Sputnik Sweetheart: A Novel

Haruki Murakami's "Sputnik Sweetheart" (2001) is a novel with themes of rejection, frustration, and lack of self-knowledge. There are three primary characters, a nameless young man who is the narrator, Sumire, a young woman who aspires to be a writer, much taken with Kerouac and the beats, and Miu, an apparently successful and polished career woman in her late 30's. The novel involves a romantic triangle between these three characters. The narrator is in love with Sumire, but Sumire is romantically uninterested in him or in any man. Sumire instead finds herself deeply attracted to Miu, whom she meets at a party. The plot of the novel consists of the working out of the triangle between Sumire, Miu, and the narrator.
The slender,spare story of this novel is greatly enhanced by the many ways in which Murakami uses musical themes. Sumire was named after a song by Mozart with a text by Goethe which her mother heard on a recording by Elizabeth Scwartzkopf and Walter Giesking. This song, I found, is Mozart's "Das Veilichen", K. 475 (the violet) the only song Mozart set to a Goethe poem. It tells the story of a beautiful young woman who does some callous things. I think the song is a symbol (another key concept in this novel) of the story as a whole. It is good to read a book that can make creative and appropriate references to Mozart and music -- not to speak of Charles Peirce's philosophy of signs and symbols.
Miu aspired to be a concert pianist before an event occured which changed her life. There are outstanding discussions in this book of music and of the joy of playing the piano. The love of music is tied closely in this book to the welcoming and acceptance of one's human sexuality.
There is a spiritual theme I find implicit throughout this book which might have been more fully developed. The book led me to think about the nature of human desire, about the relationship between sexuality and intimacy, and about frustration and unhappiness resulting from the lack of self-knowledge. The characters in this book are all lonely and all exhibit deep sexual frustration. The exploration of these issues suggests a consideration of the nature of desire, sexuality, change, and self-awareness that are profoundly explored in many religous traditions.
I didn't find the characters in this book fully bore the weight Murakami put upon them. The male narrator for me was the only appealing character in the book. Even here, I had trouble getting involved with a young man who remains deeply obsessed with a woman who rejects him physically in favor of a woman. Miu left me cold, and I didn't like Sumire. The book reads quickly and well, and is highly evocative in its spare prose. The book stayed me and stimulated by thought and reflection long after I had finished it.

Sputnik sweetheart is a story of Sumire- a young struggling writer who seems to understand and need nothing but to write; and her relationships with K- the narrator and a young man who loves her and Miu- an older woman whom she falls in love with.

With Sputnik Sweetheart, Murakami again takes us into his world of surrealism, and despite all of the unreal and un-relatable things happening to the characters you find yourself feeling like you understand these people. When Sumire feels like she must put everything on the line and express herself to Miu, you share her feeling of desperation. You almost want to have an unrequited love hidden with you somewhere to stand up and also shout "everything or bust" with her. When K is standing on a boat feeling an expanse of loneliness, you feel lonely with him- as if you also have a hole in your heart that's trying to pull your whole body in with it.

Its a great book about both feeling lonely and driftless, and also really connecting with someone.

With each new Murakami I read- that one becomes my favorite and I imagine myself meeting someone who has never read Murakami and saying- start with this one.

And so in the same way, I say- If you havent read Murakami, start with this one.

This book is both brilliant and extraordinarily insightful. Murakami has captured the true essence of one woman's journey through life trying to integrate and distinguish her sexual identity. The story is particularly exemplary in its tenderness. The characters are treated with care and empathy. The author truly gives the reader a gift of personal intimacy on many levels at many times in many situations.

The protagonist, Sumire falls in love and thus starts the journey of the book and the character. Sumire is hit by a coup de foudre, a bolt from the blue, when she realizes that all of a sudden, she is madly in love with Miu. Miu though, like Sumire herself, is also a woman. Yet this fact does not deter Sumire, who is sure that Miu loves her, so she pursues this love.

Miu does love Sumire, but is incapable because of an unrelated incident in her past, of giving herself sexually to any other human being of either sex. She is not homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual or metrosexual, she is plain Asexual. She does not have sex with anyone. She does not reveal this fact to Sumire.

One night, Sumire finds out herself about Miu's incapacity after an attempt at sexual intimacy. After this, she disappears to take a personal journey as she sorts all this out in her mind. Ultimately, she does sort it out.

Once again Murakami examines homosexuality and heterosexuality; but here he does it with them side by side. His intuitive insight into the feelings and caring of people for each other on a micro level is shockingly realistic. Finally, his writing style is wonderfully rich, yet simple in its use of language and concepts. The book is recommended for all readers over the age of 15. It is highly instructive and emotionally sublime.

Lately all Murakami seems to be writing about is a love triangle, or maybe it just seems that way. The last I read was Norwegian Wood, which was a love triangle. And wasn't South of the Border, West of the Sun offer some kind of a triangle? And I'd read an excerpt of this novel in The New Yorker earlier in the year, titled, "Man-Eating Cats." I thought it was pretty bad.
So as you can see, I had my biases going into the book. And for the first fifty pages or so, it was Murakami on repeat -- the same nonchalant male narrator, the same quirky female character...but then something happened. As usual, I fell into his story big time. It's not a bad story at all, and as he tells it, Murakami addresses a very prevalent theme: loneliness. This book is about all forms of loneliness, irreparable, irretrievable loneliness.
My favorite Murakami is Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and this one doesn't come close. I'd rank it right around those other two books of his I mentioned in the beginning of this review.

