Print List Price: | $22.00 |
Kindle Price: | $13.99 Save $8.01 (36%) |
Sold by: | Random House LLC Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
- VIDEO
Audible sample
1Q84 (Vintage International) Kindle Edition
“Brilliant . . . an irresistibly engaging literary fantasy.”—The Washington Post
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.
A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is a striking feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateOctober 25, 2011
- File size3286 KB
Customers who bought this item also bought
- What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren’t you just in another, larger one?Highlighted by 3,267 Kindle readers
- Komatsu believed that mental acuity was never born from comfortable circumstances.Highlighted by 2,835 Kindle readers
- “If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.”Highlighted by 1,919 Kindle readers
- “You can have tons of talent, but it won’t necessarily keep you fed. If you have sharp instincts, though, you’ll never go hungry.”Highlighted by 1,685 Kindle readers
- This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: “At the time, no one knew what was coming.”Highlighted by 1,527 Kindle readers
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In parallel, a math teacher and aspiring novelist named Tengo gets an interesting offer. His editor has come upon an entry for a young writer's literary prize, a story that, despite its obvious stylistic drawbacks, strikes a deeply moving chord with those who've read it. Its author is a mysterious 17-year-old, and the editor proposes that Tengo quietly rewrite the story for the final round of the competition.
So begins Haruki Murakami's magnus opus, an epic of staggering proportions. As the tale progresses, it folds in a deliciously intriguing cast of characters: a physically repulsive private investigator, a wealthy dowager with a morally ambiguous mission, her impeccably resourceful bodyguard, the leader of a somewhat obscure and possibly violent religious organization, a band of otherworldly "Little People," a door-to-door fee collector seemingly immune to the limits of space and time, and the beautiful Fuka-Eri: dyslexic, unfathomable, and scarred.
Aomame names her new world "1Q84" in honor of its mystery: "Q is for 'question mark.' A world that bears a question.'" Weaving through it, central motifs--the moon, Janáček's Sinfonietta, George Orwell's 1984--acquire powerful resonance, and Aomame and Tengo's paths take on a conjoined life of their own, dancing with a protracted elegance that requires nearly 1,000 pages to reach its crowning denouement.
1Q84 was a runaway best seller in its native Japan, but it's more instructive to frame the book's importance in other ways. For one, it's hard not to compare it to James Joyce's Ulysses. Both enormous novels mark their respective author's most ambitious undertaking by far, occupy an artificially discrete unit of time (Ulysses, one day; 1Q84, one year), and can be read as having a narrative structure that evinces an almost quantum-mechanical relationship to reality, which is not to say that either author intended this.
More to the point, the English translation of 1Q84--easily the grandest work of world literature since Roberto Bolaño's 2666--represents a monstrous literary event. Now would somebody please award Murakami his Nobel Prize? --Jason Kirk
Review
“A book that . . . makes you marvel, reading it, at all the strange folds a single human brain can hold . . . A grand, third-person, all encompassing meganovel. It is a book full of anger and violence and disaster and weird sex and strange new realities, a book that seems to want to hold all of Japan inside of it . . . Murakami has established himself as the unofficial laureate of Japan—arguably its chief imaginative ambassador, in any medium, to the world: the primary source, for many millions of readers, of the texture and shape of his native country . . . I was surprised to discover, after so many surprising books, that he managed to surprise me again.”
—Sam Anderson, The New York Times Magazine
“Profound . . . A multilayered narrative of loyalty and loss . . . A fully articulated vision of a not-quite-nightmare world . . . A big sprawling novel [that] achieves what is perhaps the primary function of literature: to reimagine, to reframe, the world . . . At the center of [1Q84’s] reality . . . is the question of love, of how we find it and how we hold it, and the small fragile connections that sustain us, even (or especially) despite the odds . . . This is a major development in Murakami’s writing . . . A vision, and an act of the imagination.”
—David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times
“Murakami is clearly one of the most popular and admired novelists in the world today, a brilliant practitioner of serious, yet irresistibly engaging, literary fantasy . . . Once you start reading 1Q84, you won’t want to do much else until you’ve finished it . . . Murakami possesses many gifts, but chief among them is an almost preternatural gift for suspenseful storytelling . . . Despite its great length, [his] novel is tightly plotted, without fat, and he knows how to make dialogue, even philosophical dialogue, exciting . . . Murakami’s novels have been translated into a score of languages, but it would be hard to imagine that any of them could be better than the English versions by Jay Rubin, partnered here with Philip Gabriel . . . There’s no question about the sheer enjoyability of this gigantic novel, both as an eerie thriller and as a moving love story . . . I read the book in three days and have been thinking about it ever since.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“Fascinating . . . A remarkable book in which outwardly simple sentences and situations snowball into a profound meditation on our own very real dystopian trappings . . . One of those rare novels that clearly depict who we are now and also offer tantalizing clues as to where literature may be headed . . . I’d be curious to know how Murakami’s yeoman translators Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel divided up the work . . . because there are no noticeable bumps in the pristine and deceptively simple prose . . . More than any author since Kafka, Murakami appreciates the genuine strangeness of our real world, and he’s not afraid to incorporate elements of surrealism or magical realism as tools to help us see ourselves for who we really are. 1Q84 is a tremendous accomplishment. It does every last blessed thing a masterpiece is supposed to—and a few things we never even knew to expect.”
—Andrew Ervin, The San Francisco Chronicle
“[1Q84] is fundamentally different from its predecessors. We realize before long that it is a road. And what the writer has laid down is a yellow brick road. It passes over stretches of deadly desert, to be sure, through strands of somniferous poppies, and past creatures that hurl their heads, spattering us with spills of kinked enigma. But the destination draws us: We crave it, and the craving intensifies as we go along (unlike so many contemporary novels that are sampler menus with neither main course nor appetite to follow). More important, the travelers we encounter, odd and wildly disparate as they are, possess a quality hard to find in Murakami’s previous novels: a rounded, sometimes improbable humanity with as much allure as mystery. It is not just puzzlement they present, but puzzled tenderness; most of all in the two leading figures, Aomame and Tengo. Converging through all manner of subplot and peril, they arouse a desire in us that almost mirrors their own . . . Murakami makes us want to follow them; we are reluctant to relinquish them. Who would care about the yellow brick road without Scarecrow’s, Woodman’s and Lion’s freakiness and yearning? What is a road, particularly Murakami’s intricately convoluted road, without its human wayfarers?”
—Richard Eder, The Boston Globe
“1Q84 is one of those books that disappear in your hands, pulling you into its mysteries with such speed and skill that you don’t even notice as the hours tick by and the mountain of pages quietly shrinks . . . I finished 1Q84 one fall evening, and when I set it down, baffled and in awe, I couldn’t help looking out the window to see if just the usual moon hung there or if a second orb had somehow joined it. It turned out that this magical novel did not actually alter reality. Even so, its enigmatic glow makes the world seem a little strange long after you turn the last page. Grade: A.”
