is a highly accomplished book by Murakami, a kind of grown up version of Wild Sheep Chase. The off the wall humour has gone but in its place we have some fine character development and an excellent edge on contemporary sex and politics. Its still vintage Murakami though with larger than life villains, girls with sexy ears, some nice culinary touches and the inevitable view of the shopwindows in downtown Tokyo. Woven into the story is a revealing cameo of the Japanese occupation of Manchukuo and the aftermath of the defeat.
Jay Rubin's translation is pretty good although one or two bizarre grammar errors seem to have escaped someone's eye and I noted too some problems with the adjective derived from the word Malta. However, for all that, it is quite a tour de force almost ranking with Hard Boiled Wonderland.

I first came across this book (and this author, for that matter) when I happened to see a news article last May about the long awaited book that he was about to release and the subsequent line ups of people waiting to buy the book all over Japan. The new book hasn't been scheduled for an English translation yet. However, after a little investigation, I found out a lot more about Haruki Murakami. His story is an inspirational one and he is only new to me apparently. His books have been hugely popular with both critics and readers alike all over the world. He is especially popular with U.S. critics, including the New York Times. So all of that intrigued me to look into him a little further.

The first novel that I read was The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. This fantastic story intertwines a complicated story line with a strong connection to the surreal and the spiritual. It picks up on the protagonist, Toru Okada, standing in his kitchen making spaghetti when the phone rings. When he picks it up it is a woman who he has never met before and she seems to know who he is and other odd facts about his life and his wife. She suddenly cuts the connection. When she calls back a little later, she boldly asks to come and see him at his home. He reluctantly agrees to this, even though he really thinks that it would be wiser not to.

His style is unfamiliar and yet absorbing at the same time. I believe that it may turn some people off, however it is unique and it works beautifully in the unwinding of his story of love, betrayal, and redemption. This story reads like a thriller, a mystery, and a literary classic all rolled into one. But don't take my word for it, see it in action for yourself.

So Toru carries on with his fairly boring day (and boring life...) until the time comes around for his unknown visitor to show up. From here, we are launched into a fast paced mystery that moves fast enough to keep you turning the pages, yet slow enough to allay the beauty of it all.

It starts with a hunt for his wife's missing cat. He has disappeared and while he is at home doing nothing after quitting his job that he hated, so he is the one to search the neighborhood for the cat. As he does so, he meets the girl who lives across the back alley and at the end of the block from him, May Kasahara. Her back yard faces his and his neighbor's backyards. She is a dark girl with obvious problems at home and at school, for she is at home most of the time as well. She observes him almost more than she talks with him. She's got the whole morbid thing going on, but her undeniable cheerfulness betrays her more often than she would like it to. Throughout the novel she continues to act as more than the little girl down the street, she offers advice and insight that far out weigh her years. She is but only one part the many intersecting lives and stories that formulate this story.

From the initial search for the cat, Toru finds himself suddenly thrown into a search for his wife, who doesn't return home from work that day. His easy and uncomplicated life has now become a lonely and desperate one with the disappearance of his wife, Kumiko. He wonders if she is or has been having an affair, although now matter how he tries to look at it, he just can't see her having an affair. She would be the type who would be more likely to just tell him outright if that were what she had done or it that was where she was headed. Sneaking around wasn't her style, it was almost beneath her to do so.

All I can do here in this review is tell you the good and bad, the how and the why, and perhaps even some of the beautiful, dreamy details. What I can not do in this review is give you an overview of the story itself. It is far to complicated and interconnected. It is a testament of Mr. Murakami's talent and skill as to how he does this. For me to try and show you or even to explain it, would require me to virtually re-write it all here. So what I can do is encourage you to read this book and experience it for yourself. It is richly filled with wonderful language that even survives through the translation process, but then again kudos must also be given to the translator, Mr. Jay Rubin, who has translated many other of Mr. Murakami's novels as well.

The book has several plot lines that are all intriguing in their own right, but they all revolve around the search that Toru is mounting not only for his wife's cat, but for her as well. It seems more and more important for him to find the cat and that it is somehow connected to the mystery of why his wife has left him.

By the end of this engaging story you feel as if you are a friend of Toru's and that you want to make sure that he is doing okay. If this can be accomplished by any author, then it can be regarded as a great success. The fact the Haruki Murakami does this on a regular basis can be regarded as something much more than a success, he is a rare gift to the writing world. I am more than happy to have discovered him, no matter how late in the game I was. I am grateful.

I hope that you are too.

Todd Hurley The Hurley Edition [.....]

If you have ever been (un)fortunate enough to find yourself at an art college's graduate show then you will perfectly understand my forthcoming analogy.

When those who do not possess either spiritual or mental fibre try to make Art - especially visual arts and more specefically abstract art, they invariably fail miserably. What they present may 'appear' to have form, structure and substance, and indeed, it may do so in the physical sense; but in the intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, ontological sense it is really a shell, a superficial expresion - an allusion to a world they have seen in other's Art, in galleries and in books. It is an echo of Art, but not Art itself, it is fake, a copy. When writers too, try to engage with subject matter that is clearly beyond them, they invariably fail. It is a truism that that which we are able to render (both visually and linguistically) is a direct reflection of our inner-self.

What Mura-kami has given us in this work is by no means a small thing for it is the real thing, the crown jewels and not costume jewellery. It is 1990s Coca-Cola with acid and bite and not your local supermarket cola. He has struck a firm sign-post on the literary path and has created something of true worth and value, a rock on the collective pile of literary consciousness. Like so many of his other great works (Dance, Norwegian, Hard-Boiled) he openly displays his creative and intellectual greatness, frugality and fragility, brutality and his capacity for creative story-telling that defines and re-defines boundaries.

'Wind-up' is a surreal and yet very realistic journey that shows maturity and growth. I can't think of may novels that are accomplished as this. One of Mura-kami's strengths in this particular work is the interplay of the narratives (a mode he used time-and-time-again) and also the time-frame of the piece. Mirroring real-life, he introduces characters and then lets them go. This alone is worthy of praise. Quite why film-makers and writers feel they have to 'keep' the same characters from beginning to end (unless they get killed off), is quite beyond my comprehension. It seems such an artificial construct and altogether too manufactured and contrived to give any air of authenticity to the narrative.

This work will not entertain nor interest all (which is no bad thing), but if you liked Mura-kami's 'Hard-boiled' or you are a fan os Salman Rushdie, then I wholeheartedly recommend this.

I should say that half way through The Wind-Up Bird, I read over some reviews to get a feel for what other people think. Unfortunately, many were intent on giving the story away. Quite simply, it is best not to know the story line in advance. This is not a book one could possibly rationalize and understand without having first experienced it. More to the point, such analysis will only detract from the experience of reading the book in the first place.
Encountering The Wind-Up-Bird Chronicle is like encountering a delicate origami crane for the first time. From the very beginning, you wonder how it got in that shape. You wish to know the secret of its structure. To do so, you must work at it slowly and carefully, undoing each fold with the utmost care and caution in order to discover the pain-staking sequence that led to its beautifully complex and elegant shape. Reading The Wind-Up-Bird is like unfolding a bigger, more-complex crane -- so complex in fact that you might be confused when the entire thing is laid out in front of you, creases spanning the entire page. If you are like me, you might spend weeks or months trying to figure out how to put that crane back together.
Without giving too much away, allow me to share some of the things that engaged and enwrapped me:
* The possibility that every experience in our life contains deep and profound philosophical meaning.
* Discovering the mysterious nature of life and the vagaries of chance fate; realizing that the place we inhabit and the family we are born into are givens that guide us, not things we can ultimately choose.
* Questioning the extent to which we can fully understand other people -- from the man why walks by us in the street to the significant other who sleeps on the other side of our bed.
* Realizing the deep and intricate continuity between dreams and waking life. More to the point, discovering how the two realities affect each other and blend together in a seamless fabric called reality.
* The possibility that our most profound insights about life might only be found in the bottom of a dry well in a deep meditative, trance-like state.
* Finally, the book made realize that a story is quite possibly the best tool with which to convey historical reality. Sounds strange, I'm sure, but after doing a lot of deep research about Japan's involvement in Manchuria during WWII, Murakami is perhaps in the best possible position to give voice to what is often omitted from non-fiction historical texts, simply because history (which is almost infinite) is never fully uncovered or told by finite, fallible and imperfect historians.
Hmm, I suppose I should discuss names a bit too. All Japanese names have meaning as written in kanji. Tanaka means 'in the rice field'. Kobayashi means 'small forest'. O'Hara means 'big field'. It wasn't until the entrance of Mr. Ushikawa (bull river) that I remembered this and began to wonder how each character's name was written in the original Japanese version. Indeed, Mr. Ushikawa's speaks openly about the significance of his name at one point. As he says, he sort of grew to fit the name, instead of the name growing to fit him.
The main character's name is also significant, but more so when he comes to known as "Mr. Wind-Up-Bird." (I'll leave that one to you.) Mr. Wind-Up-Bird and Mr. Ushikawa made me realize that I might be missing some important context, so I decided to research every name that appears in the book. It wasn't hard for a man in my position. After buying a Japanese edition in Tokyo, I spent a good hour talking over the names with a kind English-sensei that just happened to be handy. From this, I was able to flesh out many hidden nuances. One of the character's names, a certain Noboru Wataya, turned out to be of critical significance.
Noboru Wataya's first name was written in katakana in the Japanese version, but any Japanese reader would know that "noboru" has two corresponding kanji: One means "to rise" and the other means "to climb." The kanji representing "to rise" has the further significance of pictographically representing a rising sun, and thus in Japan it is often referred to "taiyo noboru" -- taiyo meaning sun. Although written without a corresponding kanji, Noboru implies something moving up -- quite possibly sun itself, and thus the very symbol of the Japanese people.
The last name, Wataya, appears in kanji, and it simply means cotton valley. Not just any valley, though. It has the connotation of a hidden, secret or mystical valley. The image of shrouded Shangri-La comes to mind. While reading the book, it is important remember that Noboru Wataya might be rising or climbing something in both the literal and figurative sense of the term. Is he rising in the social ranks, or perhaps climbing the social ladder? Again, I'll leave that to you. Of particular note, though, is the fact that Wataya is not a common Japanese name. According to my source, it is extremely rare, if anybody of Japanese origin bears the name at all. All of this overlaps very with the myterious and unique character of Noboru Wataya himself, so I was glad to have gotten the scoop.
I will say no more about the book, because it is simply too complex to unravel in a review like this. If you want to know whether or not the book is for you, try reading into it for a good ten minutes. It is amazing how much you can get from ten short minutes if you really invest your attention. I hope you find this book as intoxicating and rewarding as I did. Feel free to write me and let me know either way. I'm good like that.

For a few years now, I've heard "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" was a magnificent book of surreal mysteries that stood as one of the best of the 20th century. I guess in a way, both of these arguments are true. However, the book fails to connect in the end and leads the reader on a long and winding journey through high expectations and, ultimately, dead ends.

The book is undoubtedly an epic. I usually don't commit to 600 page books or more unless I expect a punch and some sort of intellectual awakening. When starting this one, I surely did. After the first 300 pages, I was enthralled, intrigued, entertained, and hopeful. I was telling people what an excellent book this was, ready to mark it down as a confirmed favorite. Murakami filled it with, not only a series of mundane, yet oddly disturbing and cerebral events, but with history lessons, and intricate character studies. But when I reached the 500th page, I was deeply worried the book would end with a van ride off a cliff. I was right about that aspect of the novel.

Murakimi is a talented writer. The ideas are there. The concepts flow. But in the end, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" feels like an extreme insomnia binge more than well throughout novel of the surreal. It would probably make a great David Lynch movie but not a book you have to invest time and brainpower in. The women are oversexed nothings. The main character is shiftlessly interesting at first, then unbelievable and emotionless til the end.

The book makes me want to read more Murakmi to discover the bright spots in his career. However, avoid this book unless you want to impress the 20 somethings at your local cafe.