Not my favorite Murakami novel, but a nice little novel. I feel like it was really 3 character sketches rather than a singular story and each had their interesting points. Some very vivid and memorable scenes mixed in to a short novel. I would not recommend as someone's first taste of Murakami, but it is a good choice for a fan of his work.

If there is anything which fuels us into moving down out of the trees and from there, everywhere, it must be passion and desire. It couldn't be boredom, that only leads us to the television, and nothing great can come from that. But p. and d. sends us on our way toward religion, art, music and a new and improved toilet paper. Sometimes, it leads to our destruction.
"Sputnik Sweetheart" is set in contemporary Japan, but apart from a few cultural references, it could be read a century from now and still sound current (a fact which threw the Kirkus Reviews writer who thought it was set in 1957 from the Kerouac and Sputnik references at the beginning of the book. The anonynmous reviewer must have missed the Mac Powerbook being used at the end of the novel. Ah, well, the book is only 210 pages long, and Kirkus doesn't pay very much for its opinions).
All great love stories have a triangle, to keep the happy or unhappy ending from happening too soon, and in this case it's Sumire, the dedicated unpublished novelist, Miu, the older woman and object of her desire, and the narrator, a teacher and close friend of Sumire, who loves her deeply. Like the Russian satellite, they go round and round and round, sometimes crossing paths and sometimes trying to connect. Murakami describes and explores their relationship in a quiet, restrained fashion, cooly post-modern, but clear in its intent.
With a book this short, telling more would be to tell all. The facts are few, but richly embroidered with plenty of meditations that could be read in a number of ways. The life of the book exists not just on the page -- and it's a pleasure to read Murakami's work on that basis alone -- but what goes on in your head as you track the orbits and these lonely satellites.

Have you ever feel that you don't really understand what's going on around you, that you don't really belong, and you don't really connect with anyone or anything? That life is like 2 Sputniks, passing each other in space, never really connecting? Or that you could disappear off the face of the earth and no one would notice but the world would keep on going? In this concise nvoel, Murakami sucessfully painted a vivid picture of what human alienation feels like -- loneliness, despair, the need to love and be loved in return.
The story is about two loners, K. (a teacher) and Sumire (a novice writer), who found each other through their common interests in books and music. After the disppearance of Sumire, you could feel the longings and despair of K. It's not often that people connect with one another and once found, it is to be cherished. But K. lost Sumire -- Sumire just disappeared one day without leaving any clues to her whereabouts. For Murakami, such is life. Things happen, full of absurdities and confusions, but still, one must go on because it is the only life we have.

Sputnik Sweetheart-- as you can read elsewhere in the review, it's about Sumire, a 20something would-be writer, who feels friendship for our narrator, K, a slightly older teacher, though he adores her and desires her. Instead, Sumire falls in love with Miu, a mysterious older woman. Though they're never what you'd actually call a couple, Sumire ventures to join Miu at work, and they travel to Europe, where Sumire disappears "like smoke," as Murakami writes. Our narrator is summoned from Japan to help solve the mystery.
If there's a central theme, it might be the examination of loneliness, and how people try to meet, and nearly meet, but never quite do so. Though Murakami doesn't hide this below the surface, his style is such that the reader never feels as if attending a lecture, but rather it resembles listening to the all-too-seldom musings aloud of a very wise, close friend.
A never-consummated relationship, a close relationship between one who is madly in love and another who has no such desire to take "that step," is the source of great sadness and lonesomeness. I've not encountered a writer yet who writes of this as well as Haruki.
If you've read Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart should hold few surprises for you. It has the simple story structure of Norwegian Wood, and indeed many of the plot elements are very similar. But there is a shadowy, creeping supernatural flavor to the novel also, an otherworldliness that reminds me of _A Wild Sheep Chase_ or _Wind-up Bird Chronicle_.
IF YOU'RE NEW TO HARUKI MURAKAMI: I wouldn't start with Sputnik Sweetheart. He's written many wonderful novels, and I would recommend _Norwegian Wood_ or _A Wild Sheep Chase_ instead: _Norwegian Wood_ because it's simply a better all-around novel, and _A Wild Sheep Chase_ because it's a better introduction to Haruki's work.
Sputnik Sweetheart is a little delicacy, a short and bittersweet treat. I eagerly await Haruki's next work.
ken32

This slender, haunting novel follows Sumire, a typically strange Murakami protagonist who wanders through life trying to be a writer until she falls passionately in love with Miu, a sophisticated businesswoman. The story has all the existential questioning of J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye or Donna Tartt's The Secret History. The narrator is 'K', who fell in love with Sumire when they were in college together. The narrative follows Sumire as she becomes attracted to Miu, goes to work for her, and eventually travels Europe with her, ending up on an unnamed Greek island where things go horribly awry. It's a pleasure to watch the intersection of cultures as the characters come together in Greece, both because of Murakami's keen eye for the real and for the crisp, clear prose of this translation by Philip Gabriel.