—Rob Brunner, Entertainment Weekly
“A 932-page Japanese novel set in Tokyo in which the words ‘sushi’ and ‘sake’ never appear but there are mentions of linguine and French wine, as well as Proust, Faye Dunaway, The Golden Bough, Duke Ellington, Macbeth, Churchill, Janáèek, Sonny and Cher, and, give the teasing title, George Orwell? Welcome to the world of Haruki Murakami . . . A symmetrical and multi-layered yarn, as near to a 19th-century three-decker as it is possible to be . . . The label of fantasy-realism has been stuck to it, but it actually has more of a Dickensian or Trollopian structure . . . Explicit, yet subtle and dream-like, combining viciousness with whimsy . . . this is Murakami’s unflagging and masterful take on the desire and pursuit of the Whole.”
—Paul Theroux, Vanity Fair
“Do you miss the girl with the dragon tattoo? Do you long for the thrill of following her adventures again through three volumes of exciting, intelligent fiction? If so, I have good news for you. She’s got a sort of soul sister in one of the two main characters in Haruki Murakami’s wonderful novel 1Q84 . . . With more than enough narrative and intellectual heft to make it enjoyable for anyone with a taste for moving representations of modern consciousness in the magical realist mode, this story may easily carry you away to a new world and keep you there for a long time . . . The deep and resonant plot . . . unfolds at a leisurely pace but in compelling fashion by luring us along with scenes of homicidal intrigue, literary intrigue, religious fanaticism, physical sex, metaphysical sex and asexual sex. And music . . . Murakami’s main characters find themselves drawn toward each other as irresistibly, magnetically, hypnotically, soulfully and physically as any characters in Western fiction. Given the plain-spoken but appealing nature of the prose (translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel), most of you will feel that same power as an insinuating compulsion to read on, despite the enormous length, hoping against hope for a happy ending under a sky with either two moons or one. Two moons—two worlds—a girl with—900 pages—1Q84 is a gorgeous festival of words arranged for maximum comprehension and delicious satisfaction.”
—Alan Cheuse, NPR
“Murakami’s new novel is the international literary giant at his uncanny, mesmerizing best . . . The spell cast by Murakami’s fiction is formed in the tension between his grounded accounts of everyday life and the otherworldly forces that keep intruding on that life, propelling the characters into surreal adventures . . . Translation is at the center of what Murakami does; not a translation from one tongue to another, but the translation of an inner world into this, the outer one. Very few writers speak the truths of that secret, inner universe more fluently.”
—Laura Miller, Salon
“Bewitching and extraordinarily unsettling . . . Part noir crime drama, part love story, and part hallucinatory riff on 1984 . . . Murakami paces a story as well as any writer alive. He knows how to tell a love story without getting cute. He understands how to blend realism and fantasy (magical realism if you want to get all literary about it) in just the right proportions. And he has a knack for writing about everyday matters—fixing dinner, going for a walk—in such a way that the events at hand, no matter how mundane, are never boring . . . Most impressive, he knows how to inject the logic and atmosphere of dreams into his fiction without becoming coy or vague. He’s Kafka-esque to the extent that he’s not interested in why or how a man may have turned into an insect overnight, but in how the man deals with his new situation. And like Beckett, he furnishes his dreamscapes with a mere handful of carefully chosen props—a tree, a streetlight, a playground sliding board—specifics that ground a scene but leave room for the reader to fill in details. This is perhaps the key point: he makes you, the reader, his collaborator. What he leaves out is as important as what he includes, because it encourages you to fill in the blanks in the canvas . . . Murakami is one of the very few novelists—Dickens comes most easily to mind—who can make a serious, play-by-the-rules reader cheat and jump ahead to find out what’s happened to a character . . . Even while we are being entertained by the weirdness of the world he’s creating, we feel a gnawing anxiety that this same book is unraveling our own sense of normality. You don’t know where things are going while you read it, and you can’t say exactly where you’ve been when you’re finished, but everything around you looks different somehow. If this is fiction as funhouse, it is very serious fun, and you enter at the risk of your own complacency.”
—Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
“If you haven’t previously read Murakami . . . this is a good introduction to his Lewis-Carroll-meets-Mister-Rogers style, a distinctive blend of the wild and the ordinary that can be as engaging as Wonderland itself. If you’ve read his previous book, you’ll find a lot to enjoy here . . . 1Q84 has a big, romantic heart and deserves to be celebrated on our shores.”
—Josh Emmons, People (3.5/4 stars)
“[1Q84] gets off to a vintage Murakami start: eerie wrinkles in an otherwise ordinary Tokyo day. A woman stuck in traffic decides to get out and walk. A struggling novelist is roped into a shady writing project. But with every page, the ready edges closer to an Orwellian rabbit hole. And when the plunge comes, it brings all the trippy delights of Murakami’s unsettling imagination: a vanishing, a parallel world with two moons, and ‘Little People’ who make Big Brother look like an oaf.”
—Devin Gordon, GQ
“Voracious visionary Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 mixes down-the-rabbit-hole fantasy with out-there science fiction for a superhefty but accessible adventure.”
—Lisa Shea, Elle
“Powerful . . . In 1Q84, award-winning Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami skips between alternate worlds, offering readers a moving love story in what is perhaps his most ambitious novel yet . . . An unstoppably readable, deeply moving love story that cements Murakami’s reputation as a uniquely compassionate and imaginative novelist who’s among the leading voices of his global generation . . . Murakami likes to blur the boundaries of reality, and in this sense 1Q84 is his most intricate work . . . Aomame and Tengo work their way towards each other and out of the year 1Q84 like divers straining for the surface. Finishing the book I felt as if I, too, were coming to the surface; days later the world still does not feel the way it used to.”
—Kevin Hartnett, The Christian Science Monitor
“1Q84 is extraordinarily ambitious . . . Beguiling and ridiculously entertaining . . . Murakami has created the big, beautiful book so many people have been waiting for. Before it even arrived in this country, 1Q84 was one of the most chattered-about titles of the fall. We got our hopes up—and he didn’t let us down.”
—Kevin Canfield, The Kansas City Star
“Murakami has created his genuine masterpiece, one that reaches out to fans while also satisfying the critics who have called for a more deft use of symbolism and literary worldliness in his work . . . In this book, Murakami simplifies his familiar artistic elements, leaving us with a readable pair of intertwined stories that wind up on the same, enjoyable track. For readers willing to enter Murakami’s literary marathon, the outcome will be one to remember.”
—Jeremy C. Owens, San Jose Mercury News
“Lose yourself in the nearly 1,000 pages of Murakami’s alternately mesmerizing and menacing world, living for large stretches of each day with its characters, and time actually shifts and becomes harder to measure—one of the many themes, as it happens, in this big and brilliant book . . . It’s the quest for such shared experience, between writer and reader in the dream world they inhabit together, that explains why we read fiction—that magical carpet whisking us from the lonely prison of the self into the hearts and minds of others . . . It may not be easy traveling to another world; it’s often hard enough getting around in our own. But what is true for this novel’s determined protagonists will go double for its faithful readers: Take the time to get carried away, and time itself—as well as the way you think about how you spend yours—will take on new dimensions. It’s a mind-blowing experience. Great novels always are.”
—Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“[A] masterwork . . . [Murakami has] crafted what may well become a classic literary rendering of pre-2011 Japan . . . Orwell wrote his masterpiece to reflect a future dystopia through a Cold War lens . . . Similarly, Murakami’s 1Q84 captures attitudes and circumstances that characterize Japanese life before the March earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster. Reading 1Q84, once can’t help but sense already how things have changed.”
—Lee Makela, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Always intriguing . . . 1Q84 is a huge novel in every sense . . . putting it down is not an option . . . The reader who steps into its time flow only reluctantly comes ashore.”
—Sherryl Connelly, New York Daily News
“1Q84 is a tremendous feat and a triumph . . . A must-read for anyone who wants to come to terms with contemporary Japanese culture.”
—Lindsay Howell, Baltimore Examiner
“Perhaps one of the most important works of science fiction of the year . . . 1Q84 does not disappoint . . . [It] envelops the reader in a shifting world of strange cults and peculiar characters that is surreal and entrancing.”
—Matt Staggs, Suvudu.com
“There’s no denying that Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 . . . is an impressive achievement, both for its already accomplished author and for the two separate translators who took on the not inconsequential task of translating the book from Murakami’s native Japanese into English. Equally impressive is the author’s facility at working in this long form—the story moves, it seems, effortlessly through hundreds of pages, and the reader, too, glides easily from page to page as if the book were a third of its length . . . What’s most remarkable about Murakami’s novel, however, is neither its prose style nor its accompanying emotional distance: it’s its scope. Most so-called doorstopper novels contain multitudes of characters, conflicts, decades, or even footnotes. 1Q84, at its heart, is primarily a story of two separated lovers. It takes place in a short time frame and in a single city, but it’s enriched by Murakami’s philosophical musings and his uniquely visionary form of fantasy.”
—Norah Piehl, BookReporter.com
“Murakami’s dystopian magnum opus . . . 1Q84 unfolds as a science-fiction thriller, and despite the pointed Orwellian reference, it is closer in spirit to the work of Philip K. Dick. Fantastic elements seamlessly integrate with the mundane to create a world much like, if not quite like, our own . . . The supporting cast . . . is lovingly lifted from classic pulp fiction archetypes, and roots the novel in the noir mystery genre as well. Pulp fiction, indeed, but on a grand scale—as ambitious, quirky and imaginative as only Murakami can be.”
—Robert Weibezahl, BookPage
“Murakami’s trademark plainspoken oddness is on full display in this story of lapsed childhood friends Aomame and Tengo, now lonely adults in 1984 Tokyo, whose destinies may be curiously intertwined . . . Murakami’s fans know that his focus has always been on the quiet strangeness of life, the hidden connections between perfect strangers, and the power of the non sequitur to reveal the associative strands that weave our modern world. 1Q84 goes further than any Murakami novel so far, and perhaps further than any novel before it, toward exposing the delicacy of the membranes that separate love from chance encounters, the kind from the wicked, and reality from what people living in the pent-up modern world dream about when they go to sleep under an alien moon.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Unquestionably Murakami’s most vividly imagined parallel world . . . Gradually but inexorably, the tension builds, as we root passionately for Tengo and Aomame to find one another and hold hands again, so simple a human connection offering a kind of oasis in the midst of the unexplainable and the terrifying. When Murakami melds fantasy and realism, mystery and epic, it is no simple genre-bending exercise; rather, it is literary alchemy of the highest order.”
—Bill Ott, Booklist (starred review)
“Ambitious, sprawling and thoroughly stunning . . . Orwellian dystopia, sci-fi, the modern world (terrorism, drugs, apathy, pop novels)—all blend in this dreamlike, strange and wholly unforgettable epic.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“At the core of this work is a spectacular love story about a girl and a boy who briefly held hands when they were both ten. That said, with the fiercely imaginative Murakami as author, the story’s exposition is gloriously labyrinthine . . . Originally published in Japan as three volumes, each of which were instant best sellers, this work—perhaps Murakami’s finest—will surely have the same success in its breathlessly anticipated all-in-one English translation. Murakami aficionados will delight in recognizing traces of earlier titles, especially A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood, and even Underground.”
—Terry Hong, Library Journal (starred review)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Aomame
DON'T LET APPEARANCES FOOL YOU
The taxi's radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janaìcek's Sinfonietta—probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didn't seem to be listening very closely, either. With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents. Aomame settled into the broad back seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the music.
How many people could recognize Janaìcek's Sinfonietta after hearing just the first few bars? Probably somewhere between "very few" and "almost none." But for some reason, Aomame was one of the few who could.
Janaìcek composed his little symphony in 1926. He originally wrote the opening as a fanfare for a gymnastics festival. Aomame imagined 1926 Czechoslovakia: The First World War had ended, and the country was freed from the long rule of the Hapsburg Dynasty. As they enjoyed the peaceful respite visiting central Europe, people drank Pilsner beer in cafeìs and manufactured handsome light machine guns. Two years earlier, in utter obscurity, Franz Kafka had left the world behind. Soon Hitler would come out of nowhere and gobble up this beautiful little country in the blink of an eye, but at the time no one knew what hardships lay in store for them. This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: "At the time, no one knew what was coming." Listening to Janaìcek's music, Aomame imagined the carefree winds sweeping across the plains of Bohemia and thought about the vicissitudes of history.
In 1926 Japan's Taisho Emperor died, and the era name was changed to Showa. It was the beginning of a terrible, dark time in this country, too. The short interlude of modernism and democracy was ending, giving way to fascism.
Aomame loved history as much as she loved sports. She rarely read fiction, but history books could keep her occupied for hours. What she liked about history was the way all its facts were linked with particular dates and places. She did not find it especially difficult to remember historical dates. Even if she did not learn them by rote memorization, once she grasped the relationship of an event to its time and to the events preceding and following it, the date would come to her automatically. In both middle school and high school, she had always gotten the top grade on history exams. It puzzled her to hear someone say he had trouble learning dates. How could something so simple be a problem for anyone?
"Aomame" was her real name. Her grandfather on her father's side came from some little mountain town or village in Fukushima Prefecture, where there were supposedly a number of people who bore the name, written with exactly the same characters as the word for "green peas" and pronounced with the same four syllables, "Ah-oh-mah-meh." She had never been to the place, however. Her father had cut his ties with his family before her birth, just as her mother had done with her own family, so she had never met any of her grandparents. She didn't travel much, but on those rare occasions when she stayed in an unfamiliar city or town, she would always open the hotel's phone book to see if there were any Aomames in the area. She had never found a single one, and whenever she tried and failed, she felt like a lonely castaway on the open sea.
