The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

This book haunted me from page 1, and is still haunting me now that I've read it. I started reading this book when I was jet-lagged after returning from a trip in Japan; and reading it did not help at all. I was completely gripped. I ended up reading chunks of it in the middle of the night, and living in a state of detached sleepwalking during the day. Thank God I've finished it and managed to have some real sleep.

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is about an "I" who is quite similar to the other "I"'s of Murakami's novels: the narrator, Okada, describes himself as completely normal, feels that he is somewhat a failure in life, feels detached and alienated, is well cultured especially in literature and music, knows the names of the Karamazov brothers and uses swimming and ironing as an anti-stress therapy. Not feeling very happy with his life, he quits his job for a break and to think about his next move. At around the same time his cat disappears, he meets a bored neighbour in her mid-teens, and his wife starts arriving later and later everyday from work. Okada's life becomes mundane: looking for his cat, listening to music, reading history books, shopping, cooking and eating at odd hours, chatting with his neighbour, waiting for his wife, a phonecall, or a letter, etc. Strange characters start to make their appearance in his life, telling him their life stories and slowly dragging him into a world of mysticism and occult. Mysterious events begin to take more time from his everyday mundane life giving this novel a very dark and surreal atmosphere.

This novel is very well written (thanks to both the author and the translator). It is clever, funny and also melancholic. It is full of witty remarks. It is quite a big book, made up of 70-80 `bite size' chapters that are very easy to read, and also addictive -- "I just want to read one more little chapter, just one and then I'll stop reading and go to bed, I know I can stop whenever I want to, I just need to know what happens next otherwise I would never be able to sleep, it's only 5 o'clock in the morning, that gives me 3 full hours of sleep before waking up to go to work..."

Well, it seems that I can go on talking about this book for ever. This is a story of alienation and detachment, of the feeling that others have control over your life, that your options are very limited and that happiness is unattainable. Not all puzzles can be solved, and not everyone can be understood. Highly recommended.

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is both excellent and frustrating in equal measure. When Toru Okada's cat goes missing it sets off a chain of events that sees his wife go missing and starts Toru off on a metaphorical journey in search of her. For much of it's length this is a brilliant book, Toru meets some strange characters and hears some strange stories, the best by far being the wartime recollections of a soldier serving in the Japanese army in Manchuria. Where the book fails is that the many plot points and characters are never really unified in the way that would make this read as a novel rather than a collection of loosely linked tales. A far worse failing is that the last twenty pages are frankly a disgrace, as if Murakami was suddenly told that he had to finish the book in x pages. (This is not a complaint about an "open" ending, the book has a very "closed" ending - far too closed for what has passed before).
All in all I would recommend this book with the warning that however entrancing the parts many readers will find the sum much less rewarding.

If you have ever been (un)fortunate enough to find yourself at an art college's graduate show then you will perfectly understand my forthcoming analogy.

When those who do not possess either spiritual or mental fibre try to make Art - especially visual arts and more specefically abstract art, they invariably fail miserably. What they present may 'appear' to have form, structure and substance, and indeed, it may do so in the physical sense; but in the intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, ontological sense it is really a shell, a superficial expresion - an allusion to a world they have seen in other's Art, in galleries and in books. It is an echo of Art, but not Art itself, it is fake, a copy. When writers too, try to engage with subject matter that is clearly beyond them, they invariably fail. It is a truism that that which we are able to render (both visually and linguistically) is a direct reflection of our inner-self.

What Mura-kami has given us in this work is by no means a small thing for it is the real thing, the crown jewels and not costume jewellery. It is 1990s Coca-Cola with acid and bite and not your local supermarket cola. He has struck a firm sign-post on the literary path and has created something of true worth and value, a rock on the collective pile of literary consciousness. Like so many of his other great works (Dance, Norwegian, Hard-Boiled) he openly displays his creative and intellectual greatness, frugality and fragility, brutality and his capacity for creative story-telling that defines and re-defines boundaries.

'Wind-up' is a surreal and yet very realistic journey that shows maturity and growth. I can't think of may novels that are accomplished as this. One of Mura-kami's strengths in this particular work is the interplay of the narratives (a mode he used time-and-time-again) and also the time-frame of the piece. Mirroring real-life, he introduces characters and then lets them go. This alone is worthy of praise. Quite why film-makers and writers feel they have to 'keep' the same characters from beginning to end (unless they get killed off), is quite beyond my comprehension. It seems such an artificial construct and altogether too manufactured and contrived to give any air of authenticity to the narrative.

This work will not entertain nor interest all (which is no bad thing), but if you liked Mura-kami's 'Hard-boiled' or you are a fan of Salman Rushdie, then I wholeheartedly recommend this.