As in Murakami's other novels, the nature of reality is plastic in this otherwise mainstream novel. By hewing so close to reality, the author leaves the true nature of the events reported for the reader to decide. Is what he describes reality, fantasy? The subtle changes he rings on a world we think we know, and the stealthy unfolding of the strange events, will lull you into complacency, so that when the real becomes surreal (unreal?), it's difficult to look back and identify the point at which things began to change. At just over two hundred pages, this focused, spare novel is a great place for readers new to Murakami to start.

"Sputnik Sweetheart" was my first Murakami book, and I am fascinated. There will be more Murakami in my future.
The book reads like the few moments of unreality before settling into sleep. Like something from the comic book "The Sandman," this is a story of dreams, moons, love and cats.
With the title "Sputnik Sweetheart," I was expecting some sort of hard-metal story, where love shatters on technology or maybe something about the fast pace of modern life in Japan. I certainly wasn't expecting this gentle, silent love short story, told to the sound of Brahms and with the flavor of French wines.
Of course, the style of writing and the ideas are the forefront of the novel, with the actual plot taking a supporting role. The characters are wholly unrealized, mere glimpses of caricatures. They love, they live and they do so poetically. They have ideas, and those ideas are worked out in the medium of the written word. Minimalist seems to be thrown around, and maybe that is so, but I don't see it. The words flow, and hold together well. The plot is fleeting, an altogether unresolved, the the half-memory of a dream that made sense at the time, but seems strange in the re-telling.
An excellent book, one best read right before bedtime.

I remember when the Soviets sent the dog, Laika, up in the sputnik to circle the planet. Laika was a sacrifice, and for the little girl, me, that was not a good thing. I still feel that way. I am still haunted by how terribly cruel we are to take our creatures and use them like that. We do it to ourselves every time we turn our backs on a friend's needs or whenever we keep love silent rather than risk rejection. We actually lessen ourselves, metaphorically and often literally never quite realize that we have lost something that cannot be replaced. Murakami knows. He has been there, done or witnessed that, and goodness can he write about it!

The sacrifice of dogs is part of a conversation the narrator has with his friend and secret love, Sumire who suffers from serious writer's block. The narrator uses the metaphor of the walled cities in China, how the gates were made of the bones of dead soldiers, and how dogs were sacrificed so that the bones could be baptized with the power to revive to protect the walled city. "A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side."

I felt like I was alone in a sputnik circling my own shadows and dreams and memories and cowardly acts as I immersed myself in this novel of a young man's realization of what matters most in our lives and of what leaves us feeling less. Always metaphorical, Murakami can be appealingly literal and writes the most erotic imaginary sexual encounters and describes male frustration as well as anyone writing. The various ways of love in the story all resonate and one can only hope that as the story continues beyond the book that all find joy in what they have kept of themselves.

I first found Murakami's books, not realizing that he was such a popular writer, and I have read them out of order or randomly so far. And so far, I've not been disappointed. I equate this to beginning a passionate affair and finding each new encounter more because of what has come before. In this book, Murakami is in genius mode. He can make writing less more. Sputnik Sweetheart is a great place to become acquainted with the monkey mind that is Murakami.

Thus far, I'd only read Murakami's more "fantastic" novels, such as Wild Sheep Chase and Hardboiled Wonderland so Sputnik Sweetheart was somewhat of a shock to me. Yet there are some similarities: nameless (almost), young, male narrator; cute, quirky, attractive, young female character with whom the narrator is enamored; mystery; and the occasional unusual setting.
Sputnik Sweetheart follows the story of K, his love for the quirky Sumire, her attraction to the mysterious Miu and the mystery surrounding Sumire's disappearance on a remote Greek island. Filled with plenty of angst, unrequited love and unrealized dreams, Sputnik Sweetheart is perhaps more introspective than many of Murakami's novels but it's no less enjoyable. Murakami's sense of humor, despite the sullen subject matter, shines through and his overall style makes this a unique novel.