Telling people her name was always a bother. As soon as the name left her lips, the other person looked puzzled or confused.
"Miss Aomame?"
"Yes. Just like 'green peas.' "
Employers required her to have business cards printed, which only made things worse. People would stare at the card as if she had thrust a letter at them bearing bad news. When she announced her name on the telephone, she would often hear suppressed laughter. In waiting rooms at the doctor's or at public offices, people would look up at the sound of her name, curious to see what someone called "Green Peas" could look like.
Some people would get the name of the plant wrong and call her "Edamame" or "Soramame," whereupon she would gently correct them: "No, I'm not soybeans or fava beans, just green peas. Pretty close, though. Aomame." How many times in her thirty years had she heard the same remarks, the same feeble jokes about her name? My life might have been totally different if I hadn't been born with this name. If I had had an ordinary name like Sato or Tanaka or Suzuki, I could have lived a slightly more relaxed life or looked at people with somewhat more forgiving eyes. Perhaps.
Eyes closed, Aomame listened to the music, allowing the lovely unison of the brasses to sink into her brain. Just then it occurred to her that the sound quality was too good for a radio in a taxicab. Despite the rather low volume at which it was playing, the sound had true depth, and the overtones were clearly audible. She opened her eyes and leaned forward to study the dashboard stereo. The jet-black device shone with a proud gloss. She couldn't make out its brand name, but it was obviously high end, with lots of knobs and switches, the green numerals of the station readout clear against the black panel. This was not the kind of stereo you expected to see in an ordinary fleet cab.
She looked around at the cab's interior. She had been too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice until now, but this was no ordinary taxi. The high quality of the trim was evident, and the seat was especially comfortable. Above all, it was quiet. The car probably had extra sound insulation to keep noise out, like a soundproofed music studio. The driver probably owned his own cab. Many such owner-drivers would spare no expense on the upkeep of their automobiles. Moving only her eyes, Aomame searched for the driver's registration card, without success. This did not seem to be an illegal unlicensed cab, though. It had a standard taxi meter, which was ticking off the proper fare: 2,150 yen so far. Still, the registration card showing the driver's name was nowhere to be found.
"What a nice car," Aomame said, speaking to the driver's back. "So quiet. What kind is it?"
"Toyota Crown Royal Saloon," the driver replied succinctly. "The music sounds great in here." "It's a very quiet car. That's one reason I chose it. Toyota has some of the best sound-insulating technology in the world."
Aomame nodded and leaned back in her seat. There was something about the driver's way of speaking that bothered her, as though he were leaving something important unsaid. For example (and this is just one example), his remark on Toyota's impeccable sound insulation might be taken to mean that some other Toyota feature was less than impeccable. And each time he finished a sentence, there was a tiny but meaningful lump of silence left behind. This lump floated there, enclosed in the car's restricted space like an imaginary miniature cloud, giving Aomame a strangely unsettled feeling.
"It certainly is a quiet car," Aomame declared, as if to sweep the little cloud away. "And the stereo looks especially fine."
"Decisiveness was key when I bought it," the driver said, like a retired staff officer explaining a past military success. "I have to spend so much time in here, I want the best sound available. And—"
Aomame waited for what was to follow, but nothing followed. She closed her eyes again and concentrated on the music. She knew nothing about Janaìcek as a person, but she was quite sure that he never imagined that in 1984 someone would be listening to his composition in a hushed Toyota Crown Royal Saloon on the gridlocked elevated Metropolitan Expressway in Tokyo.
Why, though, Aomame wondered, had she instantly recognized the piece to be Janaìcek's Sinfonietta? And how did she know it had been composed in 1926? She was not a classical music fan, and she had no personal recollections involving Janaìcek, yet the moment she heard the opening bars, all her knowledge of the piece came to her by reflex, like a flock of birds swooping through an open window. The music gave her an odd, wrenching kind of feeling. There was no pain or unpleasantness involved, just a sensation that all the elements of her body were being physically wrung out. Aomame had no idea what was going on. CouldSinfonietta actually be giving me this weird feeling?
"Janaìcek," Aomame said half-consciously, though after the word emerged from her lips, she wanted to take it back.
"What's that, ma'am?"
"Janaìcek. The man who wrote this music."
"Never heard of him."
"Czech composer."
"Well-well," the driver said, seemingly impressed.
"Do you own this cab?" Aomame asked, hoping to change the subject.
"I do," the driver answered. After a brief pause, he added, "It's all mine. My second one."
"Very comfortable seats."
"Thank you, ma'am." Turning his head slightly in her direction, he asked, "By the way, are you in a hurry?"
"I have to meet someone in Shibuya. That's why I asked you to take the expressway."
"What time is your meeting?"
"Four thirty," Aomame said.
"Well, it's already three forty-five. You'll never make it."
"Is the backup that bad?"
"Looks like a major accident up ahead. This is no ordinary traffic jam. We've hardly moved for quite a while."
She wondered why the driver was not listening to traffic reports. The expressway had been brought to a standstill. He should be listening to updates on the taxi drivers' special radio station.
"You can tell it's an accident without hearing a traffic report?" Aomame asked.
"You can't trust them," he said with a hollow ring to his voice. "They're half lies. The Expressway Corporation only releases reports that suit its agenda. If you really want to know what's happening here and now, you've got to use your own eyes and your own judgment."
"And your judgment tells you that we'll be stuck here?"
"For quite a while," the driver said with a nod. "I can guarantee you that. When it backs up solid like this, the expressway is sheer hell. Is your meeting an important one?"
Aomame gave it some thought. "Yes, very. I have to see a client."
"That's a shame. You're probably not going to make it." The driver shook his head a few times as if trying to ease a stiff neck. The wrinkles on the back of his neck moved like some kind of ancient creature. Half-consciously watching the movement, Aomame found herself thinking of the sharp object in the bottom of her shoulder bag. A touch of sweat came to her palms.
"What do you think I should do?" she asked.
"There's nothing you cando up here on the expressway—not until we get to the next exit. If we were down on the city streets, you could just step out of the cab and take the subway."
"What is the next exit?"
"Ikejiri. We might not get there before the sun goes down, though." Before the sun goes down? Aomame imagined herself locked in this cab until sunset. The Janaìcek was still playing. Muted strings came to the foreground as if to soothe her heightened anxiety. That earlier wrenching sensation had largely subsided. What could that have been?
Aomame had caught the cab near Kinuta and told the driver to take the elevated expressway from Yohga. The flow of traffic had been smooth at first, but suddenly backed up just before Sangenjaya, after which they had hardly moved. The outbound lanes were moving fine. Only the side headed toward downtown Tokyo was tragically jammed. Inbound Expressway Number 3 would not normally back up at three in the afternoon, which was why Aomame had directed the driver to take it.
"Time charges don't add up on the expressway," the driver said, speaking toward his rearview mirror. "So don't let the fare worry you. I suppose you need to get to your meeting, though?"
