Murakami is an exceptional writer. His story-telling is so immersive that I usually find myself awe-struck when a shocking event occurs in the novel. He is able to grab my attention and submerge it into the reality of the book like no one other ever has. He is truly remarkable, I think. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (TWBC), first published (in Japanese) in 1994, is no exception. It's six-hundred pages of _pure_ Murakami. Fully-powered by the magic of a world where dream and reality are threaded together, Murakami makes us question our own reality and perception. Can we really distinguish dreams from "the real world"? Evidently, this is not Murakami's only work that delves into these matters. If anything, it's another example of a permanent style. Nevertheless, in my opinion, TWBC reaches a level of clarity that other books (e.g., Kafka On The Shore (2002)) do not reach. Maybe its thanks to it being longer, or its just a matter of the story. Whatever the case is, I believe that this book reaches a close second against my favorite Murakami book, Norwegian Wood (1987). Although I praise the achievement of the TWBC, I believe that Norwegian Wood is still my favorite and, if you are a Murakami neophite, you should definitely go there first. That is my belief, at least. **[Spoilers from here onwards]** I love the way Toru fights his way through the unknown depths of his (and others) consciousness to confront the malevolence of his brother-in-law. And the descriptions are so vivid! Many times I felt that I was myself experiencing Toru's sacrifice and struggles. What an author...Murakami never fails. When the book ended, a few questions remained in my head: - What is up with (the lovely) May Kasahara? She said she felt/thought that she was Kumiko. Also, she definitely has some kind of connection with Toru. Do they become lovers? Is she a younger Kumiko? Maybe the daughter Kumiko and Toru never had? - What happened to Kumiko? Did she fully recover? Why didn't she want to speak or see Toru? Did she change? Maybe she has no face? Maybe something catastrophic will happen if Toru and she meet? - What happened with Cinnamon? He didn't want to be seen by Toru. Was he involved with Noboru Wataya in any way? Did he develop a blue mark, after Toru 'lost' his? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do have my own little hypothesis about what was going on in this beatiful and crazy world that Murakami created: this is a metaphor of one person's mind. This whole mess is just the insides of one human being. Breaking it down: if each character and element of the novel is a thought, or a part of the mind, we can reconstruct the story as being the tale of a mind in trouble, where emotions are stuck (the well is dry) by a malign part of the mind (Noboru), which is saved by (almost blind) courage (Toru). For me, this explains why Toru could not have died in the end, and why some things could never be as they were before (e.g., the relationship between Toru and Kumiko). It also explains the interconnection of everything: a man's experience cannot be bite-sized, it must be taken as a whole where everything is connected to each other thing (much like the philosophy of Siddharta of Hermann Hesse). Finally, when Toru's imagined May Kasahara says "you saved lots of people", I think this represents him saving his thoughts from deep darkness. This is why Toru had no other option but to behave the way he did. If he had not done so, the entire self/mind would have collapsed. Obviously, I have not developed this idea very clearly, but I like it. I like this metaphor more than thinking that the story is "simply" an example of a world of fantasy. Thanks =) created_date:: [[2017 08 11]]