The first-person narrator, a young primary school teacher, is enamored of a brash young woman named Sumire, who is completely devoted to the idea of becoming a novelist. Although she is pleased to have him as a friend, she is not attracted to him romantically, and instead falls head over heels for Miu, a sophisticated older woman with a mysterious secret in her past that prevents her from consummating this, or any relationship. That doesn't stop Sumire from going to work for Miu as a personal secretary, or from embarking with her on an extended business trip through Europe, but it does keep Sumire too busy to keep up with her old friend, or continue the writing that once meant so much to her. Our hero listlessly tries to get on with his life, until he receives word that Sumire is missing - vanished without a trace from a small island in Greece.
Unfortunately, about halfway through the novel, we become aware that the rules of reality have shifted on us, and we're suddenly in a world where anything's possible - a change that sadly undercuts the fairly prosaic, modern-day love story that we thought we were reading. After reading about frigidity, platonic love, and lesbianism, we're suddenly dealing with doppelgangers and alternate universes. Perhaps Murakami is trying to study the nature of life-changing experiences, but by making his examples so other-worldly, this reviewer finds it difficult to empathize with characters whose problems are so plainly impossible. To put it another way, if a good friend of yours had a near-death experience in a car crash, or on the operating table, you would likely be far more sympathetic than if he told you he'd been abducted by aliens from another planet. Instead, you'd be sorely tempted to assume he was off his nut, and if he didn't get over it, you'd probably find yourself distancing yourself from him, and that's basically what happened to this reviewer and this book. The temptation is very strong to say, "Come off it. Nobody's going to believe that, so either tell us what really happened or else forget the whole thing".
Murakami is clearly a talented writer, but this book doesn't know what it's doing and never goes anywhere. Surely no one will buy this book as science fiction or horror - 95% of the story is as everyday as Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. But the outlandish scenes totally upstage the rest of the story, effectively rendering the rest of the book irrelevant. Perhaps Murakami had a short novel about a lesbian romance and didn't know how to end it, so he took a story fragment about an out-of-body experience and used that for his Second Act, after which the story stumbles aimlessly along for another 50 tedious pages before fizzling out altogether. In any case, the resultant hybrid simply isn't fair to the reader, who enters the novel in good faith expecting a real world resolution, and instead finds no resolution at all.

I consider some of Murakami's books high quality literature. I enjoyed this book, but this one is just a fun novel but not a literature. Though entertaining, it lacks the depth that other Murakami books have. I think Murakami's attraction is the "life and death" issue in stories, but this book is very light in terms of that. I still give 5 stars because I felt thrilled as the story evolves, and especially I enjoyed the feeling of Europe.

I read this in the Japanese language (the orignial the way Murakami wrote) in a Japanese public library while I visited Japan. It took me about two hours (would have taken days if in English), and I thought it was like having watched a movie because a movie usually runs a little less than two hours and also the story is lighter than other Murakami books.

However I may compliment this book, I don't consider this to be one of the best Murakami books.

I just finished Sputnik Sweetheart. And I loved it. So I went on the store to read reviews, to see if other people agreed with me. I guess not. Many people complained how the book lacked depth; one reviewer even said it was poolside reading. These remarks took me by surprise, as the book reached out to me on many levels. It gave me something to think about.

One idea in this book is that we are all broken vessels, and we want others to complete us. But perhaps that's too much to ask. After all, everyone is looking for something different, and many of us aren't even looking. So we all continue to be broken, to live each day isolated and unfulfilled. Is this life as we know and understand it? At times. I highly recommend this book if you want something to mull over. The plot and ideas are not straightforward, but the emotional impact is there. You don't have to look hard; just let the book guide you. Murakami will remind you of what you already know, beautifully and introspectively.

"Sputnik Sweetheart" is centered around two very close friends. Both are intellectuals, both are alienated from their societies, although the teacher appears to fit in (the security guard senses something "not quite right"). Unfortunately for them, the male teacher is decidedly heterosexual, while his female friend is gay. The friendship between the two is totally captivating. At the same time it is used to explore themes such as loneliness, loss, sexuality, and the most obvious - the beauty and importance of a deep friendship.

A third character enters the scene. Unlike the first two characters, she has a very interesting, worldly resume, but I do not find her nearly as interesting. She has an exceptional experience, with strong symbolic overtones, but it is not grounded in anything you know about her character prior to this experience.

Haruki's writing can be very poetic. Toward the end of the novel, surreal elements are introduced and increasingly predominate. They have some kind of internal logic, but it was the writing and the teacher's humanity which carried me through, so that I very much enjoyed even that part of the book.

A very pleasant surprise to find a translation (from the Japanese) that reads well. This is a briskly told story of unusual relationships that culminate in a mysterious disappearance. The mystery owes more to E.M. Forster than Agatha Christie but Murakami handles it smoothly. The novel falls short of greatness at the end, but Murakami is a writer worth returning to. I read this when it was published in 2002, and it still resonates 12 years later.

This good novel by Japan's Haruki Murakami has essentially three characters: the narrator, a teacher in his late twenties (a Murakami alter ego, one supposes); the object of his affections, Sumire, an erratic writer in her early twenties; and the object of Sumire's affections: Miu, a married businesswoman in her late thirties with a secret past, that takes Sumire as an assistant and as the companion in an eventful trip to a Greek island. The novel finishes with too many loose ends (at least, I did not understand them), but for most of the times the mixture of existentialism and minimalism, along with Murakami's good grip as a narrator makes one interest hold. Not among the author's best, but still a good novel about the loneliness and despair of modern urban life.