"Yes, of course. But there's nothing I can do about it, is there?"
He glanced at her in the mirror. He was wearing pale sunglasses. The way the light was shining in, Aomame could not make out his expression.
"Well, in fact, there might be a way. You couldtake the subway to Shibuya from here, but you'd have to do something a little . . . extreme."
"Something extreme?"
"It's not something I can openly advise you to do." Aomame said nothing. She waited for more with narrowed eyes. "Look over there. See that turnout just ahead?" he asked, pointing. "See? Near that Esso sign." Aomame strained to see through the windshield until she focused on a space to the left of the two-lane roadway where broken-down cars could pull off. The elevated roadway had no shoulder but instead had emergency turnouts at regular intervals. Aomame saw that the turnout was outfitted with a yellow emergency phone box for contacting the Metropolitan Expressway Public Corporation office. The turnout itself was empty at the moment. On top of a building beyond the oncoming lanes there was a big billboard advertising Esso gasoline with a smiling tiger holding a gas hose. "To tell you the truth, there's a stairway leading from the turnout down to street level. It's for drivers who have to abandon their cars in a fire or earthquake and climb down to the street. Usually only maintenance workers use it. If you were to climb down that stairway, you'd be near a Tokyu Line station. From there, it's nothing to Shibuya."
"I had no idea these Metropolitan Expressways had emergency stairs," Aomame said.
"Not many people do."
"But wouldn't I get in trouble using it without permission when there's no real emergency?"
The driver paused a moment. Then he said, "I wonder. I don't know all the rules of the Corporation, but you wouldn't be hurting anybody. They'd probably look the other way, don't you think? Anyway, they don't have people watching every exit. The Metropolitan Expressway Public Corporation is famous for having a huge staff but nobody really doing any work."
"What kind of stairway is it?"
"Hmm, kind of like a fire escape. You know, like the ones you see on the backs of old buildings. It's not especially dangerous or anything. It's maybe three stories high, and you just climb down. There's a barrier at the opening, but it's not very high. Anybody who wanted to could get over it easily."
"Have you ever used one of these stairways?"
Instead of replying, the driver directed a faint smile toward his rearview mirror, a smile that could be read any number of ways.
"It's strictly up to you," he said, tapping lightly on the steering wheel in time to the music.
"If you just want to sit here and relax and enjoy the music, I'm fine with that. We might as well resign ourselves to the fact that we're not going anywhere soon. All I'm saying is that there are emergency measures you can take if you have urgent business."
Aomame frowned and glanced at her watch. She looked up and studied the surrounding cars. On the right was a black Mitsubishi Pajero wagon with a thin layer of white dust. A bored-looking young man in the front passenger seat was smoking a cigarette with his window open. He had long hair, a tanned face, and wore a dark red windbreaker. The car's luggage compartment was filled with a number of worn surfboards. In front of him was a gray Saab 900, its dark-tinted windows closed tight, preventing any glimpse of who might be inside. The body was so immaculately polished, you could probably see your face in it.
The car ahead was a red Suzuki Alto with a Nerima Ward license plate and a dented bumper. A young mother sat gripping the wheel. Her small child was standing on the seat next to her, moving back and forth to dispel its boredom. The mother's annoyance showed on her face as she cautioned the child to keep still. Aomame could see her mouth moving. The scene was unchanged from ten minutes earlier. In those ten minutes, the car had probably advanced less than ten yards.
Aomame thought hard, arranging everything in order of priority. She needed hardly any time to reach a conclusion. As if to coincide with this, the final movement of the Janaìcek was just beginning.
She pulled her small Ray-Ban sunglasses partway out of her shoulder bag and took three thousand-yen bills from her wallet. Handing the bills to the driver, she said, "I'll get out here. I really can't be late for this appointment."
The driver nodded and took the money. "Would you like a receipt?"
"No need. And keep the change."
"Thanks very much," he said. "Be careful, it looks windy out there. Don't slip."
"I'll be careful," Aomame said.
"And also," the driver said, facing the mirror, "please remember: things are not what they seem."
Things are not what they seem,Aomame repeated mentally. "What do you mean by that?" she asked with knitted brows.
The driver chose his words carefully: "It's just that you're about to do somethingout of the ordinary. Am I right? People do not ordinarily climb down the emergency stairs of the Metropolitan Expressway in the middle of the day—especially women."
"I suppose you're right."
"Right. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look differentto you than they did before. I've had that experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality."
Aomame thought about what he was saying, and in the course of her thinking, the Janaìcek ended and the audience broke into immediate applause. This was obviously a live recording. The applause was long and enthusiastic. There were even occasional calls of "Bravo!" She imagined the smiling conductor bowing repeatedly to the standing audience. He would then raise his head, raise his arms, shake hands with the concertmaster, turn away from the audience, raise his arms again in praise of the orchestra, face front, and take another deep bow. As she listened to the long recorded applause, it sounded less like applause and more like an endless Martian sandstorm.
"There is always, as I said, only one reality," the driver repeated slowly, as if underlining an important passage in a book.
"Of course," Aomame said. He was right. A physical object could only be in one place at one time. Einstein proved that. Reality was utterly coolheaded and utterly lonely. Aomame pointed toward the car stereo. "Great sound."
The driver nodded. "What was the name of that composer again?"
"Janaìcek."
"Janaìcek," the driver repeated, as if committing an important password to memory. Then he pulled the lever that opened the passenger door. "Be careful," he said. "I hope you get to your appointment on time."
Aomame stepped out of the cab, gripping the strap of her large leather shoulder bag. The applause was still going. She started walking carefully along the left edge of the elevated road toward the emergency turnout some ten meters ahead. Each time a large truck roared by on the opposite side, she felt the surface of the road shake—or, rather, undulate—through her high heels, as if she were walking on the deck of an aircraft carrier on a stormy sea.
The little girl in the front seat of the red Suzuki Alto stuck her head out of her window and stared, open-mouthed, at Aomame passing by. Then she turned to her mother and asked, "Mommy, what is that lady doing? Where's she going? I want to get out and walk too. Please, Mommy! Pleeease!" The mother responded to her cries in silence, shaking her head and shooting an accusatory glance at Aomame. The girl's loud pleading and the mother's glance were the only responses to her that Aomame noticed. The other drivers just sat at the wheel smoking and watching her make her way with determined steps between the cars and the side wall. They knit their brows and squinted as if looking at a too-bright object but seemed to have temporarily suspended all judgment. For someone to be walking on the Metropolitan Expressway was by no means an everyday event, with or without the usual flow of traffic, so it took them some time to process the sight as an actual occurrence—all the more so because the walker was a young woman in high heels and a miniskirt.