This is an addictivly unsatisfying book (and I mean that in a most positive way). It is addictive because it draws its reader in with its first sentence and does not let him/her put the book down for the next 500 pages. I went through it so quickly; devouring each page while searching for answers and meaning. It is unsatisfying because I never seem to have gotten the answers I was looking for or I found meaning where I did not expect it and where it did not make sense.

It is hard to describe what the book is really about. On the surface it is the story of Toru, who without a job spends his days swimming, reading and hanging around the neighborhood while his wife works a mundane job at a publishing house. One day the couple's cat vanishes and Toru's wife tells him to meet with a "spiritual" woman to find the cat. Toru initially questions this strategy, but agrees to it. When his wife leaves him without as much as a good-bye note shortly thereafter, Toru believes that his introduction to the spirit is a clue to finding his wife again. An additional meeting sets off a chain of events that range from the surreal to dreamlike, from the bizarre to violent. Toru searches for his wife throughout the book, meets some very interesting characters, does some crazy things and seems to develop a very active personality that seems very unnatural for his very passive character. What seems to stand out is his love for his wife and his determination to find her. Below the surface, this is also a book about the violence of war and the atrocities that happened in Manchuria. Finally, it is a book about life stories, about the things that happen to people and how they relate to each other.

Murikami is a wonderful writer, who has the ability to bring the bizarre, the natural, the comical and the violent together in one book. You will laugh and cry while reading this book. You will meet characters with strange names and even stranger occupations. You will walk through Tokyo with Toru searching for his wife and the meaning of his life. You will read many different stories and you will wonder what the sense of all this is. Ultimately, this is a book that leaves so much room for meaning that the unexpected reader may feel lost. However, do not give up. This is a book which you will remember for years after finishing it.

I've been really looking forward to reading one of Haruki Murakami's books, and this is the one that particularly caught my eye. Murakami's stories and writing are a bizarre mix of realism and a fantasy world. In this book a young man named Toru Okada looks for his wife's missing cat. Eventually, he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a strange "netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo." He meets a whole group of strange characters, allies and antagonists. As the book progresses, it becomes harder and harder to tell what is real and what is not. This book had a great plot, and I really liked the narration of the book. Toru Okada tells the story, and he is matter-of-fact and observant. I look forward to reading more of Haruki Murakami's books in the future.

*You can read all of my reviews at my book blog, novareviews.blogspot.com*

My favorite book of all times. If you like authers like Dostoyevski or Albert Camus but haven't read Murakami's arguably best book you're in for a treat!

His style of writing is just extraordinary cool! Super simplistic - almost naive - but at the same time very very delicate. It's a very strange book, almost psychedelic, but to me it was the most absorbing read ever. Japanese culture values things like delicacy, minimalism, and elegance, which explains Murakami's huge succes there. In his universe a cat doesn't just run away. There's more going on ... or is there? Several features repeats in Murakami's books. Young girls too clever for their age. Middle aged guys that drink Cutty Sark whiskey, listen to Amarican jazz music and who has a peculiar liking for girls ears....

Without describing every leaf of each tree, Murakami makes you feel that you are present right there in the middle of a boring Japanese suburb, where not normal things begin to happen. All the time you have a weird sense that something really really serious is going on in the background.

It's kind of a detective novel but then again not. It's definately not the classic detective novel, where all loose ends are tied nicely together in the end. You're getting bombarded with strange clues, that makes your imagination run wild, and there are no guarentees that they actually have anything to do with the plot. You catch yourself accepting the rationality of a man sitting for days at the bottom of a dried out well with a baseball bat, while he looks at the stars that passes over his head.... Waiting! Waiting to break through to god knows what....

One day Murakami will win the Nobel Prize for literature and this book will be cited. I liked this book because I could identify with so many of the emotions Murakami writes about in the book. He writes about the calming effect of swimming and taking the water in and out of your mouth like a fish as you stroke through the water. He writes about the feeling of loss and disorientation when someone you love leaves you. He shows the horrors and atrocities of violent murder in WW 2 and how they scarred people for life.
I loved the letters May Kasahara wrote to "Mr. Wind-Up Bird" and I understood her being so scared at times. Although I wouldn't like being in the bottom of a well, it was a great metaphor of escaping into blackness, total aloneness and recouping on one's own.
The book is rich in so many ways -- all the characters, through their letters and meetings with Toru Okada, show their innermost sorrows and also how they have survived. The book made me feel like I have company when I am up in the middle of the night and can't sleep thinking about so many things and people in our weird lives. But alas, as Murakami presents life in this book, it is all normal and this a comfort and reassurance.

Either I or the author was overdoing the magic mushrooms. Firstly, I did finish it although I wish I had followed one reviewers advice and chucked it in the fireplace. Secondly, I did actually think it was great at first. But things grow boring. There's a lot of sitting in a dry well and thinking. There are a lot of hallucinogenic sequences where dreams touch reality. I am sure its all wonderfully symbolic. Okada searching the underworld for his lost love. Lots of bizarre characters. And quite a bit of history. This book epitomises all that I hate about "great literature". Lots of imagery and show off writing and just too much hard work to read. Not for us intellectually simple people who would like to be able to understand the story without going down a well.

As with most of Murakami's work, the first two-thirds of his books are engaging. For me, his books usually crap out on the last stretch, but his endings do not strangle you with a conclusion,leaving everything open for discussion (always the sign of a good book).

Murakami creates characters with quirk, concepts that smack of the serial. It's grand to read of the relationships he builds or tears down. I've always thought Murakami is the best writer of killing time. He has a knack for describing what could just be mundane tasks to give us an extra understanding of his characters.

This book is about more than a missing wife and the equally missing family cat. Murakami manages to inject an off-beat nymphet into each of his books, usually to both create a gap between the younger and older generations and to then bridge that gap by pairing them together. He also throws in his unusual but captivating secondary character (this time the mute boy codenamed Cinnamon). Contemporary Japan, a flashback tale of an old war hero and an escort service are thrown in the mix.
If this hits the spot, try 'Kafka on the Shore' and 'Sputnik Sweetheart', both by Murakami.

Murakami's novel brings ancient struggle between evil and good into a new dimension. The author interplays and intertwines dream and reality, past and present, female and male characters to create complex, disturbing and beautiful experience. I particularly enjoyed the diversity of the threads within this book and the parallels betweens the characters and events. Murakami's writing style is unlike any other that I have encountered. Using very simple words, sentence structures and situations Murakami puzzles and intrigues the reader through the entire book. This is one of those books that you just have to finish.

I should start by saying that I usually like bizarre fiction. Well, "Wind-up Bird Chronicle" is certainly that. A "regular Joe" for the main character, surrounded by the weird and inexplicable - psychic sisters named after islands, a healer and her mute son (named after spices), a well with no water in it, and an alternative reality set in a hotel.
The beginning of the book sucks you in, written in a crisp, modern style, with no high-brow literary waffle. Very quickly you realise that something strange is happening to our "normal" protagonist, Toru Okada. The events don't seem to be connected in any way, but they are portrayed as clues, and you are batting for Toru to figure them out. The random, bizarre happenings make you excited, curious, desperate to read on.
So then you read on. And on. More strange characters and events get introduced. There are large forays into the Japanese occupation of Manchuria before WWII and gruesome stories of violence there. But still, you think (or rather hope, by now) that this will all be explained. Somehow. But alas, it isn't. And you begin to suspect that many of the things you thought were significant "clues", were actually just there to increase the "weird and quirky" factor.
At the end, several important people and occurances had just disappeared out of the novel (Malto and Creta Kano?), or were left hanging without explanation or resolve. I don't want the meaning of everything spelled out to me, I'm happy to use my imagination to figure some things out. But this book didn't even leave me with a skeleton on which to build my thoughts at the end. Only one of the themes (good vs. evil - how original) was resolved to my satisfaction.
Read Murakami's book for an introduction to his style, read it if the words "Japanese" and "bizarre" in combination sound good. But don't expect to finish it feeling contented.

Such a strange world Murakami's Toru Okada lives in. Synchronicity and the shadow of a much larger world abound - a world just over the backyard fence or down in a dry well - always ready to sweep one off to strange and unforeseen fates. And yet, that strange world bears the imprint of our daily lives so well. No matter how odd things get, there's always a sense that our "Mr. Wind-up Bird" (the nickname given Toru Okada by his precocious and eccentric teen-age neighbor) is someone probably a lot like you or me, that his reactions to things are never more or less than those of someone like we see in our bathroom mirror in the morning. Toru Okada delivers his lines deadpan when required, but never lifelessly.
To step back and look at The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle simply as "a novel" rather than as "an engrossing journey toward Mr. Wind-Up Bird's ultimate self-awareness", after having my nose buried in it for hours at a time, was always a task. Murakami deftly balances Toru Okada's well-crafted, oddly mellow personality with the collectively volatile personalities around him, even as he balances the predictable and often pedestrian daily life of the world with its bellicose history and sometimes wildly unpredictable turns. More to the point, he gives us a character who learns and develops very openly and in an honest fashion that at the least bears the mark of verisimilitude.
Murakami has been compared to Thomas Pynchon, and I can see where the comparison is justified. Murakami's characters feel very real even when placed amidst the most bizarre circumstances, and, in the case of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a certain parallel could indeed be drawn between Toru Okada and Pynchon's Lt. Tyrone Slothrop, both of whom find themselves from one day to the next - even from one moment to the next - more and more removed from the existence they had come to accept as reality, for reasons they cannot fathom - at first.
From the loss of the cat to being found by May Kasahara, the neighbor girl, from Lieutenant Mamiya's account of his time in Mongolia to the journey to the bottom of a dry well, from psychics and surrealism to the poignancy and suchness of everyday life, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle never ceases to weave its enchantments, even when they are as unsettling as a zoo in the middle of a war or as simple as watching faces in a crowd. As I have worked on this review, I have gone back and thumbed through the pages of the book, feeling caught up by the passages and chapter headings I chance to glance upon, and I find myself tempted to read it again. A feeling I suspect many people who read the book must have.

I have a 70-year old uncle named Joe. Uncle Joe is a captivating storyteller. One minute he'll be exciting you with stories about a trip he took to Greece 20 years ago, then he'll start regaling you with a witty anecdote about his 30-year-old girlfriend, then suddenly he'll have a flashback about Vietnam that has you at the edge of your seat. Then out of nowhere he'll just stop his story and walk away. You'll be left sitting there saying to yourself, "What the hell was the point of that story?!?" You're torn between feeling happy you were entertained for 30 minutes, and pissed that you just wasted 30 minutes of your life on a story that had no point.

This book is like my Uncle Joe. Except instead of 30 minutes of your life wasted, it'll be more like 20 hours. What Malcolm Gladwell is to non-fiction, this book is to fiction--so very engaging throughout, but so loosely tied up at the end that you have to shake your head and wonder if the author had a deadline from an editor and just regurgitated out the last few chapters in an effort to finish the book and collect a paycheck. If you like fantastical storytelling, you'll probably give this book 5 stars. If, like myself, you enjoy a plot that comes to fruition at the end of a book, you will hate this book and give it a 1-star rating like I did.

I finished this book last night and my feelings are mixed. On one hand, I absolutely loved the first three hundred pages or so, but the last three hundred...ugh, they just got too weird.
The story starts off simply enough. A young couple have lost their cat, probably in the nearby alley. Things start to get a bit weirder when the man (who is unemployed), starts receiving explicit phone calls and encounters a number of strange people with odd stories. This part was all good. I liked how it was getting steadily weirder, but still remaining anchored in reality. At this stage, nothing was implausible, just very weird.
Then. The author must have gotten too caught up in making things weird, because it started to get really stupid. The main character followed a random guy around for a while and then beat him up. For no real reason (the reason was there, but it was weak, I think), a woman started spending lots of money on him, his wife disappeared under increasingly stupid circumstances, he developed...ugh...psychic powers. Etc and etc. Not too impressed with all that.
But. I was waiting for it to be all neatly wrapped up. And it wasn't. One of the main characters at the start, May, she was relegated to little more than a letter writer at the end. I didn't see the point at all of the old man telling his long (but interesting) stories about Russia/Japan hostilities in WW2.
And the *BIG SPOILERS* big bad guy at the end being his wife's brother? Sure, that was obvious, but it was never really explained just how he managed to get all these psychic powers, or what he intended to do with them, or why he was such a threat. And the psychic dream world place was never explained, not at all.*/BIG SPOILERS*
So in the end I was disappointed. But I loved the start. I can handle weird, but not stupid weird.