I am still uncertain I grasped all the underlying meanings and intentions of Haruki Murakami in this poetic story but know that this was a unique read; one which requires time and thought in order to really "get into" and enjoy. The story takes several turns and its focus shifts between its three characters.
The story starts with the description of Sumire, a bit of a lost soul who wants to become a writer. Sumire writes all the time, but something is lacking. Her male friend, the narrator of the story whose name is never revealed, encourages her that "a story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side..."
what he really means is that Sumire needs more time, more life experience, maybe more pain in order to breath life into the story; Sumire however, seems to remain on the search for the "other side". When Sumire falls in love with Miu, a much older business woman, her life undergoes a tremendous change and suddenly she is no longer able to write. As if somehow the focus of her life has shifted... The voice of the narrator who has been telling us about Sumire changes its tone and we now understand that he is an active participant in the story - he is in love with Sumire but understands that his love for this meaningful and special soul companion will not be returned. This is the pain he has to suffer.
The story reaches its climax in the Greek island where Sumire and Miu have gone for vacation. One night the narrator receives a telephone call from Miu who begs him to come to the Island at once.
It is never clear who is the real hero of the story as the tale shifts from one character to another and all characters are endearing in the same tender vulnerable way. Maybe the male narrator, speaking in its own voice is the one who touches your heart the most but you can feel the pain and lonliness of all characters and their endless search for something which is impossible to get.. at least not on this side.
The story is definitely surprising - starting from its special name and characters and follow its intriguing tale, touching the real and the supernatural in a way that is in total harmony and agreement with all the book.
Sputnik Sweetheart deals with the presence and absence of people and how absence can be present in every nuance of ones life. I think this is also intended in the name of the story and the explanation given in the preface to the term "Sputnik" ending in the words: "but the satellite was never recovered"...which should have given me the first clue to what is about to happen, one of the many clues and signs that Murakami will give along the book. The book by the way is not depressing as it may sound. Sad and poetic yet you can feel a life force running underneath.

This was my first Murakami novel. I remember being very fascinated by the strange encounters of Miu and encounters between Miu and Sumire. (Of course, I came to realise that this was exactly Murakami's forte - the strange and interesting incidents)

K. sounds like a perfectly normal guy who is attractive to certain woman. However, he is in love with Sumire. His love for her is sweet and simple, it's selfless and free of sexual intentions.

Sumire is a dreamy young lady who aspires to be a writer but lacks experiences. She inevitably fell in love with a beautiful middle-aged woman Miu and soon became her personal secretary.

Together, they went abroad to live together.

Finally, one night, Sumire decides to confess to Miu her love, but only to uncover Miu's weird encounter when she was much younger.

The plot of this book is very interesting and appealing. The translation is sweet and simple, just like what someone will write in the winter. The ending leaves us with our imagination, as to whether Sumire will return or not.

If you haven't had any Murakami yet, this is a good book to start with, the most simple book to start with, as you will find his other books much more content heavy than this..

One complaint I've heard so often about Haruki Murakami is that over and over, he writes the same book. Even if this is true, so what? He writes beautiful books. And really it's not the same, none of them are the same . . . just as a sonata is made each time around the idea of form and scales, notes and instrumental possibility, or a painting built up of layers of brushstrokes on a canvas (or other surface), so Murakami creates and constructs with his personal and specific set of tools these exquisitely wrought novels and stories that always seem to take too long to make their way into English.
This novel, the most straighforward of them all, except for maybe South of the Border, West of the Sun, deals the least with the other sides, the under- or over- or through-, peripheral, parenthetical, whatever -- that occupy so much space in the other books. Maybe what I mean is it deals with it the least directly. His characters obsess over the idea, that there is another world, another side, another something, touching lightly on the eternal dialogue about which of any of them is the real one, and this uncertainty, this question informs every aspect of our three main characters' existences; they ask it of each other, though indirectly (this book is all sleight-of-hand), and never staying around to find the answer. They do not want to know: any answer, it seems, would be the worst possible answer.
It's about perfection and ideals attained and lost, the continuation of the now empty flesh, such that the soul and spirit become myths and bedtime stories told to the very bodies they once colored and infused. There seems to be an inverse proportionality of the relative smallness of the book to the hole left in your heart when he's done with you this time. It may be my favorite, though I don't know when I'll have the strength to read it again.

I have vowed to myself to read only the classics. From Chekhov to Zola, there are a lot of classics to read in the world, and what I've read is miniscule at best. Murakami caught my eye, though, and he is one of the few contemporary authors I have read and loved. Within a week's time, I have already read three of his books, the first being Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

Hard Boiled Wonderland questions the validity of manipulating human minds. It was very daring in both its scope, its subject matter, and its genre-breaking antics. I have found Sputnik Sweetheart to be a glaring contrast to this, but this does not make Sputnik Sweetheart a bad book. On the contrary, it visualizes to the reader Murakami's genius - him being able to create stories both grand and myopic in nature, and telling both kinds in such ways that move the reader and leave a profound feeling. This time, it was truly a meditation on the solitude of human longing amidst queer occurrences in the story.

Sputnik Sweetheart simply distills the story of a love triangle and loves unrequited in sparse, minimalist prose. What is so special about this? "... I can't put it into words," said Sumire, "... but she still did put it into words," said K. This is what the story is all about for me. It was the magic of contradiction, of paradoxes and enigmas we barely look at because of our selfish lives, passing us by. This is a good glass of wine, wine that you can twist and turn in your mouth; wine that prolongs its taste to enable you to eat heartily. This is a reminder, a bittersweet reminder of the value of simple things like life and love. Excellent.