Aomame pulled in her chin, kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, her back straight, and her pace steady. Her chestnut-colored Charles Jourdan heels clicked against the road's surface, and the skirts of her coat waved in the breeze. April had begun, but there was still a chill in the air and a hint of roughness to come. Aomame wore a beige spring coat over her green light wool Junko Shimada suit. A black leather bag hung over her shoulder, and her shoulder-length hair was impeccably trimmed and shaped. She wore no accessories of any kind. Five foot six inches tall, she carried not an ounce of excess fat. Every muscle in her body was well toned, but her coat kept that fact hidden.
A detailed examination of her face from the front would reveal that the size and shape of her ears were significantly different, the left one much bigger and malformed. No one ever noticed this, however, because her hair nearly always covered her ears. Her lips formed a tight straight line, suggesting that she was not easily approachable. Also contributing to this impression were her small, narrow nose, somewhat protruding cheekbones, broad forehead, and long, straight eyebrows. All of these were arranged to sit in a pleasing oval shape, however, and while tastes differ, few would object to calling her a beautiful woman. The one problem with her face was its extreme paucity of expression. Her firmly closed lips only formed a smile when absolutely necessary. Her eyes had the cool, vigilant stare of a superior deck officer. Thanks to these features, no one ever had a vivid impression of her face. She attracted attention not so much because of the qualities of her features but rather because of the naturalness and grace with which her expression moved. In that sense, Aomame resembled an insect skilled at biological mimicry. What she most wanted was to blend in with her background by changing color and shape, to remain inconspicuous and not easily remembered. This was how she had protected herself since childhood.
Whenever something caused her to frown or grimace, however, her features underwent dramatic changes. The muscles of her face tightened, pulling in several directions at once and emphasizing the lack of symmetry in the overall structure. Deep wrinkles formed in her skin, her eyes suddenly drew inward, her nose and mouth became violently distorted, her jaw twisted to the side, and her lips curled back, exposing Aomame's large white teeth. Instantly, she became a wholly different person, as if a cord had broken, dropping the mask that normally covered her face. The shocking transformation terrified anyone who saw it, so she was careful never to frown in the presence of a stranger. She would contort her face only when she was alone or when she was threatening a man who displeased her.
Reaching the turnout, Aomame stopped and looked around. It took only a moment for her to find the emergency stairway. As the driver had said, there was a metal barrier across the entrance. It was a little more than waist high, and it was locked. Stepping over it in a tight miniskirt could be a slight problem, but only if she cared about being seen. Without hesitating, she slipped her high heels off and shoved them into her shoulder bag. She would probably ruin her stockings by walking in bare feet, but she could easily buy another pair.
People stared at her in silence as she removed her shoes and coat. From the open window of the black Toyota Celica parked next to the turnout, Michael Jackson's high-pitched voice provided her with background music. "Billie Jean" was playing. She felt as if she were performing a striptease. So what? Let them look all they want. They must be bored waiting for the traffic jam to end. Sorry, though, folks, this is all I'll be taking off today.
Aomame slung the bag across her chest to keep it from falling. Some distance away she could see the brand-new black Toyota Crown Royal Saloon in which she had been riding, its windshield reflecting the blinding glare of the afternoon sun. She could not make out the face of the driver, but she knew he must be watching.
Don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.
Aomame took in a long, deep breath, and slowly let it out. Then, to the tune of "Billie Jean," she swung her leg over the metal barrier. Her miniskirt rode up to her hips. Who gives a damn? Let them look all they want. Seeing what's under my skirt doesn't let them really see me as a person.Besides, her legs were the part of her body of which Aomame was the most proud.
Stepping down once she was on the other side of the barrier, Aomame straightened her skirt, brushed the dust from her hands, put her coat back on, slung her bag across her chest again, and pushed her sunglasses more snugly against her face. The emergency stairway lay before her—a metal stairway painted gray. Plain, practical, functional. Not made for use by miniskirted women wearing only stockings on their otherwise bare feet. Nor had Junko Shimada designed Aomame's suit for use on the emergency escape stairs of Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway Number 3. Another huge truck roared down the outbound side of the expressway, shaking the stairs. The breeze whistled through gaps in the stairway's metal framework. But in any case, there it was, before her: the stairway.
All that was left for her to do was climb down to the street. Aomame turned for one last look at the double line of cars packed on the expressway, scanning them from left to right, then right to left, like a speaker on a podium looking for questions from the audience now that she had finished her talk. There had been no movement at all. Trapped on the expressway with nothing else to occupy them, people were watching her every move, wondering what this woman on the far side of the barrier would do next. Aomame lightly pulled in her chin, bit her lower lip, and took stock of her audience through the dark green lenses of her sunglasses.
You couldn't begin to imagine who I am, where I'm going, or what I'm about to do,Aomame said to her audience without moving her lips. All of you are trapped here. You can't go anywhere, forward or back. But I'm not like you. I have work to do. I have a mission to accomplish. And so, with your permission, I shall move ahead.
Aomame had the urge at the end to treat her assembled throng to one of her special scowls, but she managed to stop herself. There was no time for such things now. Once she let herself frown, it took both time and effort to regain her original expression.
Aomame turned her back on her silent audience and, with careful steps, began to descend the emergency stairway, feeling the chill of the crude metal rungs against the soles of her feet. Also chilling was the early April breeze, which swept her hair back now and then, revealing her misshapen left ear.
Product details
- ASIN : B004LROUW2
- Publisher : Vintage (October 25, 2011)
- Publication date : October 25, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 3286 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 1185 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0307476464
- Best Sellers Rank: #46,978 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #22 in Literary Satire Fiction
- #372 in Contemporary Literary Fiction
- #429 in Magical Realism
- Customer Reviews:
Videos
Videos for this product
0:41
Click to play video
1Q84 (Vintage International)
Amazon Videos
About the authors
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.
Jay Rubin (b. 1941) is an American academic, translator, and (as of 2015) novelist. He is best known for his translations of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He has written about Murakami, the novelist Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), the short story writers Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908) and Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892-1927), prewar Japanese literary censorship, Noh drama, and Japanese grammar. In May 2015 Chin Music Press published his novel THE SUN GODS, set in Seattle against the background of the incarceration of 120,000 U.S. citizens and non-citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
Rubin has a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of Washington for eighteen years, and then moved to Harvard University, from which he retired in 2006. He lives near Seattle, where he continues to write and translate.
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Jerusalem Prize, whose previous recipients include J. M. Coetzee, Milan Kundera, and V. S. Naipaul.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the story engaging with interesting mysteries and a blend of the mundane and magical. They describe the book as an enjoyable read with an imaginative plot. Readers appreciate the compelling characters and their development. However, some feel the writing is repetitive and lacks clarity. Opinions differ on the length, with some finding it too long while others consider it well-written and fast-paced.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the story engaging and complex. They appreciate the author's skill in setting up intriguing mysteries and blending the mundane with the magical. The book is described as an enjoyable fantasy with an enticing heroine. While some readers felt the story left unanswered questions, overall they found it a brilliant novel that creates a sense of magic.