This is the book you should read. That everyone should read. This book...oh...this book...wow...this book. Really. You should not hesitate for a moment and get up and go buy it. Rarely has an epic tale been so enjoyable and compulsively readable; the POV jump cuts and swings around, jumping time and place and narration.
When I bought this, I had no idea who Haruki Murakami was and why I should care. Immediately afterwards, I bought every book of his and borrowed the ones not yet available in this country.
He is one of the finest writers working today and if you don't support him, then you are against him, and if you are against him, you are against everything good literature and good art stands for.

This was the first Murakami novel I read, and it remains the best (above NW, Sputnik Sweetheart, or Underground). What this reminds me of more than anything is David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks'.
A man is comfortable in his seemingly humdrum life until he starts to investigate the case of his wife's missing cat. As the layers start to peel back, he slowly discovers that the world is following the logic of a kind of Japanese dreamtime... and as he follows the signs and symbols of this madness, he is drawn to ANOTHER PLACE... the mysterious hotel, and the nightmare figure that stalks it.
Often Murakami re-uses the same system of symbols in his books - deep wells, missing animals, disturbed women. This has two main effects - one, you can better understand what he's getting at in one of his books if you've read a couple of his others too, and two, after a while his novels seem to be remixes of each other, which can take the edge off your enjoyment of them (Sputnik Sweetheart in particular suffers from this).
So, should you start with Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, and get Murakami's worldview in it's strongest form while you are still fresh to it, or work up to it, all the better to appriciate it's nuances? All I can say is - this was my first trip, and I loved it.
A novel of shadows that bite you.

I was lent this book after a failed attempt at reading "Hard Boiled Wonderland". What a revalation. This book made me a Haruki Murakami fan. I've since read all his work and love all of it (or at least most if it) this book still stands above for me.
The recurring Murakami-esqe motifs are all here, the well, the ennui-stricken main character in search of a name for his malaise, the May Kashahara-type; the metaphysical mayhem. But this book ties together both of Murakami's styles (the confessional and the surrealistic romp) seamlessly so that the surreal becomes inseperable from the real, perhaps even more real.
But none of this is what earns it the title of: One of Five Essential Novels of the past ten years. What earns it that illustrious title is the fact that WUBC illuminates a condition of man prevelant here in the last half of the twentieth centry in a way that Kafka did the first half of the century.
Surely these conditions have always existed, at least in potential, but their accutness in there respective eras is remarkable.
what WUBC speaks to is this: We have two types relationships- that with things we can touch and that with things we can't. We have always had this, but here in our supermodern era the second type of relationship has taken a new promenince in our lives. It is about these relationships: With the past, with things out of reach, with people physically distant, with the Television screen that Murakami so eloquently depicts. These relationships have a real and lasting and profound effect on us.
WUBC helps us reconcile with these strange relationships in a way that is profoundly human.
So read it yourself. Nothing I write can replicate the experience. Go ahead. Do it.

After reading something from Ryu, I decided it was only fair to give the other Murakami a go. Perhaps this was not the first book of his worth starting out on, so keep that in mind while you read my review.

Usually I'll find myself sucked into a book and stuck in it until I've finished. It took me a good 100 pages before I began to enjoy where this one was going, but that quickly vanished as the story became less about the plot and more about meaningless tangents, letters, newspaper articles, long descriptions, and unrelated stories. I think that sometimes characters are worth introducing later on in a story, but the ones that came up in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle began to bore me. I became less and less interested about the main character's acquaintances and itching to find out what was eventually going to conclude this novel. It seemed to take forever. About 200 pages of it are about the protagonist trying to figure out what to do next. Then things just jumped all over the place. A letter from a friend would say nothing awe-inspiring, an article would appear to summarize what had already been said, then you'd get a chapter with the main character, but he wouldn't do anything but sit and listen to some new person share their life story.

This book is full of meaningless tangents and what-have-yous, but at first, even those come to conclusions. Later on, they simply fill gaps between the over-arcing story. Some of the new characters are so lifeless or ugly that I began to lose hope in Murakami's ability to create interesting characters. It became so tedious that I stopped reading about them completely and still managed to enjoy the conclusion.

If Haruki Murakami had stuck to the original plot, the book could have been half the size it is now and still be a great read. I think I'll try him again some time, but I won't be recommending this book to anyone.

At the heart of the wind-up bird chronicle is the story of a man's search for his missing wife. Yet that is just a beginning as Toru Okada (and reader)is thrown into a psychological, metaphysical and even anthropological journey where the boundary between reality and fantasy adopts the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty. Reading The Wind-up bird chronicle is like being thrown from wall to wall in your own living room. There are so many zany characters and loose ends as to keep you wondering for weeks afterwards. Haruki Murakami displays a wonderful blend of western dualistic pre-occupation and eastern Zen-ist simplicity. Despite his whole world changing around him, Toru Okada remains focussed on his task and took everything in his strides. The wind-up bird is beautifully written (especially the Zoo killing episode) and it is one of my favourite books of all time.

I am a diehard Murakami fan. I have read a good chunk of his novels and have gotten accustomed to his distinct style. I could deal with Kafka on the Shore's quirkiness, so I tried The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
One of Murakami's gifts is to explore the mind of a character and analyze their personalities and relationships with others. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle only offers an unlikeable main character and a whirlwind of characters and places that drift in and out of the narrative. It has the usual cats, psychic phenomena, and mysterious women, typical of Murakami. I felt reading this novel as an ordeal and I admit to skimming over the historical chapters dealing with Manchuria. Murakami should stick to a relatively straight-through plots and skip dream sequences. I want to like this book but I can't. Don't use this book as an introduction to Haruki Murakami, try Norwegian Wood instead.

I couldn't wait to start reading this book after a sensational reading of Murakami's `Norwegian Wood'. Half way through, I couldn't help but asking both myself and around, why write and why read. Certainly, Murakami knows how to write targeting a certain group of audience, which might be a clear goal for most of the writers, which his clear presence, would be contrived story revolving sex, myth, and a bit of history presented in a way of no obvious trace of the real impact. The common characteristic of all these elements, however, is nonetheless confusion. Though quite compelling, the reading wasn't as meaningful and satisfactory as I had expected. One chapter after another, the only motive for my turning the page, was often the last few sentences, promising to reveal some excitement, which was never profoundly presented before coming to another turning point for the next chapter. For something profound and intriguing as to search for meaningful life with a realistic culture background, I am a big fan of the work of Almodovar of Spain; for something with twisted and complicated story line without regard to any realistic meanings, I would recommend the books of Harry Potter. This `wind-up bird chronicle', simply wasn't developed either way, as far as my taste concerns.

I had wanted to delve into the world of Murakami for some time, so I came here to the store last year to seek the advice of reviewers as to which book to try first. I was veering toward "1Q84" beforehand as the plot sounded intriguing but from the reviewers' comments, it seemed that this wasn't the book for Murakami virgins to begin with. The choice of most reviewers was "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" or "The Wild Sheep Chase." After much deliberation, I decided to go with my original choice, "1Q84."

Thank God I did!

I say this because I've just finished "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Had I have read this first, this would have been my one and only foray into Murakami's world. But as I have read "1Q84", a book which I adored, I know what Murakami is capable of and because I have read one great book and one not great book, I am intrigued as to what his other books have to offer.

Whilst reading "1Q84", I was totally enveloped in Murakami's world and was getting quite sad as I neared the end because it was a world I didn't want to leave. When I finished it, it felt like a dear friend had left my life. The book stayed with me for a long time afterwards as I pondered the meaning of certain sections and indeed what the book was saying as a whole.

Am I any the wiser a few months down the line? A bit but not really. But it doesn't matter as the whole book was a piece of art that is appreciated by viewing the whole panorama not just certain brush strokes.

So it was with much anticipation that I started "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle." And I have to say that I've never been so disappointed in a work of literature in my life.

The two books share similarities; both are surreal, both have unexplained plotlines and both will leave you scratching your head at the end. But with "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", Murakami was too obtuse, too disjointed, too eager to cram too many things in at the expense of clarity.

Quite simply, it just didn't make a lot of sense. In many cases I got the impression that Murakami was trying to be too postmodern, too surreal and this was to the detriment of the story as a whole. Surrealism is great but there has to be some rhyme and reason behind it. It has to be intelligible, even if it takes some cerebral work to decipher the artist's intentions.

I read a review here that suggested the book was about the nature of defilement and the relationship between the defiled and the defiler. I suppose that's one way of looking at it but I think it's a stretch to give such a definite take on such a book. And this is the problem with it. There is such a lack of overall purpose that anybody can read anything in to it that they like.

With "1Q84", there were parts that are still unresolved and I still try and work them out in my head and come up with solutions. With this book, however, it is so all over the place that any real attempt at "explaining" it is ultimately futile. And this does not make for a pleasurable literary experience. The reader should be challenged but if the game is rigged against him from the outset, there's no point in taking part in the competition.

Perhaps other readers got the same feeling with this book that I did with "1Q84". That the book was so beautiful that meaning is just a small part of the whole. I think this is what Murakami is perhaps trying to aim for with his books, based on the two I read so far. If that's the case, then this book certainly fails to live up to his vision.

I intend to give Murakami another go at some point in the future because of my love of "1Q84." So if anybody, based on this review, could give me suggestions as to which fork to take at this critical juncture of my Murakami journey, I'm all ears. I don't mind surrealism, I don't mind postmodernism. But I don't like books that are, ultimately, pointless.

I was directed to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by two friends. After hearing so much about them I picked up the novel expecting to be instantly blown away.

Instead I was lured into a captivating and engaging story. Murakami has an amazing talent of writing descriptively, and not overwhelmingly. He paints clear pictures, and introduces entertaining and interesting characters. This novel is full of unique characters and profound insights that are played off as little moments.

The novel follows a man named Toru Okada who's life becomes increasingly complicated after his wife and his cat leave him. The reason I kept reading the novel was because of these strange occurrences, but they were written in a most ordinary way. The character knew they were odd, the reader did also, but the writing gave no indication of oddities.

This is what I enjoyed, the mystical that was present in these ordinary situations, and because of or perhaps due to the ordinary surroundings the mystical seemed ordinary.

My favorite character was May Kashara, a young girl who was the neighbor of Toru who after a short introduction when Toru spoke about a bird who sounded as though he had a wind-up spring, called him "Mr. Wind-Up Bird".

My favorite scenes were the war scenes (although they are very brutal and violent, my imagination went crazy and I was appreciative of the medium of writing where I was in control, instead of a film) and the water well scenes, which were cleverly executed and described. There was a part where Toru promised himself he wouldn't look at his watch and then all he could think about was the watch and the time, and it was described to a T and I was amazed at how well Murakami described the human animal.

Murukami's characters are likeable, and each of them are different and well-developed. As the novel continues past strange phone calls to baseball bats and water wells, it became harder for me to concentrate on my life. I simply wanted to read the book until its finish.

When I reached the last hundred pages of the book, I took my time. I didn't want to say goodbye to May Kashara or Toru Okada, the characters were so vivid and sweet that I didn't want to finish the novel.

I did, however, and the end did not leave me short-changed, but instead was just as an end should be. Not too much and not too little.

I would have to say that all in all, Murakami has an incredible skill for balance. He never gives too much or too less, and the novel progresses wonderfully. I would recommend this novel to everyone. But try it for yourself! Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off the store is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.

