SilverSeason
Reader
A rather ordinary young man lives quietly with his wife for six years. He has left his job and is irresolute about what he wants to do with himself. Their cat disappears.
That is the opening of the wind-up bird story. The bird is never seen, but its voice is heard, a creaking sound like a spring, winding up the world. Okada?s world unwinds as he seeks the cat and, eventually, his wife. Many people tell him their stories: two sisters with clairvoyant powers, the elderly lieutenant who remembers events in Manchukuo and Siberia, Nutmeg whose husband was mysteriously murdered. Some are evil: Boris the manskinner, Okada?s brother-in-law. Some do violence in the service of evil. We find layers on linked stories and events. Murakami begins at the beginning with the disappearance of the cat and he ends with a resolution 600 pages later, but the telling is far from direct. The stories his characters tell are like the arias in an opera. They take the stage, they sing their song, we feel their emotions.
This may sound disjointed and remote, but that is my weakness in summarizing, not Murakami?s weakness. His writing is sure and strong as he brings he characters to life. They are not creatures of impulse, but struggle to understand where they are and what is happening. One of the persistent themes of the book is our need to find out who we are and what controls out destiny. As the lieutenant reports:
I was able to descend directly into a place that might be called the very core of my own consciousness. In any case, I saw the shape of something there. Just imagine: Everything around me is bathed in light. I am in the very center of a flood of light. My eyes can see nothing?. But something begins to appear there. In the midst of my momentary blindness, something is trying to take shape. Some thing. Some thing that possesses life. Like the shadow in a solar eclipse, it begins to merge, black in the light. But I can never quite make out its form.
Okada and the other are looking for the form, the inner thing that makes us who we are.
I found this a powerful book, but very difficult to explain.
That is the opening of the wind-up bird story. The bird is never seen, but its voice is heard, a creaking sound like a spring, winding up the world. Okada?s world unwinds as he seeks the cat and, eventually, his wife. Many people tell him their stories: two sisters with clairvoyant powers, the elderly lieutenant who remembers events in Manchukuo and Siberia, Nutmeg whose husband was mysteriously murdered. Some are evil: Boris the manskinner, Okada?s brother-in-law. Some do violence in the service of evil. We find layers on linked stories and events. Murakami begins at the beginning with the disappearance of the cat and he ends with a resolution 600 pages later, but the telling is far from direct. The stories his characters tell are like the arias in an opera. They take the stage, they sing their song, we feel their emotions.
This may sound disjointed and remote, but that is my weakness in summarizing, not Murakami?s weakness. His writing is sure and strong as he brings he characters to life. They are not creatures of impulse, but struggle to understand where they are and what is happening. One of the persistent themes of the book is our need to find out who we are and what controls out destiny. As the lieutenant reports:
I was able to descend directly into a place that might be called the very core of my own consciousness. In any case, I saw the shape of something there. Just imagine: Everything around me is bathed in light. I am in the very center of a flood of light. My eyes can see nothing?. But something begins to appear there. In the midst of my momentary blindness, something is trying to take shape. Some thing. Some thing that possesses life. Like the shadow in a solar eclipse, it begins to merge, black in the light. But I can never quite make out its form.
Okada and the other are looking for the form, the inner thing that makes us who we are.
I found this a powerful book, but very difficult to explain.
