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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami

The first chapter of this appears to be a revision of "The Wind-Up Bird And Tuesday's Women," a short story collected in "The Elephant Vanishes". Details were changed, but it is the same story.

I do not know if the first chapter was extracted into a more-or-less self-contained short story, or if the short story was extrapolated into a larger work. I suspect the latter, not only because it's the common case.

Let it first be said I really, really liked this book. Reading Murakami is like eating a big stick of fresh normandy butter or a big pile of seared foie gras with a little maple sauce. It's rich and perfect and I can't stop shoving it into my head.

With that out of the way, this book lacked a certain integration. It definitely felt as if there were three or four short stories, expanded and brought together at some point in a larger work.

Many of these threads touched at a single point in the story, in a way that advanced the plot slightly. After that point, the primary character in the thread continued relating their story. Because this happened, and because these threads were all kept trailing forward, I expected them all to tie together in the end.

To break the suspense, they did not come together. I have no idea why Lieutenant Mamiya had to run into Boris The Manskinner years later, both Gulag prisoners. Mamiya's contribution to the primary plot line was minor, and could have been as complete if one of the other characters, such as the dry cleaner, had said,"Hey, you can do a lot of thinking from the bottom of a well."

This book, and my favorite of his, Dance Dance Dance, all rely on a certain melding of dream and reality. In this way, they may be compared to the better-known "melding of dream and reality" in our popular culture, the stranger films of David Lynch.

The reason I say this is two-fold. On the one hand, a dream-like red herring distracts and draws attention away from the primary plot line, obscuring what is actually a pretty linear chain of development. On the other hand, these apparently indulgent digressions provide a rich opportunity for the artist to display their mastery of the craft, whether that craft be writing fiction or making film.

This book is dark, and parts of it are rather unpleasant to read. Bad things happen to decent people, and horrible things happen to slightly bad people, and really bloody awful things happen to bad people. Because of Murakami's narrative skill, a very well-formed and clear image will appear in the reader's head.

I cannot recommend the book to someone who needs a clear resolution where all the plot elements and twists are tied together, nor can I recommend it to people who don't want to read about a substantial amount of misery.

If Pynchon, Joyce, or Faulkner frustrate you, if you throw up reading Bret Easton Ellis, or if you think Neal Stephenson is the top of all postmodernism, you probably shouldn't read this book. Your brain will itch when you hit page 570-580 and realise that there's no feasible way all the plot elements can come together without some horrible Farina-esque battery. (Sorry, I used up my Stephenson metaphor up above.)

For those who like reading a highly-skilled writer's (or translator's) work, or enjoy the japanese metaphysical fiction of someone like Banana Yoshimoto, I can't recommend Murakami enough.