I can't say, as many of the other reviewers here have said, that this is *the* best or one of the best books I've ever read, but it certainly was a pleasure.
I was nervous before starting it. Judging by what I'd heard about it, combined with it's length (silly, I know), I was afraid it would be some long, fustian ramble with only a vague plot like Gravity's Rainbow (which is certainly a great book, but was no fun to read). I was pleasantly surprised, however, at how easy and fun Wind-Up Bird was to read, while it still raised interesting and relevant questions about humanity's interconnectedness and the nature of conciousness. The writing is simple and clear. The plot has some surreal twists and turns but is easy to follow. Enjoyable from start to finish.

Though not his best in my opinion, Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is surely the most hilarious of all his works, intertwining altogether such various subjects, which appeared or at least was touched upon in its sister works, as Japan's warfare history, the dark side of Japanese politics, satirical criticisms of advanced capitalism, reminiscences of the past golden days, the evil nature of humans, and so forth. While the protagonist of the books remains one lonely, reclusive and yet profoundly witty, the theme, compared with those in Haruki Murakami's former books, turned increasinly social, more efforts explicitly put on socio-historical issues. This is not hard to understand, many writers are more directly concerned about social issues with age. You may be disappointed if you are to look for meticulous lyricism of a modern man's feelings in this book. Conversely, if you are one who like those 'grand' novels, you may be overwhelmed by the success of this book in reflecting an immensely brutal era Japan has brought to other Asian countries, especially China. The most obvious flaw of the books is certainly its disproportionate distribution of plots and descriptions, some too long or even unecessary, some too condense. Considering that it is hitherto the most ambitious work of Haruki Muramaki's, fans should be more generous. Actuallu I am to predict that the next book, if still on the track, would be the most representative work for this most popular Japanese author; otherwise, we should incline ourselves to accept that his best was already accomplished.

Overall, I thought the stories contained in this novel were quite fascinating and occasionally beautiful. I enjoyed nearly all of the characters, but my favorites were probably May Kasahara, Kumiko Okada, Noboru Wataya and his delightfully repulsive henchman Ushikawa, Cinnamon, and of course Mr. Wind Up Bird himself.
Despite the fact that I enjoyed reading this novel very much and think very highly of it, I do feel somewhat unsatisfied with a number of plot elements in the intertwining stories that I think were not properly explained.
1.) Regarding the nature of Noboru Wataya's dark power, which Kumiko and her sister were also tangled up with: It seems to me Noboru Wataya is a sort of black magician who has learned to harness this innate ability, and yet it is hinted at that the entire Wataya bloodline is somehow affected by this evil power. This evil entity is central to the plotline (It was in some way responsible for Kumiko's horrifying streak of extramarital [affairs] which in turn triggered her disappearance), yet the phenomenon surrounding it is kept extremely vague. This mysterious something was almost certainly behind Noboru Wataya's defilement of both Kumiko's sister and Creta Kano, but as for the purpose for these defilements we are kept in the dark. When Toru finally does battle with this evil entity, it still is kept extremely vague and we never get to see it. I found myself wishing Toru would ignore Kumiko's requests and turn the flashlight on it, just for curiosity's sake.
2.) Regarding the story of the young boy who I assume is Cinnamon who hears the wind up bird and then proceeds to witness two shady looking characters burying a certain something on his property. Judging from his descriptions of these two shady characters - one tall and one short - I can only guess that they are indeed Noboru Wataya and Ushikawa. In the dream sequence the boy experiences after watching the real life events, the buried object is a human heart, which leads me to question #3...
3.) Regarding Nutmeg's Husband and Cinnamon's Father, who died in a certain hotel room under very bizarre circumstances. Nutmeg confirms that the assailants removed several of his organs and smeared his blood on the walls, etc. Again, I can only guess that Noboru Wataya, Ushikawa, and the evil being are involved here too. But there is never an explanation as to the connection between Cinnamon's father having his heart removed in a type of ritual killing, and Cinnamon Witnessing two men burying something which in the dream state is revealed to be a live beating human heart, shortly afterwards resulting in the loss of Cinnamon's voice.
4.) Regarding the dark hotel. I find myself wishing this place was explained a bit more. Who is the No Face man, or the "hollow man" as he refers to himself, and why does he decide to ally himself with Toru? Who is the whistling waiter? What is the significance of room 208? The dark hotel is obviously the domain of the dark entity with which Noboru Wataya is aligned. I can speculate that this is some type of spiritual prison maintained for Kumiko by Noboru Wataya, but I find myself wishing that the reason for this place's existence were more clearly defined.

Despite the (as I see them) loose plot ends, I still was quite happy with my overall reading experience. I really enjoyed Nutmeg's/Cinnamon's/Lt. Mamiya's war stories, May Kasahara's stories and letters, and even all the trivial details of Toru's house activities and such. I really was able to connect to Toru, I find him quite a loveable character, and I sympathize with him a great deal. Needless to say, I am more than happy that finally, good triumphed over evil.

I first read this book in the summer of 1999 and it felt as if someone had taken my brain apart and put it back together again. I literally wasn't able to read anything else for several weeks after finishing it as I couldn't get it off my mind. I've gone through it 4 times since then and am constantly amazed at how readable it is even when I know what is coming. There is always something that I see for he first time or reinterpret in a new and interesting way. In a way, it makes me think of what it must be like to watch someone else's dreams.

Others will have written about the plot, so I will leave that alone. Something the (potential) reader should note is that the book in Japanese is actually 3 seperate books that were published several years apart from each other. I have read that Murakami actually aimed to end the book at the end of the 2nd volume (Book 2 of the English version), but that interest from readers compelled him to write the 3rd book. In that sense the final section sometimes feels as if he is trying just a touch too hard to tie up all the loose ends he created. This is a minor complaint, however, as I find the end of the book to be quite satisfying. I do wonder what ever happens to May Kasahara, though.

Something I did years ago that is still sort of interesting for me was to think about who I would cast in a movie version of the book, if I had the chance. I stuck with Japanese actors and actresses for authenticity. Hopefully some of these names will be familiar to some readers. Feel free to let me know what you think of my choices!

Toru: Takao Osawa
May Kasahara: Ryoko Hirosue (circa 1999-2000) or the current Masami Nagasawa
Kumiko: Takako Matsu
Noboru Wataya: Takanori Jinnai
Malta Kanno: Takako Tokiwa
Creta Kanno: Yuko Takeuchi
Mr. Honda: Beat Takeshi
Nutmeg: Yuriko Ishida
Cinnamon: Hiroshi Abe

and not all answers need to be spelled out. The comments left here about unanswered themes and untidy threads might indicate a possible misunderstanding. The "clues" referred to in one reviewers comments are indeed real, there is no "weird and quirky" superficiality in this novel. Sometimes things not obvious are the most rewarding on deeper penetration. Characters do not just "disappear," they are absorbed. If at first you don't get it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't make sense; maybe you just don't get it, and maybe if you ponder it you still will. This is great and profound literature, and a page turner as well, with everything happening on multiple levels. Great characters, fascinating developments, deep undercurrents, terrifying and yet so much fun. Like a lot of great and lasting art, you just gotta let it cook. This is a book that rewards.

I was directed to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by two friends. After hearing so much about them I picked up the novel expecting to be instantly blown away.

Instead I was lured into a captivating and engaging story. Murakami has an amazing talent of writing descriptively, and not overwhelmingly. He paints clear pictures, and introduces entertaining and interesting characters. This novel is full of unique characters and profound insights that are played off as little moments.

The novel follows a man named Toru Okada who's life becomes increasingly complicated after his wife and his cat leave him. The reason I kept reading the novel was because of these strange occurrences, but they were written in a most ordinary way. The character knew they were odd, the reader did also, but the writing gave no indication of oddities.

This is what I enjoyed, the mystical that was present in these ordinary situations, and because of or perhaps due to the ordinary surroundings the mystical seemed ordinary.

My favorite character was May Kashara, a young girl who was the neighbor of Toru who after a short introduction when Toru spoke about a bird who sounded as though he had a wind-up spring, called him "Mr. Wind-Up Bird".

My favorite scenes were the war scenes (although they are very brutal and violent, my imagination went crazy and I was appreciative of the medium of writing where I was in control, instead of a film) and the water well scenes, which were cleverly executed and described. There was a part where Toru promised himself he wouldn't look at his watch and then all he could think about was the watch and the time, and it was described to a T and I was amazed at how well Murakami described the human animal.

Murukami's characters are likeable, and each of them are different and well-developed. As the novel continues past strange phone calls to baseball bats and water wells, it became harder for me to concentrate on my life. I simply wanted to read the book until its finish.

When I reached the last hundred pages of the book, I took my time. I didn't want to say goodbye to May Kashara or Toru Okada, the characters were so vivid and sweet that I didn't want to finish the novel.

I did, however, and the end did not leave me short-changed, but instead was just as an end should be. Not too much and not too little.

I would have to say that all in all, Murakami has an incredible skill for balance. He never gives too much or too less, and the novel progresses wonderfully. I would recommend this novel to everyone. But try it for yourself! Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off the store is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.

I was directed to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by two friends. After hearing so much about them I picked up the novel expecting to be instantly blown away.

Instead I was lured into a captivating and engaging story. Murakami has an amazing talent of writing descriptively, and not overwhelmingly. He paints clear pictures, and introduces entertaining and interesting characters. This novel is full of unique characters and profound insights that are played off as little moments.

The novel follows a man named Toru Okada who's life becomes increasingly complicated after his wife and his cat leave him. The reason I kept reading the novel was because of these strange occurrences, but they were written in a most ordinary way. The character knew they were odd, the reader did also, but the writing gave no indication of oddities.

This is what I enjoyed, the mystical that was present in these ordinary situations, and because of or perhaps due to the ordinary surroundings the mystical seemed ordinary.

My favorite character was May Kashara, a young girl who was the neighbor of Toru who after a short introduction when Toru spoke about a bird who sounded as though he had a wind-up spring, called him "Mr. Wind-Up Bird".

My favorite scenes were the war scenes (although they are very brutal and violent, my imagination went crazy and I was appreciative of the medium of writing where I was in control, instead of a film) and the water well scenes, which were cleverly executed and described. There was a part where Toru promised himself he wouldn't look at his watch and then all he could think about was the watch and the time, and it was described to a T and I was amazed at how well Murakami described the human animal.

Murukami's characters are likeable, and each of them are different and well-developed. As the novel continues past strange phone calls to baseball bats and water wells, it became harder for me to concentrate on my life. I simply wanted to read the book until its finish.

When I reached the last hundred pages of the book, I took my time. I didn't want to say goodbye to May Kashara or Toru Okada, the characters were so vivid and sweet that I didn't want to finish the novel.

I did, however, and the end did not leave me short-changed, but instead was just as an end should be. Not too much and not too little.

I would have to say that all in all, Murakami has an incredible skill for balance. He never gives too much or too less, and the novel progresses wonderfully. I would recommend this novel to everyone. But try it for yourself! Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off the store is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.

There seems to be somewhat of a cult around Haruki Murakumi whom I haven't heard about before. By chance I came across this book that pretty much surprised me. "Wind-Up-Bird chronicle" is an unusual book which writing style one has to get used to. The mysterious and attractive element of the book is not due to the Japanese culture in which the plot is unravelling. It is more due to the way of coping with a crisis that is a typically modern first world crisis which has yet a Japanese touch. As much as Japanese would like to assume western culture he can not ignore his roots without which he also won't manage his crisis. Thus the book may help answering the question: What can we learn from the Japanese?

At first sight the answer to this question seems to be: Waiting. In "Mr.Wind-up-Bird", what for us appears to be a waste of time is an activity that ultimately brings the solution. It is not waiting for an event that is already fixed but waiting for something that is completely open as for the time of the event and its content. It is not the latter that is important but the waiting as such. When performed with devotion events start to take place that were unpredictable in their quality to change the course of events. Thus waiting has not the quality of killing time. One could formulate a paradox law: The less I do the more I will achieve.