I read Norwegian Wood from the same author a little earlier. It is interesting that several characters are similar accross the two books.
It is really a nice book. Once again the author focusses on a few characters and their psychological profiles. THey are all made very real and very human.
However, unlike Norwegian wood, this story also contain some fantastic elements. The story starts with a realistic narrative tone but ends in a fanstastic manner. Because this is unexpected, one keeps thinking about it.
I can only recommend reading the book.

Sputnik Sweetheart was the first Haruki Murakami novel I ever read. He quickly became one of my favorite novelists and I went on a mad quest to read every novel of his published in English.

Sputnik Sweetheart is a short, bittersweet novel about three people trying to make connections in an alienating society. K, a young Japanese elementary school teacher is in love with his best friend Sumire. Sumire is a determined young woman who is so focused on being a novelist that she does not pay attention to love or very much else actually. This changes suddenly when Sumire goes to a cousin's wedding. At the wedding she sits next to Miu, an older, highly attractive married Korean woman who runs a very succesful wine import business. Sumire falls for Miu hard and fast. Miu befriends Sumire immediately and makes her into a project of sorts. She hires Sumire as a part-time assistant, makes her learn to drive, take French and Italian lessons, and become more cultured and wordly. Miu also replaces Sumire's baggy and grungy wardrobes with more feminine and fashionable clothing.

Through out Sumire's transformation K falls more deeply in love with her and also begins to feel sadder about it. He is not sure how to react to Sumire's newly discovered lesbianism. Is it a simple crush, a youthful experiment, or a life long decision?

Sputnik Sweetheart is a novel about the joy and angonies of unrequited love and first love. It is about whether true love is merely a romantic ideal or something that can actually exist and happen. Haruki Murakami is a master writer whether he is describing emotion or physical location. Anyone who has ever been in love should be able to appreciate this novel.

All Haruki Murakami readers are at a disadvantage I think when they read his novels in translation as the translator stands in between Murakami and his readers. How much of Murakami do we really "get?" This thought was running through my head while I read "Sputnik Sweetheart," a very simple and straight forward novel. A novel with little for me in which to sink my teeth. Which is not to say that SS was not mildly diverting and nicely written or re-written by Phillip Gabriel. But a major Murakami novel or one with high-toned intentions and thoughts...? No not at all. What "Sputnik Sweetheart" is is a very high quality beach or pool novel. And in that sense it succeeds admirably.

Always the master of forlorn emotions, Murakami has done it again. Frequent readers of his work will spot some familiar elements, yet I think he manages to avoid being caught in that trap of a middle aged writer unable to produce a new idea. Even if his characters' stuggles with love and life has played out before, this is a writer that just puts it on the page better than almost any other. Closest in feel to "South of the Border, West of the Sun", but I liked this one more than that one.

What a wonderful, fresh, spare yet rich book. It starts out like a very modern love story, with self-absorbed characters yearning to make connection with the other who is unknown and disengaged, more an outward semblance of a companion than a person in an actual relationship. Then, believably yet fantastically, it slips into a Japanese ghost story reminiscent of Henry James in its mixing of the mysterious with the all-too-real yet unknowable unconscious. I picked this book up serendipitously, as one of the few English-language books in a Seville bookstore that might arguably qualify as readable, and I found a treasure.

Most of Murakami's work revolves around a common theme -- the sense of isolation people feel and how easy it is for this loneliness to break your spirit and leave you little more than an empty shell. Sputnik Sweetheart focusses on the sense of loss people feel when they discover that love is fleeting and realize that the closeness they share with someone today will soon fade and may never be recaptured.
The plot is fairly straight-forward. K is in love with his best friend Sumire, an aspiring writer who considers K to be a close friend, but nothing more. Sumire, in turn, is madly in love with Miu, a married wine importer who lost the capacity for love when she went through a traumatic experience as a student. Sumire sets aside her writing to work as Miu's personal assistant, and the two head off to Europe on a business trip. Sumire mysteriously disappears, and Miu summons K to help search for her.
Each of the novel's characters is scarred by loss, and like the Sputnik, each character feels isolated, connected to the world and the people around them by the most thin and tenuous of threads. Miu suffers a traumatic experience as a young student which leaves her half a person and turned her hair white. As K sees her for the last time, she is a hollow shell, and her white hair reminds K of bone that has had every bit of life bleached from it.
Sumire's sense of loneliness is even greater. Having never previously experienced or even understood love, she falls completely for Miu only to realize that Miu will never love her back. Like two satellites briefly passing each other in space, never to meet again, Sumire realizes that the has grown as close to Miu as she ever will and that she will eventually lose what little she has. She imagines another world where Miu's lost half still lives and abandons our world to seek Miu there.
K too feels isolated. As Sumire becomes increasingly enamored with Miu, K sees his best friend and closest confident slip away. When Sumire disappears for good, K does his best to move on with life, but the sense of loss stays with him, and as the novel concludes, K finds himself tempted to join Sumire somewhere in that other world.
If you're a Murakami fan, you need no encouragement to read this book. If you're new to Murakami and are wondering which work to start with, Sputnik Sweetheart will provide you with an excellent introduction to Murakami's writing and leave you wanting more. This is a beautifully written novel, and Murakami's simple, eloquent prose conveys they characters' loneliness like few other writers can. Bravo Murakami! We eagerly await your next book.