"...Because of this fluidity, it was so easy to become hypnotized by the events that took place and are swept away with the plot twists that keep the..." Read more
"...the end of the day, in spite of all the craziness, this novel is a love story about two people searching for each other in today's hectic modern..." Read more
"...is no ordinary novel as it spans more than 1000 pages; yet, it is captivating and hard to put down at times. Society is in ruin...." Read more
"...Is this fodder for the next book? Sex is huge in this book and I feel that it is well-written while pushing limits...." Read more
Customers enjoy the book. They find it an enjoyable read, with good writing and intriguing story. Some appreciate the trance-like quality and consider it a great series or trilogy.
"...of everything negative, Murakami's characters are what make 1Q84 a masterpiece...." Read more
"...it fights so hard to do what it wants, because it made me feel amazing while I read it, and because it's highs are so much better than it's lows are..." Read more
"...Murakami respectively hails as one the best selling-authors in Japan and of the world to say the least...." Read more
"...seems long and I felt as reading it that this book would make a great series/trilogy...." Read more
Customers find the book's imagination engaging. They appreciate the author's skill in combining disparate imaginative elements and bringing them together through clever use of small details. The plot is described as articulate and interesting, with powerful mythology and literary elements. Overall, readers describe the book as an insightful exploration of the creative process.
"...and happy about the good things this book has to offer: the powerful mythos, the advanced literary techniques, and hope for the future of literature..." Read more
"...life in this world not only becomes bearable; it becomes abundantly meaningful and satisfying...." Read more
"...The little people fascinated me. I wanted to know more about them but the author wasn't going to share everything...." Read more
"...it is an interesting look at Japan in 1984, and the temporal and cultural details are an enjoyable trip to the near-past in a country many of us do..." Read more
Customers find the characters compelling and engaging. The book features two main characters whose stories alternate.
"...This character is likeable and has ways to talk to people. The ones hating him are more than the ones who like him...." Read more
"...is masculine in her lack of emotional episodes, yet is a likeable protagonist even as an assassin...." Read more
"...however, is not the length or the ending but the way he eliminates key characters as the story goes on, characters that are not given a follow-up..." Read more
"...the behavior, motivation, emotion, morality, and existential philosophy of the characters and the culture they are embedded in with minimalist color..." Read more
Customers have different views on the writing quality. Some find it well-written and fast-paced, with simple language and beautiful prose. Others feel the writing is not concise, confusing, or easy to read. The dialogue and descriptions seem stilted and the book is complex, making it difficult to understand some details.
"...The words flowed so evenly, so much so that the reader may forget (as I did many times) that they are reading a translated novel...." Read more
"...What it is is a great story, thematically thin and deceptively simple in its telling, yet compelling in its hold on the reader...." Read more
"...gramatically incorrect or unclear, however, it does make the dialogue sound stilted and the descriptions to sometimes be overblown and almost campy..." Read more
"...to be a writer and get published, is rather a fun character and relatable. I, myself, am a person whose dream is to be published one day...." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's length. Some find it an easy read with gripping final sections, while others feel it's too long and feels underwhelming.
"...During the first "Book", the length really bugged me...." Read more
"...A lengthy novel of over 1,100 pages, 1Q84 has two alternating storylines; one concerning Tengo Kawana, a cram school math teacher and the other..." Read more
"...or books, and I have to say, it is no ordinary novel as it spans more than 1000 pages; yet, it is captivating and hard to put down at times...." Read more
"...As a reader you have the power to scan those pages. Yes this book seems long and I felt as reading it that this book would make a great series/..." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some find it fast-paced for most of the story, with days flowing smoothly and unnoticeably. Others mention that the plot is often slow and tends to drag, especially in the final 200 pages or so.
"...Slowly, everything slows down, and the new relaxed pace is a difficult adjustment to make after such a wild ride and especially since you are so..." Read more
"...For a book of nearly 1000 pages, it was one of the most quickly reading books I've read in recent years...." Read more
"...level, this book almost fails: the translation can be rough, the plot is often slow and tends to drag, and the characters seem unrealistic and..." Read more
"...Even simple sentences were compelling: "The days flowed by smoothly, regularly, uneventfully."..." Read more
Customers find the book repetitive in its descriptions of characters and exposition. They mention it lacks cohesion and is repetitive at times. The prose becomes repetitive, leading to rambling and boring scenes.
"...across an unfortunate review that stated the book was, somehow, too repetitive...." Read more
"...Unbearably redundant at times. Case in point: How many pages do we need to explain the same physical characteristics of Ushikawa?..." Read more
"...The MC, Tengo, is boring as a person (we get deeply immersed in his boring life) and I have to imagine he reflects the author in many ways: as a..." Read more
"...And yet, it is also so darn repetitive. How many more times do we have to hear via internal monologue what Tengo witnessed as a child?..." Read more
Reviews with images
Great Story, definitely my favorite read from Murakami
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2014It is important to note that 1Q84 is not for the ill of heart. It has been compared to The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and 1984 by George Orwell but this epic novel definitely stands on its own for its originality, depth of characters, and fluid writing style. A lengthy novel of over 1,100 pages, 1Q84 has two alternating storylines; one concerning Tengo Kawana, a cram school math teacher and the other concerning Aomame, a sports club physical trainer. Under different circumstances, they each fall into the new world of 1Q84 (aptly named by Aomame) instead of 1984, where there are two moons and a bestselling fantasy novel, Air Chrysalis, actually contains classified information about a highly religious organization, Sakigake. As each of them adjust into this new world and try to find one another after twenty years, dangerous obstacles stand in their way of them reaching their goals. With only a few trusted companions and their own inner strength, they have to survive long enough to hopefully discover a way back to the real world and have the storybook ending they so deeply desire.
This novel took on so much in terms of storytelling and character development, but one of the best parts of 1Q84 is the combination of Murakami’s writing style and the translation of Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. The words flowed so evenly, so much so that the reader may forget (as I did many times) that they are reading a translated novel. Because of this fluidity, it was so easy to become hypnotized by the events that took place and are swept away with the plot twists that keep the reader guessing until the very end. The other beautiful aspect of Murakami’s writing is the way that 1Q84 is a love story, but that fact is not in your face. I appreciated the way the he presented love with fate, and did not make it the focus of the story; it played an important part but you were not smothered by it.
The length, which most readers seemed to have a problem with, is a bittersweet subject for me. I do not mind a long novel because the longer the novel is, the more opportunity the author has to test his characters in various scenarios to show their complexity and versatility. On the other hand, staying at a consistent pace to keep the reader’s attention is very important in such a novel, but unfortunately in 1Q84, in the last two hundred pages, the story line becomes slower and you have to push to finish it. Please do not think that the story becomes less interesting and that is a reason not to read this amazing novel! What I mean is 80% of the novel is so fast paced sometimes you forget to breathe. Slowly, everything slows down, and the new relaxed pace is a difficult adjustment to make after such a wild ride and especially since you are so close to the end.