The plot of the book leaves everything open until the very end of the book. Just this ambiguity needs getting used to but by causing suspense it also makes the reader keep on reading. There are several levels on which events take place. These levels relate to each other but it is not clear how. It is not a harmonious relation-ship. The hero of the book must face a situation in which his wife suddenly and apparently without reason leaves him. Since he is unemployed there is plenty of time that he can spend in order to find a way out of this crisis. The situation is so hopeless because his wife's whereabouts are unknown and doesn't want to communicate with him.

Our hero has to enter a path that confronts him with many strange people that all help him moving on. The path leads into an unknown realm: the inner world of the mind that relates both to the present reality and events of the past. While on this path one of these people gives him the name "Mr.Wind-up-Bird". Accounts of the past confront the reader with a world that usually is not so familiar: the Japanese wars with China and Russia in the 20th century. These often traumatic events influenced several generations in Japan.

Mr.Wind-up-Bird gets to know the time of these wars and also a spiritually transcendent world. By learning to orientate himself in these realms he can face the challenges and trials that he meets in order to find a way out of his crisis.

Over the course of more than 600 pages Murakumi manages to entertain the reader with accounts that are quite difficult to digest. If the reader is willing to do so he not only learns about the Japanese culture but also how this culture mysteriously relates to him.

I was directed to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by two friends. After hearing so much about them I picked up the novel expecting to be instantly blown away.

Instead I was lured into a captivating and engaging story. Murakami has an amazing talent of writing descriptively, and not overwhelmingly. He paints clear pictures, and introduces entertaining and interesting characters. This novel is full of unique characters and profound insights that are played off as little moments.

The novel follows a man named Toru Okada who's life becomes increasingly complicated after his wife and his cat leave him. The reason I kept reading the novel was because of these strange occurrences, but they were written in a most ordinary way. The character knew they were odd, the reader did also, but the writing gave no indication of oddities.

This is what I enjoyed, the mystical that was present in these ordinary situations, and because of or perhaps due to the ordinary surroundings the mystical seemed ordinary.

My favorite character was May Kashara, a young girl who was the neighbor of Toru who after a short introduction when Toru spoke about a bird who sounded as though he had a wind-up spring, called him "Mr. Wind-Up Bird".

My favorite scenes were the war scenes (although they are very brutal and violent, my imagination went crazy and I was appreciative of the medium of writing where I was in control, instead of a film) and the water well scenes, which were cleverly executed and described. There was a part where Toru promised himself he wouldn't look at his watch and then all he could think about was the watch and the time, and it was described to a T and I was amazed at how well Murakami described the human animal.

Murukami's characters are likeable, and each of them are different and well-developed. As the novel continues past strange phone calls to baseball bats and water wells, it became harder for me to concentrate on my life. I simply wanted to read the book until its finish.

When I reached the last hundred pages of the book, I took my time. I didn't want to say goodbye to May Kashara or Toru Okada, the characters were so vivid and sweet that I didn't want to finish the novel.

I did, however, and the end did not leave me short-changed, but instead was just as an end should be. Not too much and not too little.

I would have to say that all in all, Murakami has an incredible skill for balance. He never gives too much or too less, and the novel progresses wonderfully. I would recommend this novel to everyone. But try it for yourself! Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off the store is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.

I am very much in awe of this author. This is the second book I've read by him. I will read other writer's before I return to another book by Murakami. I am wrung out from this reading, but there are several more books I want to read in the future.

I wish I wrote a review directly after I finished it, because the feelings I had while I read it were faded and dreamy enough without adding the decrepifying effects of the passage of time. Murakami spins his epic narrative in a meandering way that frustratingly never loops back to close up the many loose ends it leaves behind, but somehow it isn't actually frustrating: its muted, conclusion-less ending perfectly fits the calmy bizarre plotline, so that the mystery of its unresolved questions becomes an aesthetic accessory to the rest. Never has a narrator been so lame but likeable, never has a plot been so directionless but captivating, never has an antagonist been so intangible yet darkly unsettling.

This is for readers whose real passion is the process of being pulled into a story. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle creates its own world of rich characters and supernatural oddities that feels like a reasonable parallel Earth, or maybe our own, with its more clandestine secrets partially unveiled in a coy flash. Whether or not Murakami himself knows what his book is really about is irrelevant - the point is going along on his journey, seeing what he sees, and either drawing your own conclusions or surrendering yourself to the enjoyment of rich, meaningless weird.

My first Murakami book. The adventure when it ended made me sad, I wanted it to continue- sign of a great book. The imprint seems ever-lasting as it discusses a concept as vague as 'flow' in the most tangible way. Only someone 'real' and interesting who has understood the concepts in such detail and depth can weave a novel around it. We are drawn into his (protagonist's) world right from the first chapter. What a thrilling, interesting, multi-layered.. stories within a story novel. After reading this one cannot go back to cheap thrills fiction book.. once you taste the real thing, you cannot go back on cheap imitations. I found this book spiritual, totally fun, freeing and got an outlook towards the many ways people live lives .. Thoroughly enjoyed the story and the endings for each character.. I'd love to find out more about what happened to all of them 'ahead'..

This is the first book in a long time that I can say that I did not like despite it being very well written. Maybe I just don't like the genre of surrealistic existentialism. It's difficult for me to put my finger on what I disliked. I didn't like the scenes of intense and graphic violence. I didn't like not caring about the protagonist (who also seemed not to care about anything himself). There are other things I didn't like as well, but, ultimately, it wasn't any one thing that turned me off. I'm sure that some might say that those things that I disliked were exactly the point (the meaninglessness is the meaning!). Frankly, I just found it tedious.

The writing (and/or translation) was good, though, so maybe I'll give his memoir about running a try...

In one of his shorter works, Murakami wrote of watching through an air vent as strange things happened to space and time inside an elephant house. The physical universe takes on new wrinkles with this writer. Each of his works seems to fold back reality and give us a view of something wonderfully perplexing happening in a setting as distant as that elephant house but as familiar as our own lives. I love the way that the mundane and the fantastic weave themselves together in this book. His characters are fully 3-D, giving the lie to his frequent tip of the hat to the hardboild genre. He likes a good mystery, but he's going to populate his with characters that pop and with situations that teeter on the brink between reality and something darker upon which reality seems to be built.
Many of Murakami's protagonists seem simply to leave themselves open to the astounding things that happen around them and to them. They are open books onto which events simply scrawl -- leaving them (and us) to try to put the pieces together. More often than not, he portrays the perplexed state between the sexes nearly perfectly. I find his ability to portray characters who can't quite put their finger on their feelings very uncanny.
He often seems to be saying, "Look around you -- if you look closely enough, something astounding is happening. Whether you want it to or not."

I wanted to continue, but the narrative voice is so damn irritating that I can't. The main character is so passive and pliable. Moping around his house? Check. Seemingly giving up on life? Check. Accepting demands from others because who really cares? Check.

By the time the plot picks up, it's too late. I don't care what he does, mainly because I'm not sure he'll do anything. At least not until it's too weird or too many pages have passed by.

I don't need every page action-packed, but at least give the characters some momentum. That'd be nice.

I guess, full understanding of this book is a hard task for the most of readers. But seems it makes book even more entertaining. Murakami entertains his readers exposing a world of subconsciousness, which is managed by an invisible hand - an invisible energy that we generate. In the book, many characters are subconsciously connected to each other and take actions subconsciously. I guess, it is the reason why Murakami left them unexplained, leaving many readers unsatisfied.

The main plot of the book is the resentment between two individualists with good and evil morals: Toru Okada and Naboru Wataya (or likewise Lieutenant Mamyia and Boris Manskinner). Other characters and plots are supportive. The main purpose of Corporal Honda sending empty box to Toru Okada through Lieutenant Mamyia was to connect these two people in similar situation, psychologically fighting with evil. By connecting them, Corporal Honda helps Lieutenant Mamyia relieve his long time suffering, letting him to open his secrets to Toru Okada. It adds Toru's hatred to Naboru Wataya and gives strength to defeat him. From the book I sense Toru Okada is a Lieutenant Mamaya, living in different time. He is similar to the reincarnation of Mamiya (or other people who suffered in WWII), takes actions, to fulfill Mamyia's dream: defeating evil like people and being loved by someone or having sex with woman (Creta Kano) in both real and dreamlike world. This book tells that evil and poisonous people, like Naboru Wataya always exist and succeed far. They exist in the context of different situations and the impact of their negative, powerful energy is fatal. Book gives impression that Murakami explodes his own personal hatred to evil like people and dislike to the dominant social psychology (people's confusion) through his book. I feel like I see Murakami in different characters of his book.

Appearance of teenager girl, May Kasahara makes Toru Okada's character clearer. She is strong and bright individual and helps Toru to shape his own view. Murakami perfectly exposes deeper feelings of different people, in the context of different circumstances.

Story about Mongolian man who skins people is shocking, because I'm Mongolian and I never heard this kind of things happened during WWII. I'm not really sure whether it is based in historical fact or it is fiction. Anyway, this did not affect at all my feelings towards Murakami and his books. He is great.

Even though the book was excellent, I have to admit that, in most of cases I fell asleep while reading. But it does not mean that the book was bad; may be I felt the same way as Toru Okada was feeling while sitting in the well.

Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird starts in a way that confuses and gives a taste of everything that follows. Yet, everything that follows is totally unexpected. The main character, Toru Okada, is an unemployed, seemingly passive and unimpressive character. If you met him in real life you may forget about him only minutes after having met.

But as the story unfolds this impression seems increasingly mistaken. He doesn't turn into some great hero pulling his clothes off and showing a superman suit. Murakami is far too subtle for that. He has a better way to let Toru Okada grow on you. The more you learn about him, or actually about his thoughts, the more real he becomes and the deeper the impression he leaves on you. What Toru Okada does is amazing, yet you are not really sure what he is doing. Toru Okada himself doesn't even seem te be sure.

As the story unfolds his thoughts, his memories, his experiences pull you into a world that clearly can't be real, but a world that at the same time feels more than real. What is Murakami trying to achieve, you wonder? What is he trying to say in this book? He never really clarifies that. He just describes a series of events that seem puzzling, in a world that seems confused. Through Murakami's writing you get to know the feeling of enstrangement. You get to know a different way of looking at the world of thought as well as at the 'real' world. In the process of doing that Murakami manages to make you wonder about the reality of anything. Including that of your own life.

The Wind-Up Bird is not a story, it is a journey into someone's thoughts, and as a result, into your own thoughts. If you like clear books with heroes and villains, clear themes and clear endings, this book is not for you. If you like to be pulled aside to be shown a new way of looking at something, and if you like to venture into the unknown world of your own thoughts, you will thoroughly enjoy this amazing story by Murakami. Strongly recommended.

I really liked this book. I feel like it will be one of those books I will read again and again. Some books point at deeper truths while realizing that trying to explain those truths is pointless. This is a wonderful book. Not for those who want things to be tidely wrapped up. I really cannot state my gratitude for the wondrous imagination of Murakami. This is my first exposure to his writing. I look forward to reading more of his work. In some ways it reminded me of The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, another great book. Highly recommended!!

If you're going to begin reading Murakami books, don't start with this one. After reading "South of the Border, West of the sun," (Which I thought was wonderful), I found this book to be a lot more laborious to get through. Around the 400 page mark, you don't really know where anything is going. You have to have a lot of faith in an author to keep reading after you begin to doubt he's going to take you somewhere special in the next 200 pages. Definitely try Murakami, but don't start here.

Imagine you're doing a jigsaw puzzle. At the beginning you're excited to see where it leads. Then you concentrate intensely on solving it. Then you get frustrated because you're making no progress. Finally, you realize that the puzzle has no solution - it's impossible to solve.

If this situation would annoy you, you probably won't enjoy this novel. If you enjoy the process of learning that the puzzle has no solution, read this novel. I'm in the former camp.