To some extent, all Murakami's books are tightly structured along a philosophical theme (i.e. life and death in Norwegian Wood, conscious and subconscious in Hard-boiled Wonderland, and despair and action in Dance Dance Dance), but in Sputnik Sweetheart he goes into a territory less universal - sign and symbol, idea and spirit, and presence and absence. I used to see Murakami as a philosophical novelist, but now I feel like I'm reading a novel written by a philosopher.
The storyline is only a cover for Murakami to unfold his reflections on these themes - Sumire was swept by her love for an otherworldly woman; meanwhile, the earthier "I"(is he yet again nameless?) quietly awaits her love. It's his discussion on the contradictory forces behind these characters that makes Sputnik Sweetheart an intriguing read: Sumire was named after a Mozart's song with the most beautiful music and the most callous lyrics; Miu is a foreigner who can no longer speak her mother tongue; "I" is a passionate, kind, intelligent teacher, who nonetheless sleeps with the mother of one of his pupils. All of them feel the force of destiny, and each answers in one's own way: Sumire disappears after her quest for heavenly beauty; Miu is no longer a living person, but a memorial to the person she was, just like the statue of her father. "I" remains in this world, resists, and hangs on to a thread of hope that nobody else would call hope. All three are aware that they need some fresh blood - the spirit - to revitalize their being - the white bones.
Murakami's approach is even more abstract and conceptual here than before, and it enables him to hit some sublime emotional notes, for example, the horrid scene when Miu watchs her own rape, and the final scene when "I" waits for Sumire to call back. The pain was so pure and transcendental - Murakami definitely spills some blood over the white bones here!
The prose is absolutely stunning: it flows like a piece of music, with tones and colors and subtle emotions, even a bit serene sloppiness. Hat off to the translators.

A story of wistful beauty, love, and longing. A strange "through the looking glass" tale, told from a unique perspective. Not only was this a beautiful piece of writing, but it was full of things I love - lesbians, unrequited love, Beatniks, magic... Also, it didn't read at all like a translation, which really impressed me.

"And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."

Teased by several stories in the New Yorker, I purchased "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" in 1998 and was blown away. The combination of average guy, difficult circumstances, and a Japanese take on magic realism was a potent one.
This book is not as good. It's interesting, but not something that would make you immediately read everything the author had written. I'd put it third after Wind Up and Norwegian Wood, but my scale is skewed because Wind Up is a masterpiece that takes up the first five places of my 1-10 ranking.
Good Murakami, and he's very good; but nothing like his best.

I really enjoyed this novel, but it does not rank among his best in my opinion... Well worth reading if you are a Murakami fan, but otherwise dive into one of his other novels first (maybe After Dark or Hard Boiled Wonderland ~ both of these are relatively short and quick reads).

I find that the characters in this novel are among the least likable and to me that is not typical Murakami.

Fitting snuggly somewhere between the surreal-realism of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and the rain stained melacholia of South of the Border, Sputnik Sweetheart is totally compelling, beautifully inexact, bafflingly comprehensible study in love and heartache.
From the first sentance you can hear the music that resides in the background of all of Murakami's fiction, the quiet lullaby of a world like ours but slightly skewed, like watching the world through a tear soaked whiskey tumbler. The story of K (One of many nods to Western Fiction through the book) and his doomed affair with a girl who may possibly be gay or may be not, it follows a conventional line, a simplistic plot until things begin to divert, digressing into the bizarre in the way that Murakami does so well. People disappear, people drink beer, people talk about man eating cats, people talk at night, see magical music bands on hills and get arrested for shoplifting.It is Murakami's genius that both the mundane, and the mythical, feel as real as the chair you sit on.
To describe wht happens is to take away the delicious pleasure of Sputnik, is to somehow denigrate the sheer delight of the prose and the characters. It's like falling in love with somebody you shouldn't have fallen in love with, only to find that you should have after all. Make sense? Possibly not, but neither do life and love, a fact Murakami is comfortable exploring and the reader is happy to discover.
As essential as sunscreen in summer and log fires in winter, Sputnik Sweeteheart will hold you till the last page and make you feel you've got loving arms around you for months. Wonderful

Like other reviewers, i find myself buying every Murakami book waiting for another Wind-Up bird. Or at least another Hardboiled. I guess that's my (our) fault. Whatever. The point is, if you haven't read everything of his already, pay attention first to the first half of his career. That's where the majority of the gold lies. At that point, you'll be so hooked on him, you'll want to read this one anyway, even though there's a fair amount of reviews telling you it's not so great.

This was an interesting novel. I don't think this was one of Murakami's best, but definitely interesting when you compare it to Franz Kafka's novel "The Castle". Obviously he is a fan of his. I think Murakami wanted to write his own version of "The Castle". I'm going to compare the two novels a bit.
1.) One of the Main charachter's name in "Sputnik Sweetheart" and "The castle" is "K".
2.) They are both searching for something and the same outcome is given in both. In "The castle" K searches for a high-rank member of the castle. In "Sputnik Sweetheart" K searches for Sumire.
3.) They both travel to a foreign land. In "The Castle" K arrives in a (if I remember correctly) nameless village. And K in "Sputnik Sweetheart" arrives in Greece.
4.) The endings are very much the same. Both leave the reader in a state of wondering. I don't want to give away the ending so I won't go further.

