1Q84: What was the Point?

I've finally made it to the end of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, and after 1200 pages and no real answers, I'm struggling to see the point of the whole endeavor. The book was alright, but why it was dragged out to that length is beyond me; perhaps it was only done so that it could be classed as an epic. There are some great ideas in it, but they're only loosely explored, and too much time is given over to plot instead of surrealism. In the third book it becomes excrutiating as the chapters are alternately focused on three different characters, and nearly every single thing that you read has already been covered. It's difficult to feel any tension when you know exactly what is going to happen. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle fit in way more in half the number of pages, and it's so much better for it. One of the main problems for me is that the book is more plot-driven than his usual work: where Bird Chronicle is a piece of mad surrealism that you can happily get to the end of without answers and draw your own conclusions, or just be beautifully lost in everything that happens, 1Q84 is instead a sci-fi-thriller without much of a pay-off. If it had been balls-out surrealism the lack of closure would be fine, but the style of the book means that you expect more from the ending. It's like the loose ends are too loose to be satisfying, but not loose enough that you can get lost in their meandering paths. I read somewhere that Murakami initially stopped the novel after its second book, but returned to it a few months later to write a third, and I personally would have preferred it to end at the conclusion of Book Two. I'm sad because I love Murakami, and I will definitely re-read the other novels of his that have previously bamboozled me, but I don't think I'll pick up 1Q84 again. Luckily, I've still got about ten books in his back catalogue to get through.

And, while I'm at it, Murakami's boob obsession is bizarre, and absolutely cringey to read. You can barely get five pages through 1Q84 before Aomame, the main female character, is talking about her tits, or somebody else's, constantly saying "if only my breasts could be a little bigger". I found it very odd that Murakami went on about boobs so much when I've never noticed it in any of his other books. I don't know why it wasn't all cut in translation. And while they were at it, they could have cut another five-hundred pages and I probably would have loved 1Q84. It seems like a missed opportunity to me, and I'm upset :-(

Estella's Life as a Looper

The other night I went to see a play version of Great Expectations featuring Jim Fenner from Bad Girls, which was reason enough to go. It was very interesting how it was staged: all of the action took place around one set, Miss Havisham's house with its dining table topped by a moulding wedding cake and surrounded by decrepit artefacts and cobwebs. The costumes were really cool too, with most characters emblazoned in mad Alice in Wonderland-style Victorian fancy dress. But the best thing about it, as with anything to do with Dickens, was the characters. Every character in it is so alive that when you read them you can imagine them sitting next to you. Estella is my favourite: a young lady moulded by her ruthless guardian, Miss Havisham, into becoming a man-hating fiend, who'll go through life breaking hearts just to see the pain she can cause, all the while taking solace in the feeling that she has no heart of her own. Estella is doomed to live this life thanks to Miss Havisham's own heartbreak, which made her feel the need to "protect" Estella in such a way that, although she couldn't suffer the pain of Miss H, she could also experience none of the joy of life.

As I'd seen the time-travelling film Looper the night before, I couldn't help drawing parallels between the two. Great Expectations' characters are in a way very similar to those in Looper: fated to live out their existences in a seemingly unbreakable cycle, but forced through their lives by the weight of benefactors' expectations rather than following their own paths again and again as in Looper. In a way maybe Estella is a time traveller of sorts, doomed to live her life forever, in slightly different heart-breaking ways and in different bodies, as each woman in the chain is destroyed by love and passes on their loathing to the next generation, leaving their child cursed to make the same mistakes.

Getting Better With Age

I was first attracted to the author Ned Beauman because he has the same surname as me (with a different spelling). After finding out that he was younger than me and already a twice-published novelist, I was intrigued to see how developed he is as a writer at such a young age. I've been reassuring myself for ages that it's fine if I'm a bit of a lazy writer, if I don't see myself being anywhere near ready to get a novel published for the next few years, because there's so much to learn that it's impossible to write properly until you're about forty. Yet here he was, published at twenty-six, and with back cover blurb that sounded very interesting.

It was reassuring to read Boxer Beetle and see that, although Beauman is clearly a very talented author, he still has a long way to go before he reaches the peak of his powers. The premise and historical background to Boxer Beetle were very interesting, but sometimes the action lagged a bit. The things I most enjoyed were the little scientific asides on eugenics and scary-tough beetles, and that a character had trimethylaminuria, a condition that makes you smell of fish. I'm looking forward to reading his next novel, The Teleportation Accident, when it comes out next year in paperback (I hate hardbacks) and following Beauman's career as he matures. It's exciting how much better you get as you write more. I read back stories that I wrote a couple of years ago and see dozens of mistakes that I wouldn't make now.  There's a long way to go, but at least I've got the rest of my life to improve my writing. I feel sorry for sportsmen who hone their craft and should be getting better and better, but are instead constantly battling the decline of their bodies. Despite all of the improvements to their mental performance and understanding of their game, they are always struggling to match the highs of their physical peak, and then they get to their mid-thirties and it's over. It must be very frustrating to be sat on the pundits' couch, knowing that if you had a body twenty years younger you could be one of the best players in the world, but having creaky knees and a bad back instead. In contrast, it's probably better to be unhealthy as a writer. Moving around is overrated.