Murakami has a tremendous imagination and is a great writer. He is able to convey a sense of unease without telling the reader exactly why s/he should feel uneasy. This book is engrossing, and it kept me interested.

But there are too many unresolved questions. More accurately, there are virtually no *resolved* questions. I don't need a plot that gets wrapped up with a nice bow, but I do expect a novel to move from one place to another. Either this novel didn't, or I'm too dumb to understand it.

I don't want to be too harsh because I admire this novel's originality; I've never read anything like it. But ultimately I found it frustrating, so I can't recommend it.

It is the first time I have read so thick a book written in so fine letters.

But it was definitely rewarding.

Reading this book, I was reminded of various theories in psychoanalysis, literary studies, etc.

Jacque Lacan said somewhere that in dreams or visions or something, the imagery of the violent deformation of the body such as visceration or cannibalism is a manefestation of the crumbling of the ego. And it would prelude the creation of a new ego.

Indeed, in this novel, after such violence is inflicted on a body, the phrases such as "a new person" appear.

As for me, this can be Murakami's unconscious revelation of a desire of transformation or a sort of massive surgery of the ego.

The scene of that cheerful and morbid girl (I forgot her name) bathing in the moonlight and tears -- it was sooooo beutiful!

Isn't it another expression of the desire to clean the corrupted and dirtied ego?

And the mark on Okada's cheek or the dead well. Aren't they symbols of the corrupted ego, too?

But, how can the ego be fixed?

Murakami answers the above question: by sacrifice.

After Okada sacrifices himself in the netherworld and gets out of there, the mark dissappears and the dead well begins to produce fresh water.

Sacrifice turns death into life.

Okada is Jesus Christ wearing a Japanese face.

My copy of the book accidentally came with two dust jackets. I plan to use the extra to cut out Mr. Murakami's photo and display it prominently on my wall. _Wind-Up_ actually seems to me to be one of the most explicit of Murakami's work, certainly more so than the whimpering ending of _Dance, Dance, Dance_. However one cannot deny the presence of open ends and vague descriptions throughout the novel. However, I find these to be the work's most enticing features. With a character like Toru Okada who consistenly searches for things concrete, explanations he can see and touch, the airy situations seem to taunt him, telling him that sometimes you just can't fully understand. This theme is perhaps the only one that persists throughout the jumpy, episodic novel. While I preferred the translation work of Alfred Brinbaum, whose words really hit me in the chest, I do think Jay Rubin has earned his paycheck.

One extraordinary thing about Haruki Murakami's work is its ability to blend reality with dream-like mysterious fantasy, such fantasy that absorbs and draws you in indefinitely to the world he carves.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is another mysterious ride into the world of Murakami's genius strokes of pen. Draws you in and engulf you in its mysterious and enigmatic romantic fantasy. An experience not bound by orderliness, time, and space; luring you in its sophisticated serene labyrinth and suddenly striking you with thunderous lighting that vibrates every marrow of your bones. Eventually, you will understand vividly every corner of the labyrinth and every pieces of puzzles you need to draw into a triumphant finish. All is possible by Murakami's unprecedented strokes of fluidity and lucidity.

It all began when Okada's wife disappeared without leaving a note; strange people began appearing in Okada's life; everyday occurances become tinged with a hint of unreality-- and ultimately, Okada finds himself going on a wild sheep chase across improbable landscapes and scenarios.

Perhaps the readers who questioned Haruki Murakami's purpose with scenes and imageries expect too much concrete details from a book that is meant to be surrealistic, and hence, "doesn't go anywhere" (Did Kafka's books go anywhere, in the first place?). In fact, what struck me as most profound was the fact that it simply doesn't go anywhere-- a perfectly accurate parallel of today's postmodern world.

To be a plebian and put Haruki Murakami's magic into words is to destroy its effects; words in their description have an anaesthizing effect towards the experience of the Wind-up Bird Chronicle. It is the experience in this book that gives us the thrill of reading it, that leads us through further conclusions, that ignites our imaginations and brings us to question our own lives. We live vicariously through Okada, in his surrealistic landscapes, and the experiences of those whom Okada meets.

That is to say, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle represents life.

In short, it is the experience of reading this book that presents the statement. It provides scenarios which bear no significance to the actual plot, but this very fact parallels life itself. What then, are we to make of this apparent absurdity?

The answer is: Those who are looking for quick-and-dirty quotes to issues that can't be resolved would certainly be disappointed. The key to reading this book is to look at the scenarios presented in this book, and then look within yourself.

Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is a good combination of the weirdness that turned me off his "A Wild Sheep Chase", and the transcendent beauty that had me gushing over his "Norwegian Wood". Thankfully, he's taken what didn't work in the former and made it work, and what did work in the latter and amplified it.
Our narrator here, an out of work lawyer named Toru Okada, bears a lot of resemblance to his "Norwegian Wood" namesake, Toru Watanabe. Both men are ciphers, devoid of any personality of their own. "No doubt about it: a whole day had gone by," Okada notes at one point. "But my one-day absence was probably not having an effect on anybody. Not one human being had noticed that I was gone, likely." This is how both Torus see themselves, only it was hardly true. Okada, like Watanabe, is adept at unwillingly attracting a menagerie of strange women to him. There's a pair of seemingly psychic sisters with silly names, an inquisitive and curious high-school girl who lives across the alley, and the mysterious woman who's always offering Okada a cigarette.
Most dominant of these women is Okada's wife, Kumiko. "Is it possible, finally, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?" Okada asks early on, articulating the novel's central question. It is Kumiko of which he is speaking here. She appears one morning wearing a strange new perfume. And then she disappears. The remainder of the book finds Okada searching for her, and the situations he gets himself into do a lot of work in answering his question in the negative. Take one example, in which he relates the story of how on their first date, Kumiko wanted to watch the jellyfish at the aquarium. Unfortunately, the jellyfish call up a bad memory for Okada: the time as a boy when he accidentally wandered into a school of jellyfish and got badly stung, making him violently him sick. The curious thing about this story is that he admits to never telling Kumiko any of this. Through his own actions he misrepresents himself to his wife, while paradoxically proclaiming her to be the one person who understands him. It is Kumiko herself who metaphorically answers his question, later on in the book, when she notes that, "Two-thirds of the earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see of it with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. We hardly know anything about what's underneath the skin."
Mirroring this idea, that we can't ever know another human being, Murakami's book presents itself as a confusing mixture of styles and time periods and points of view. While writing in a prose style that's comfortable for a reader to flow through, Murakami does a lot of work not letting the audience (nor Okada for that matter) see the machinations that are powering the story. To a passive reader, this can be quite disconcerting. The book is filled with tools to keep the reader off-balance: characters often tell long-winded stories, and abruptly cut themselves off in the middle for seemingly no reason; Okada asks countless questions of the people he believes to have the answers but never seems to get any; in fact, his questions are often ignored.
But a more discerning reader will revel in Murakami's post-modern detective techniques. Like Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy", "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is less about finding the answer, than about the labyrinthine path one must go through to even ask the questions. The story is: "A well without water. A bird that can't fly. An alley with no exit. And--" as Okada incompletely notes at one point. He is a narrator most put off balance, but more than willing to follow along on the adventure. "I felt as if I had become part of a badly written novel," he says. "That someone was taking me to task for being utterly unreal. And perhaps it was true." He is constantly recognizing that the little universe into which he's stepped has artificial rules. At times he becomes frustrated with the lack of cohesive explanations ("This reminded me of several so-called art films I had seen in college. Movies like that never explained what was going on. Explanations were rejected as some kind of evil that could only destroy the films' 'reality'") but he never quits on the search. The audience, in order to enjoy this book, should follow Okada's lead in this regard. If they don't, Murakami's head games will confuse rather amuse, and annoyance will rule the day. If you're not ready for a book so aware of its reader that it helpfully title chapters 'No Good News in This Chapter' and 'A Place You Can Figure Out If You Think About It Really, Really Hard', then you're probably not ready for "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle".
If you are ready, then you'll encounter 600+ pages (it's long, but not *too* long) of simply but effectively written narrative (Jay Rubin's translation once again captures the tranquility-within-chaos that is a hallmark of Murakami's prose). One that's set in Japan but bears the cultural marks of American influence. One that jumps back and forth between the recent past and "prewar Manchuria, continental East Asia, and the short war of 1939 in Nomonhan." You'll encounter an interesting use of parallel motifs, where items or events that occur in the past or in a dream or on TV reveal themselves again in Okada's waking life. Here's a helpful hint: follow the bat, the dry well, and, of course, the wind-up bird, which "comes over by my place every day and goes 'Creeeak' in the neighbor's tree. But nobody's ever seen it."

This is a superb book that deeply probes the mind of an outwardly ordinary but a very spiritual individual to whom a great many people are drawn. The courage and the steadfastness he shows in his affection towards his tormented wife also makes this a great love story. The book is an eyeopener on the war crimes of the japanese generals that went largely unpunished and the author portrays the effect it had on the a number of people and continues to torment even after several generations. A great work of literature. The style is so fluid and engaging that makes even ordinary events engaging. I wish I could have read the untranslated portions.. This is my first murakami and i cant wait to read the others.

the store.com reviews, despite being very helpful, are plagued with one major ailment: the book snob's opinion. I can't stress how furiously my scrawny arms shake when I read a defensive, hostile review chalk full of copious and unnecessary references to other books that's only purpose is to inform me why this person possesses some greater knowledge/has a "more valid" opinion then the rest of the fine people writing reviews.
It's hard to bear when these people use such revoltingly snide, pseudo-punchy literary terms as "fast food fiction," and "short attention span writing," in an attempt to emulate the scathing book reviews they long so desperately to be able to write. Tell me, how many times can one successfully classify hip literature as a product of the "Mtv Generation." Yes, it's all about the Mtv Generation. The nerve of us. We just barge onto the scene with our "fast food fiction," vintage track jackets and ipods, with complete disregard to the standards of profundity established by an aging Gen-X dufus.
Don't pay any mind to these people. Chances are, you aren't pretentious enough to have a rigid set of standards and won't send down lighting and pestilence on anything that fails to meet them. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles is wildly imaginative, and that alone makes it worth reading. Murakami writes an intensely surreal story in a simple, straightforward tone that creates a nice contrast between the books' protagonist and the events surrounding him. It's deeply emotional. I could say more, but you should just experience it yourself. It's a deliriously entertaining read. Just go out and try it. Ignore the imposters and spite the cynics.

More of a 2.5 than 3.

This book started very strong but by the end I felt it was a little too meandering and repetitive. Just felt like a big series of vignettes that occasionally got back to a main story for a bit.

However, I do love the magical weirdness that Murakami creates. Kafka of the Shore just did it better for me.

The first line of this book, which talks about the perfect song to make spaghetti to, is what made me read it, and Murakami's style, so perfectly expressed in the first line is what made me enjoy the book so completely. Murakami's writing is so unbelievably honest, and he has such an attention to details that would normally be considered unimportant to plot, but which he makes a main focus in the novel. It is full of the things that we would never admit to thinking, or wouldn't deem necessary to write down, and this makes for an interesting read because you feel as though you're reading about a real person. When you're confused, Toru is confused right along with you. At one point in the novel I found myself shocked by something one of the characters said, and looked back over the text to see if I had missed something, only to find out a page later that Toru was as shocked as I was, and just didn't want to interrupt the speaker to try and make sense out of what they had said.
This book is amazingly funny, but also incredibly creepy at times. Murakami creates a world that is incredibly realistic, and then throws outrageous things into it in a way that doesn't seem awkward in the least.
This book follows the path of a mystery, but unlike most mystery novels, you cannot try to predict "who the killer is" or in this case "why Toru's cat has gone missing." The only thing you can do is to let yourself be swept away by the tide, as if you were caught in a dream that you knew you were having, but didn't have to ability to depart from. I use this analogy because many of the scenes in the book are dreamlike, as well as some being literal dreams. In a way, reading the wind up bird chronicle was like waking up from a disturbingly vivid dream, the kind where you can remember every detail, every action, but you have no idea what the dream means. This isn't to say that I have no idea what the point of the book was, but I often felt as though I was missing some profound meaning behind every word. Murakami makes every detail and every line of dialogue important and deliberate, and every scene gave me the feeling that the meaning of the book was hidden inside it.
And perhaps it was. I cant say that there was only one meaning behind this book because I think everyone who reads it will get something different. For me, this book was about self discovery, but for others it could be about society, relationships and how they change, war, the nature of evil, living out your chosen destiny, or making your own destiny. In more briefer word though, it is simply a funny, serious, sad, exciting, disturbing, eye-opening novel that I definitely do not regret having read.

