Hypnotic and surreal. There’s no real other way of describing a book like this. The thing with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is that it’s long, and largely doesn’t really get anywhere for a huge amount of pages. That is, until it suddenly does and by that point you’re 200 pages in, and gears slowly start to turn and the pieces begin to slowly connect, and you’re too invested to not finish. Murakami’s writing voice is too fun to read, too distinct — even if he’s writing about some mundane cycle for 50 pages.
The book largely tells its story in a haze. Those who have read Murakami before may be a little disappointed by the beginning — I know I was, and for the first little bit I wasn’t sure I was reading the same writing that I fell for in Norwegian Wood. Make no mistake, though, this is easily one of Murakami’s masterpieces because of how grand his story plays out, and how many long digressions he takes to thoroughly examine Japan’s society at-large and its crimes in World War II. What really constitutes the present-day?
But with examinations of Japan aside, he concurrently examines the protagonist and his failing life. Like many of his other works, he explores alienation and the self. How do we cope with sudden events? Who really are we, or the people around us? The underworld he dreams up has no real parallel in other authors’ work. It’s unknowable, chaotic, nightmarish, and utterly captivating.
The final third of the book lacks the shine of the previous two thirds. But this doesn’t really detract from the book as a whole. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is extraordinarily complex and there’s much to think about. This certainly isn’t a book where everything can be put into a clean narrative. Frankly it’s not something I felt I understood at all at its end.
This is very much worth a read. A modern masterpiece to be studied and re-read.
4.5/5
Written 3 July 2022 Adapted from my review on Goodreads.
Notes
The English-language translation (and any derived from it) by Jay Rubin was forced to cut several chapters out of the original book. A fan translation is online here.