The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle might be one of the best books I've ever read. It's my third Murakami novel, and while the first two were very good, there seemed to be some slight indefinable quality missing that stopped them short of being great, but with Wind-up Bird everything in Murakami's writing comes completely together, and results in a fascinating exercise in surrealism. The main character, Toru, is mostly a foil for all of the weird and wonderful people who inhabit this bizarre Japan, and the novel is so bursting full of ideas that 600 pages really isn't enough to fully flesh out the paths of all the characters involved. In a nutshell, it's about a guy who quits his job and spends his days housekeeping. After his cat goes missing, and his wife becomes increasingly distant before leaving too, he embarks on a quest to win her back, actively doing little but being dragged around by the actions and stories of a phenomenal supporting cast of characters who propel him through his journey. It's packed full of brilliant surreal ideas and some very entertaining history on Second World War Japan and the puppet state that they created after invading parts of China. Every chapter is bursting with ideas, I can't recommend it highly enough.

My one criticism of the book is that the first two parts build up a couple of characters who aren't that involved in the final third, but maybe I just need to re-read it and see if things make a bit more sense. It's certainly a book that demands re-reading, maybe even studying, something that you could immerse yourself in. I always find this annoying about books: you can watch a film or listen to an album over and over again, learn every tiny nuance of it, but a book is usually only going to be read twice at most, and has so much more to get your head around to begin with. If I could stop time I'd sit and read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle over and over until I knew every sentence off by heart, and knew exactly what Murakami was trying to say with every wonderful word. Although actually, I suppose if I could stop time I'd rob a bank and rave around the world forever, and I'd still never get round to reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle as many times as I'd like. Perhaps the only way you can get involved enough in a book to truly understand it is to write it yourself.