Haruki Murakami's novel, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, is an exquisite body of passionate storytelling and artful characterization that simultaneously reunites readers with the sights and sounds of their everyday lives and locks them in the grip of the past.
Toru Okada is a normal, unemployed, young man living in the suburbs of Tokyo in 1984. The story begins with Toru listening to the radio while cooking a simple meal of spaghetti. His pasta goes softer than al dente when a woman phones him and asks him for ten minutes of his time so that they can understand each other's feelings. He tells her to call back later. Moments later, his wife Kumiko phones to tell him, first of all, that it is OK with her if he decides to stay unemployed for the time being and, secondly, that she is worried about Noboru Wataya, their big, brown, striped tomcat, who has been missing for over a week. After lunch, Toru puts on his sneakers, steps out into the hot summer sun, and hops over the backyard fence to search for the cat in the dusty alley behind their house.
In the first 23 pages, Murakami establishes an intimate constellation of symbols that he sets out to explore in the remaining 584 pages. The result is a rich tapestry colored with the depths of love and life.
In the alley we catch glimpses of abandoned backyards, wandering sounds of televisions, and the softness of cool shade. Toru tells us that as a result of the suburban development of the city, the back alley gradually became sealed off on both ends. Empty and abandoned, the alley soon becomes Toru's, and thus the reader's, connection to a mysterious teenage girl and an empty well that takes Toru, quite literally, to a dream world. Ironically, the alley is really a closed space that leads nowhere.
The name `Toru' translates into `conduit' or `passageway'. Just as the view from the alley shows us the `insides' of people's lives, Toru is our connection to a world of people and events, conscious and unconscious. He is Mr. Wind-up Bird. A narrator that connects the reader to an old war veteran, a prostitute of the mind, a young mute named Cinnamon, and his mother Nutmeg.

Murakami traverses space and time to tell stories of forgotten soldiers and mass consumerism. Set in Japan in the mid-1980s, the stories and personalities woven together in the novel are rooted in the history of Japanese empire in the 1930s and 40s. Much more than a set of facts, Murakami paints history as a living, breathing entity through which he drives his exploration of the Japanese psyche. Murakami draws a powerful link between the emptiness he finds in modern Japanese society and the past that it emerges from. In so doing, he challenges himself and his readers to imagine and to confront the conscious and unconscious historical forces that shape daily life. As a work of fiction, Murakami's novel is invaluable for the interpretive freedom that it gives its readers. Rather than a book that can be read for answers, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a novel that must be read for its possibilities. In its approaches to the history of Japanese imperialism the novel offers inspiration on the different ways in which the past must be historically imagined.
In exploring history, Murakami challenges Japanese national identity. The narrative is Murakami's struggle to confront the contradictions of modern Japan, the story is Toru's struggle to take back his own identity. While Toru confronts the contradictions in his life at the bottom of the well, Murakami confronts the contradictions of modern Japanese identity by composing the oral narratives of Lieutenant Mamiya and Nutmeg and Cinnamon's meta-fictional narratives.
History is Murakami's well. Just as the well takes Toru to another world, the narratives that Murakami writes for Mamiya and Nutmeg introduce the reader to a imaginary world that borrows a sense of reality from a historical context that Murakami subtly and carefully invokes. Across the borders of Manchuria Yamamoto is skinned alive while Honda and Mamiya manage to escape back to Hailar only to become forgotten and disgraced in the battle of Nomonhan. Though both characters managed to end up back home in Japan, Honda lost his hearing and Mamiya lost his left hand. Much more than sacrificed appendages, the two characters lost their souls in Manchuria, living the rest of their lives in solitude and emptiness.
As haunting as the images were, Murakami sculpted the many stories in the chronicle in such an organic way as to imbue in each an undeniable moral and psychological weight, harmonious in a constellation of sounds, symbols, and meanings.
The weight of each narrative is rooted in an underlying memory of Manchukuo-a memory that Murakami writes as alien yet familiar, conscious but unconscious. Just as Rossini's The Thieving Magpie is unconsciously familiar, so too are the images of Japanese soldiers killing Chinese people and the `modernity' that we find in the Xinjing zoo.
Murakami is working to connect and embrace the contradictions in modern Japanese history in an effort to understand and transcend them. The work challenges and in many ways convinces readers to connect the contradictions and imagine the many meanings in fiction and in history. Haruki Murakami's novel, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, is a compelling meditation on history and historiography that crosses psychological and national boundaries and penetrates the depths of individual and collective identity. The psychological undercurrents in Japanese history are strong. Murakami's novel is an important window into the depths of those waters.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle engages your attention from the first line. The novel is humorous, tragic and disturbing all at once. I must admit, I found myself dozing a bit at intervals when either the main character Toru Okada or his friend Lieutenant Mamiya would discuss the war in Manchuria (honestly, IÕm not a fan or war stories), however I thought that the book was interesting and exciting to read.
This novel is brimming with symbolism. Toru Okada pays meticulous attention to detail and notices everything including the weather, the time, the strange lack of reality in his world, water, pleasure and pain. Throughout the book, Okada searches for something real, tangible, and "concrete" (as he puts it) so that he can have something to hold on to in his world that is sadly deteriorating and becoming more dream-like and less real every moment. For me, this book was mostly about OkadaÕs search for the concrete in an abstract world.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle tested my patience to see how long I could stand a book with a main character who hid himself in a well for about one hundred pages and reflected on life. After finishing the book, I thought about my impatience at that interval and attempted to see where it came from. This book is unlike any other I have ever read; although it is obviously fantastical and mostly unrealistic, it almost seems like the most realistic book I could imagine. I believe that if someone was at the bottom of a well, in the dark, that it would be a time of reflection and contemplation and not a point where the plot needed to take over and propel the story. I suppose that I simply expected for it to end neatly packaged, for it to have a classic resolution, but it did not. It was a pleasant surprise though, because it left me with much to think about.
I really enjoyed MurakamiÕs style, and use of symbolism and intricate details in this story because it left me with a very fulfilling experience both while I read and after I finished. However, I must admit that I was a little disappointed that I never got to know what happened to the little boy who heard the Wind-Up bird from his bedroom window, or what KumikoÕs secret was. I got so interested in what would become of them that it was a tremendous let down that I never found out. In the end, I was both happy and confused. I think I might try picking up another Murakami book, but IÕll have to wait a while. I need to recuperate.

I picked up this book a year ago and was smitten with its cover. I read the first chapter at the bookstore. It seemed interesting but a bit too everyday. I decided to wait for it to go on sale (most Knopf seem to hit the bargain rack - perhaps too literary for wide printings?).
It turned out that what kept me from reading the book a year ago is what made "Wind Up Bird" work so well. I was drawn in by the prose and the day to day events of Mr. Okada. And it is from these mundane events that the author slowly peels back a surface and reveals to the reader a second reality that is as credible as the first. I admit that I didn't realize what has happening with the two realities because the language and detail kept the story moving and I couldn't get enough of all the characters. When I finished the book, I didn't know how to categorize it, and that may be its biggest strength.

This is Murakami's masterpiece, it's everything they say, hypnotic, surreal, thought-provoking, mysterious and highly entertaining. I have a theory that the folks that realize Murakami's talent but still didn't give a good review are the type who want everything explained and resolved in easily understood and satisfying ways. I think that some people feel unsatisfied if an author doesn't come up with pat explanations for everything. I think that takes away from the fun of thinking and contemplating the mysteries presented for yourself, and is less realistic. As Alan Moore writes through the character of Hollis Mason in his great graphic novel, "Watchmen" "Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really get's resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that." I think people can enjoy great modern authors like Murakami if they don't think it's his job or purpose as a writer to explain everything to them. Rather if he gets you to think and wonder about the nature of life and reality while entertaining you at the same time, he should be thanked for doing a great job.

Warnings about water. Precise notation of time, the complete lack of it. Women who become one another at critical moments. Baseball bats and blue-black marks. Cats, birds, jellyfish, tigers and elephants (oh, my!). Young soldiers and little boys. Sex in dreams and real consequences. Love and dysfunction. War, gore, and fear. And more water. Confused yet?
I was, but I was also intensely interested. The various intertwining narratives split their time between the concrete and the nebulous, the ordinary and the supernatural. The result is a schitzophrenic reality with a smooth finish, that can be read and enjoyed simply as a wonderful story. I never felt that Murakami was trying too hard.
However, the layers of symbolism that make up the story are difficult to analyze and understand. Water is obviously a major unifying thread. Everything in the story is built around the "flow" of life, of events. This flow is marked by the behavior of the literal water in the story, from tap water to the ocean to a dry well. Mr. Honda tells Toru to follow the flow, and he obeys, even as it takes him to ever-stranger places. Another theme deals with identity. Lt. Mamiya and the Kano sisters are empty. Kumiko, May Kasahara, and Nutmeg's women have disturbing and nameless things lurking within. Toru must combat the evil that lives inside Noboru Wataya, and rescue both his beloved wife Kumiko and himself, armed only with a vague sense of unreality, a gateway well, and a baseball bat. In the end, he succeeds, though just barely. His victory is not total, but it does have a quiet kind of triumpth.
This book is not "about" any one thing. It is better understood through feeling than through thought, a characteristic that makes it difficult to describe; it must be experienced. When I finished it, I felt bewildered, yet serenely satisfied.

What an astonishing story! Here's a nice fellow who from page 1 meets extraordinary people: a young teenager with incredibly profound remarks and questions, a sister pair Malta and Creta Kano who seemed to have deliberately crossed his life, a mother and her silent son who are keys to the secrets of his own life, an astrologist who gives him precious hints and sends him a friend who indicates through his own story that fate is part of it. In addition, Toru because of his simplicity and his open mind becomes some sort of knight, the only one capable of stopping the absolute evil. The more I progressed through the pages the more I felt that all the characters were part of a cosmic chess game, each one of them related by some means to another disregarding time and space. It seems as if not only the story is part of the cosmic arrangement of things, everything in the book is part of the story, the page numbering, the breaks, the chapter headings, the picture and the drawings, the final comments on the font type. In addition, I got to know so much on the Japanese presence in China and Outer Mongolia, and some parts of the story playing in the Siberian ice desert is simply frightening you to the bones. A really magical story that leaves no one indifferent.

I have not been this enthralled with a book in quite a while. I happened upon this book in November, and picked it up last week. Well, I am not finished yet, and I am not sure that I want to finish. I am simply enjoying the journey that I am experiencing. I have already purchased Murakami's other available works in the States, for future pleasure. I wouldn't mind acquiring the rights to this book, writing a screenplay, and turning this wonderful book into a film.

Toru Okada has no plans. He's quit his job, and he's just taking some time to consider his next move. *Something* has plans for Okada, though. His life is wheeling around him uncontrollably. First, his cat disappears, then his wife. And a collection of odd women begin to parade through his life, each "packaged with her own special, inscrutable problem."
Murakami's simple yet sensual and elegant writing makes this mind-bending tale incredibly intriguing reading.

This book will keep you interested and entertained from start to finish. It is a sort of fantasy, mystery, love story. The plot is actually three plots. The protaganist is searching for his missing wife, is developing a friendship with a teenage girl all the while Murakami is retelling a veteran's horrific war story.
The book is hard to interpret, my belief is that it has many meanings but the main point I took away from it is the power of imagination and meditation in acheiving our goals and desires. It is beautiflly written and I would give it a higher rating were it not a little slow in spots. Still, an excellent, mesmerizing read

An amazing mystery wrapped around the cruel Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the colonization of Manchuku the brutal Soviet liquidation of the Japanese expeditionary forces in north east China and dark family secrets and the occult in Tokyo. Could not put it down!