The ending is good, but not great. Throughout the entire novel, I could not figure out how everything would sort itself out but as the story started to relax and everything became more predictable, the ending (not a surprise) was conventional. Personally, I was hoping for something grandiose, but the fact that the ending is simple is not bad; it is merely personal preference.
The biggest mistake Murakami makes in this novel, however, is not the length or the ending but the way he eliminates key characters as the story goes on, characters that are not given a follow-up after they have left the storyline and are never heard from again. If he would have given some background as to what happens to them once they leave the story, then the story may have continued to pick up some speed. Unfortunately, though, Murakami lets them fade into the wind, almost making the reader wonder if they had ever existed in the first place.
Regardless of everything negative, Murakami's characters are what make 1Q84 a masterpiece. The characters have wonderfully well-rounded personalities and at times it is almost impossible to not make connections between your world and theirs, so much so that the readers may find themselves looking up at the sky and wondering if their moon has changed into the ones in the world of 1Q84.
- Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2011Upfront caveats:
1. I did not know who Murakami was prior to selecting this book from Amazon's best of the month list and then reading of his oeuvre.
2. Its surprising that I elected to read it after reading "about" it. My reading preferences trend toward densely detailed non-fiction (think Robert Caro and Doris Goodwin Kearns) or complex, intensely human and often "spiritual" fiction (think Dostoevsky or Marilyn Robinson). I do not generally enjoy science fiction or fantasy works.
That said, and to my surprise, I really did enjoy this book. It is not a great "novel" and I am not sure it can even be characterized as a novel, unless its unique style results in a redefinition of the genre. What it is is a great story, thematically thin and deceptively simple in its telling, yet compelling in its hold on the reader. In fact, a better word than compelling would be "propelling". The short chapters made of short paragraphs, that alternate between the destined-to-intersect worlds of the two protagonists, and a third Colombo type investigator, move swiftly and purposefully carrying along the reader like a passenger on a steadily moving train on an express route free of stops or stations to pause or ponder along the way. It doesn't matter that its obvious from the very beginning that the story's denouement will be the union of the two detached and lonesome lovers. In this case, it's not the destination, it's the ride.
I'll not dwell on the plot elements. If you've read the reviews you know they involve a detour into a parallel world where the main characters' lives are seemingly being controlled at first by human outside forces of cults and ideologies and then by seemingly super-natural ones evidenced by night time visits by Little People and a sky with two moons. Ultimately the story is a love story that involves two loners destined to be united, after, and by, surviving forces of apparent good and evil that turn out to be ambiguously neither. In that sense,it seems, their story is everyman's.
Murakami is a great maker of moods. The first chapter had such a wonderfully mysterious quality to it that I was more than a little let down as the more mundane elements of Book One unfolded. I felt then that the book was a lot more "ordinary" than its beginning suggested. But as the story progressed, the air of mystery returned to color the seemingly more mundane events and ultimately to create a rich and sustained sense of other-worldliness.
At times, the book seems to border on pulp fiction, particularly when describing the protagonists' kinky or casual sexual encounters and escapades. I suppose the point of these seemingly superfluous curiously unerotic episodes was to depict how actually loveless were the solitary lives of Tengo and Aomeme before their childhood memories of each other were reawakended from the past due to external forces in their newly shared "other" world. In that sense, I suppose, the sex was like exercise and eating, a necessary physical ritual in their respective work a days lives that was scheduled in on a regular basis, but really not anchored to anything permanent or fulfilling in the deliberately then "single" lives of Tengo and Aomeme.
Aside from those odd interludes, and maybe even intending, for this purpose, to include them, the author magically mixes the mundane and the fantastic to create a surreal world where the most ordinary things intersect with supernatural ones in the course of single day or even a single paragraph.
To me, Murakami (at least in this the only of his works I have read) is less a great novelist, and more a master of the craft of story telling. His style is quite simple, or more likely, his skill is his ability to make it appear simple. For a book of nearly 1000 pages, it was one of the most quickly reading books I've read in recent years. While I have read much criticism in these reviews of the level of repetition, I was not bothered by that. This is not a "subtle" or profound book, and the reader is not asked to ponder what came before and what that may mean in the context of what lies ahead. Its more like a tale you "listen" to on the edge of your bed or by the side of a burning fire (and I think the audio version would be mesmerizing), without stopping to consider its meaning and course and, in that context, the repetition of the facts you learned along the way actually help to create its uniquely propulsive reading quality- no need to stop and look at the map; the author's gps will remind you where you've been and in fact foretell what lies ahead.
All you need to do is sit tight and enjoy the ride.
Top reviews from other countries
- Derek TibbittsReviewed in Canada on December 30, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Incedible
My all-time favourite book.
-
Diana Carolina Godinez RodriguezReviewed in Mexico on April 23, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars La historia completa en un solo libro.
Llego en excelentes condiciones, pero la sobreportada parece un poco maltratada, es de esperarse ya que está hecha de un papel tipo cebolla, muy delgado. Aún así no es anda del otro mundo. Es una edición excelente y aún muy buen precio, por los tres libros en uno.
Diana Carolina Godinez Rodriguez
Reviewed in Mexico on April 23, 2021
Images in this review - L AlksarisReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 9, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars just a review of the book and customer service. Have not read yet
The physical book is very good. I wanted to get the slightly more expensive and nice looking version because it's very long and I don't want to spend that much time with an ugly book. This book is definitely not ugly. The cover is very good and the font is readable. Not to big or small. The book is also very floppy. I prefer books like this as it makes it easier to turn the pages and stops the spine from creasing. I knew that I would probably enjoy this book because I've read his other stuff and loved it. I would definitely recommend reading some of his other shorter books before committing to this one just to make sure that you like his writing. I've read the wind up bird chronicles, Norwegian wood and after dark and they were all great. I'm excited to read this one. His writing style feels so engaging and you make connections in your head. Murakami never holds your hand and leaves you to interpret things. This is really refreshing as lots of modern media tells you everything and treats you like your stupid.
L Alksaris
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 9, 2021
Images in this review -
ioReviewed in Italy on December 8, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Libro fantastico nella versione a volume unico
Il libro é semplicemente un capolavoro! Questa versione a copertina rigida e singolo volume la rende ottima da tenere nella propria collezione. Peccato solo per copertina superiore che é veramente molto sottile e va trattata con delicatezza per non rovinarla.
- EONIPReviewed in India on February 16, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars A True Masterpiece
Thank you Amazon for providing the international Vintage Paperback Edition at such unbeatable price. The book was in excellent condition.
Now for the literary part, it's hands down one of the best Murakami creation of Magical Realism. Tango,Aomame and Fuka Eri are interwoven so intricately in this novel with such daydreaming narrative is simply unputdownable.
EONIP
Reviewed in India on February 16, 2019
Now for the literary part, it's hands down one of the best Murakami creation of Magical Realism. Tango,Aomame and Fuka Eri are interwoven so intricately in this novel with such daydreaming narrative is simply unputdownable.
Images in this review