I could be wrong, but these similarities seem too significant to look past it.

This novel should have been a novella. The core of the novel is about 50 pages long, and really good, but it takes too long to get to it. There is a unique quality of strange ethereal mystery at the core. Fortunately, it's a quick read so you don't feel like it wasn't worth it. It ends like After Dark, leaving you hanging.

The best thing about this author is his tender understanding of people.

My only complaint about Sputnik Sweetheart is that it is too slim a novel. How I wish Murakami made it longer. Anyway, this novel is written in the typical Murakami fashion- poignant,riveting and mind-bending. Though Sputnik Sweetheart is by no means groundbreaking the characters of K and Sumire touched my heart. Both of them so painfully young and sad.

Sumire to K: "Other than wanting to be a novelist I've never wanted anything so much. I've always been satisfied with exactly what I have. But now, right at this moment I want Miu. Very very much."

These words from Sumire sum up the intense longing palpable all throughout the novel.

I can feel empathy towards Sumire though my personality is different from hers cause isolation had once been a part of my life.

This is one novel that I can read over and over again.

A few years ago, after seeing a Murakami story in the New Yorker, I picked up this book and decided to test the waters. Unsurprisingly, I loved it, from beginning to end- and I see it as the perfect introduction to Murakami's body of work. This novel, unlike many of Murakami's others, is very simple (at least on the surface), but still manages to embody many of his common themes. Having later read most of his other works, I still come back to this one as my favorite. It captures, for me, what all the rest attempt to- a sense of real beauty in the magical, but incredibly lonely world his characters inhabit.

i hear that the japanese publishing companies can be unforgiving with their pressure -- trying to get authors to consistently produce product on schedule. well, if kodansha's to blame for this one, shame on them.
i've been a fan of murakami's for several years now, and i like all of his books to a greater or lesser extent. this is definitely the least of them, in my opinion. this new permutation of his traditional narrator character superimposed over a narrative -- that seems nothing so much as shoplifted from a banana yoshimoto novel -- ends up trite and stale. oh, what is love? it's a guy who likes jazz and whisky with a hard-on for a cute girl who may or may not sleep with him for no readily apparent reason. thanks, mr. murakami, but you can do much, much better than this.

I've read all of Murakami's English translations now, except for Underground, and this has to be my least favorite. It just left me when an empty feeling. I realize this is one of his more popular books, but it just didn't do it for me. If you are new to Murakami, read Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, or Norwegian Wood first.

What kind of Magic is this? Haruki Murakami's prose is sweet and simple, but the effect is way beyond its parts, rich deep and tangled. I have been reading a few novels of girls running away with older women recently, but this is the most intriguing. Three hearts in a tango, each dancing to a different tune.

Huruki Murakami is one of the best authors out today. If you haven't read anything by him then I suggest Norweigan Wood. I think it is his best although all his novels are great including this one. You won't be disappointed with this purchase.

This is not a sappy tale about unrequited love. Instead, Murakami casts a positive light on a frustrating friendship and an ethereal connection that are very real. His characters endure uncontrollable forces that drive eerie encounters and realizations. And the reader grasps that a feeling or memory of love, however fulfilled or unfulfilled, remains a source of motivation.

Anyone who praise this book for its surrealism and isolation is totally missing the point. I believe, the readers of this great novel seem to miss out on one very important theme in this novel.
This novel deals with many themes of lust, love and loneliness, but it's about a young Japanese woman traveling to distant place which is very unsafe idea in itself.
if you pay attention to the ending, and what takes place in Ferris wheel is about Sexual exploitation and sexual slavery that is so rampant in our culture. it deals with themes such as human trafficking, sexual slavery, forced prostitution and porn industry where a select group of women from parts of world, Japan, Russian, Eastern europe and find themselves in very vulnerable position filled with dangerous threats and sexual exploitation which leads to forced prostitution, suicide and being disabled, death for some.
Women get drugged all the time and get sexually exploited right in front of us. this happens so much yet very little attention is being given to its issue. look at how many women become detached and get raped over and over in front of cameras for porn production and in prostitution. and how easy it is to ignore that and simply have detached male perspective on its issue.
Haruki Murakami is an important writer not simply for writing great surreal science fiction type of novel but he actually is addressing issues that are very dark but very real, therefore his work carries over significance socially and politically.
This is Not a book to be simply praised for its entertainment value and surrealism but for its realism and social significance.

This is the story of a strange love triangle, wherein the main character disappears. There are some nice moments in the book, but it seems as if the writer was short on plot lines and never really finished it, and didn't bother to connect a lot of the narrative to the plot.
He seemed to set up a lot of metaphor and other nice images but never used them to their fullest.
It was meant to be a melancholy love story + a mystery, but it ended up being a complete waste of time and ink.