This book is a fictional GEM. Just dare to take on Haruki's metaphysical world, a world in which everything in life comes together at one single point, fusing the real with the imaginary - if every detail is researched over and understood your head will implode with information. Haruki brings forth a story that seems to be very logical but driven by extraordinary events that somehow, somewhere, make sense - the novel turns into a cook book, a mathematical equation for what takes place to Okada - every piece and detail could be explained from something personal in the main characters life - a very simple and ordinary life so he thinks. What is happening to him is just another statistic. I have read nearly all of Haruki Murakamis literature and consider this along with Kafka on the Shore his best novels.

The disappearance of a cat signifies the end of unemployed Toru Okada's easily explainable life. His wife leaves him, and soon he finds himself in the company of some very strange and psychic women and a disaffected teenager. Inexplicable happenings at first baffle Okada, but soon he takes them all in stride for lack of anything else else to do. Murakami has created a complex dream world of a global Japan, where the past horrors of the war mingle with coffee from Dunkin Donuts. This book is reminded me somewhat of Heller's Catch-22; it fuses grim reality with the ridiculous and the impossible, imparting its wisdom through laughter and an unbelieving shake of the head. Even though Murakami's literary gymnastics stumble near the end, the show is well worth a less than perfect landing.

there's not much of the book left.

Just about everything you could (or, more probably, as was the case with me, could'nt) imagine as far as sex goes, except sex between a man and a woman bonded by love and committed to one another in anything as outlandish as marriage.

If sex sells, that might just explain why most reviewers found it hard to put the book down...

An oddity amongst all of the prurience is the fact that most of it is related second-handedly (to the main character, Toru). The actual, 1st person sexual encounters are comparatively few, and related rather discreetly. Whether this is intentional or not is hard to determine, for one is wary to credit the author with anything resembling an old fashioned literary device when the post-modernist attachment to ambiguity is so evident. Non-sequiturs merely reflect reality, don't you know?

Second-handed accounts and hearsay abound in the novel. (It ties in with Murakami's penchant for name-dropping western musicians, and their music at every possible turn. It is an effective, charming ploy used to good effect in setting the tone, but the problem is that it is used extensively in all Murakami's work I've read up to date. It eventually raises the suspicion of an unconscious, provincial fixation with Western culture. But, of course it could be justified by a fan of his writing as a deliberate ploy to reflect globalization )

In the same vein, every-one Toru meets in the novel seems to be hell-bent on revealing the most intimate and esoteric details of their lives to him. In another time this would have been noted as an unrealistic flaw, but such is the license granted to writers of the ilk that the line dividing a stroke of genius and careless extravagance has been all but obliterated, effectively pre-empting any such criticism, it would seem.

That said, Murakami writes so that one wants to read. And to keep on reading. Even when he doesn't write about sex. It is an original, florid imagination which claims such a large audience with such off-beat narratives. As has been remarked in other reviews, it may ultimately prove to be an unrewarding experience, but his writing makes for compelling reading nonetheless.

He obviously enjoys writing, and it comes across. He is never laboured. There is something in his writing which redeems the obvious flaws. It has the slickness of an advert you want to watch over and over again. Which seems to be an indispensable skill for the art of prose, competing with all else that demands our attention. In that Murakami achieves what many other serious novelists dream of: to hold the flighty, fickle modern audience spellbound, as the majority of the reviews here attest.

Eventually, though, the proof is in the eating, not the puff, of the pudding. Whether hype can transform itself into a product that endures remains to be seen. Only time will tell. I, for one, have left the table with the suspicion that once the sugar-rush wears off, the want for substance will start to nag.

Caution is therefore advised, Murakami may prove to be addictive.

A surrealistic novel of a marriage gone wrong, buried secrets from WWII
and social commentary of modern Japanese society.
Everybody has a back-story and the netherworld beneath the placid
surface of modern Japan produces a strange and compelling tale.
This is vintage Murakami.

I can't believe I'm the first person to review this incredible novel. If you like your fiction with a touch of the surreal you'll love this book. It starts out as a typical mystery of man looking for his wife who has disappeared but it takes many weird twists that can not be explained but have to be experienced. If you watched Twin Peaks and remember the log lady, the weird giant and that freaky speaking dwarf with fondness then Murakami is the author for you.

I so enjoyed "the wind-up bird chronicle" it was like reading a beautiful tapestry.. all the threads moving across the fabric and circling and twisting into a montage of connected scenes. The story of one house-husband's identity crisis... starting with a missing cat and runaway wife...

I have chosen The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to review because it exaggerates every Murakami trait. You only have to read one on his novels and you have read them all. I'm not exagerating. It's the same story, same characters, same scenes over and over. I love Murakami's style and I initially enjoyed his symbolism and characters, but he never alters either from book to book. Wow! Just a slight change would be nice, but it is the same main character with a different name disillusioned with his job in an industry that changes only a tiny bit from book to book. Who's tired of the underground well/water symbolism? Who's tired of the music references that add little if any real tone to a scene? And please...in every novel a woman disappears or is killed or in Murakami's world vanishes into a ill-defined nether region. He could have been a great author...sad. And by the way, if you are going to pick one to read make it "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." At least it has that relatively clever "even chapters being the second half of the odd chapter's story" thing going on.

I agree with a previous reviewer that the end of this 600 page novel isn't satisfying, in the traditional sense. Most American fiction has a predictable happy ending for the hero. This one doesn't.

But that may just be part of the different feel one gets when reading foreign authors. I've read Marquez and other South Americans, but this is my first foray into Japanese writers. The imagery, the revealing life of the mind, and the unpredictable plot, kept me glued to this book from early morning until 1AM.

To claim that Murakami is a one trick pony, well, that's just absurd. This novel is nothing like Hard-Boiled. In that novel, the bifurcation of worlds is explicitly expressed, in this one, the theme is much more subtle. And calling this fast-food literature because it makes references to modern culture is as narrow minded as ever. Apparently the previous reviewer wants to revel in the traditional cherry blossomed excesses of Mishima. I don't know how the comparision between Mishima and Murakami can be be made; that's just comparing apples to oranges. Murakami was more influenced by American authors like Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, and F. Scott Fitzgerald than he was by japanese nationalists like Mishima, Kawabata, or Oe, who or more interested in the quintessentially japanese than the quintessentially human.
There is no one in the world writing like Murakami at the moment. And if Murakami is a one trick pony, then a writer like Pynchon is nothing more than a broken record, spewing out the same turgid, nonsensical, entropic rigmarole every other novel. Murakami is post modern, but he doesn't resort to the pretentious, ignorant nihilism of impostors like Don Delillo or Jonathan Franzen. Those guys in my opinion are the fast-food writers.
I just can't praise Murakami enough. He defies classification. He mixes the best elements of science-fiction, mystery, and the literary into something that blows his competitors out of the water. So to the previous reviewer who believes that Murakami is shallow and frivolous, well, he's had about as many short stories published in the New Yorker as John Updike, which isn't exactly a magazine devoted to fast-food literature. The way he tackles the themes of alienation, loss, yearning, and the unconscious, is something to be marveled at, and not disparaged simply because of his so-called "hip" and jazzy elements. For those of you who don't get literature, a writer uses his environment as a base to create his narratives. For Murakami, pop-culture,the ravages of capitalism, and everything we tend to know as the modern world are the foundations upon which he builds his mesmerizing tales of human tragedy and human love. Don't expect the heroic fireworks of Mishima in a Murakami novel, because that day has passed. In our time, men die slowly, imperceptibly, not with the flourishes of Mishima's samurai heroism but with a whimper, so much so that we can't tell who's alive and who isn't. Are we dead, are we alive? How can we ever know? Murakami tries to help us out. You can't expect much more from an author than that.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle engages your attention from the first line. The novel is humorous, tragic and disturbing all at once. I must admit, I found myself dozing a bit at intervals when either the main character Toru Okada or his friend Lieutenant Mamiya would discuss the war in Manchuria (honestly, IÕm not a fan or war stories), however I thought that the book was interesting and exciting to read.
This novel is brimming with symbolism. Toru Okada pays meticulous attention to detail and notices everything including the weather, the time, the strange lack of reality in his world, water, pleasure and pain. Throughout the book, Okada searches for something real, tangible, and "concrete" (as he puts it) so that he can have something to hold on to in his world that is sadly deteriorating and becoming more dream-like and less real every moment. For me, this book was mostly about OkadaÕs search for the concrete in an abstract world.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle tested my patience to see how long I could stand a book with a main character who hid himself in a well for about one hundred pages and reflected on life. After finishing the book, I thought about my impatience at that interval and attempted to see where it came from. This book is unlike any other I have ever read; although it is obviously fantastical and mostly unrealistic, it almost seems like the most realistic book I could imagine. I believe that if someone was at the bottom of a well, in the dark, that it would be a time of reflection and contemplation and not a point where the plot needed to take over and propel the story. I suppose that I simply expected for it to end neatly packaged, for it to have a classic resolution, but it did not. It was a pleasant surprise though, because it left me with much to think about.
I really enjoyed MurakamiÕs style, and use of symbolism and intricate details in this story because it left me with a very fulfilling experience both while I read and after I finished. However, I must admit that I was a little disappointed that I never got to know what happened to the little boy who heard the Wind-Up bird from his bedroom window, or what KumikoÕs secret was. I got so interested in what would become of them that it was a tremendous let down that I never found out. In the end, I was both happy and confused. I think I might try picking up another Murakami book, but IÕll have to wait a while. I need to recuperate.

I’m a little late jumping on the Haruki Murakami bandwagon. But he’s an extraordinary writer. Murakami’s fiction and talent have no limits. What I find most appealing is the humor and offbeat story lines and voices that are as myriad and creative as Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The Murakami book's I've read to date seem splintered for the first half. You stick it out and stay confused, only to see it resolve in the end.

I took six months to wade through The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, following the plot but not really seeing the overall point. Perhaps there is no point. The main plot thread found resolution...sort of. Everything else was left dangling in an anticlimax of an ending. It makes me wonder if the publisher made him remove pages.

It does, however, have the prototypical Murakami writing style, and his classic characters. But it goes nowhere...for 595/600 pages.

I was dissapointed. I recommend Hard Boiled Wonderland or especially South of the Border, West of the Sun.

What makes this book so enjoyable is that the surreal elements of the story are always set in everyday occurrences. Murakami does not let the book run away on him or the reader, and this also makes the strange events and characters more unsettling. What makes them even more believable is the narrator. He's a bit of a loser, an average Joe, who doesn't fully comprehend what's happening to him, and yet there's something so sympathetic about him that the reader can never lose interest in him. He's the heart of the novel, the warm core of it that keeps the reader engaged.
Another way Murakami keeps the reader engaged is the masterful use of subplots. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of those big books that leave you feeling as if you had read several different novels.

With this book, the first Murakami I read, I was set spinning on an incredible journey of awe. I remember having this same feeling when I first read The Magus. I was completely swept up in this book and thought about it long after finishing it. Accidently left it in a spa lockerroom when I only had 50 pages left, realized I had left it far behind and headed immediately to a book store to get another copy retrieving the first copy weeks later. I now own two. I need two so I can continuously lend them out to my friends! Since reading The wind up bird chronicle I have read at least 7 more of his books- I adored many of them but not to the same degree of the first. It is absolutely wonderfully great!

I was teetering between four and five stars. I really wish these review sites offered fractionals, or better yet, percents. Nevertheless, this book paints an interesting and engaging world. The style and application are quite unique. I would argue there is something for just about anyone here: comedy, suspense, the supernatural, you name it. If you're not sure you want to devote yourself to 600 or so pages, pick up one of his short story collections first. I know I will most certainly read more Murakami in the future.