“I don’t talk about the goat”. Much ado about nothing. Peak-Murakami for some, a test of patience for others, this is, however which way you spin it, too long and may well send you away wondering whether your time has been well spent. If an extended will-they, won’t-they romantic narrative with a sprinkling of oddness is your thing then read on. Otherwise be prepared for some low-key mirror-world shenanigans, evil religious cults, an obsession with breasts and lots of wheel-spinning.

“1Q84”, as Tengo observes, is a place where questions outnumbered answers and where “logic has no purpose”. This is a tried and trusted trick enabling authors to draw away the veil of boring old reality and, here, have ‘little people’ walking out of mouths, religious leaders levitating clocks, two moons and a miraculous impregnation all without care for explanation. I have no problem with this – I’m all for a bit of weirdness and I don’t require explanations from Carroll or Kafka or David Lynch – but Murakami’s oddness is very meh. Really wish he’d let rip and marooned Aomame and Tengo on Bizarroworld. What no dinosaurs? Bah!

Still, the oddness is irrelevant: “1Q84” is predominiently a hoary old love story. A will-they won’t-they narrative featuring two characters separated by 1000 pages of young adult prose. Thank God, Murakami does manage to bring their story to a passable close but this reader suspects he got up each morning, nudged his characters on a couple of thousand words without them actually doing much (Aomame spends much of Book 3 stuck in her flat watching clouds and reading Proust; Tengo reads to his comatose father) then went for one of his epic park runs. 1000 pages later people are falling over themselves to Tweet Murakami’s fortune-cookie sentences. Nice work if you can get it.

That 1000 pages is really the major drawback with “1Q84”. “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” had similar magical realist sequences and one character taking a break from the plot at the bottom of a well but it was at least shorter. “1Q84” overstays its welcome, not through its length but by the bagginess of the narrative. It starts very well with a vengeful widow and a publishing scam involving an oddly passive young girl but by Book 3 the pitiful Ushikawa is uncovering facts we already know while Aomame waits for Tengo to appear at the top of a slide and he gets high with a geriatic nurse. If this had some narrative momentum Aomame and Tengo would have been pursued up the “Alice In Wonderland” ladder at the end with at least some narrative obstacles placed in their path. Cult nuts Buzzcut and Ponytail might even have pursued them into “our” world, setting up, God help us, Book 4. As it is Tengo ghostwrites “Air Chrysalis” but doesn’t look at the moon and see its double until long after its published, Ushikawa’s Book 3 investigation pieces together information the reader is already aware of (one of many, many repetitions in this novel, right down to sentence level), we never find out what happened to Tengo’s married lover or divine the link between Tengo’s dying father and the crazy NHK licence fee collector persecuting Aomame and Ushikawa. Plus whither Fuka-Eri? Disappeared when no longer required. It’s all just stuff interspersing the endless interior monologues. The only conclusion you’re left with is that Murakami really hates television licence fee collectors.

You could argue Murakami is a poet of the mundane. He’s Nicholson Baker by way of Paul Auster. He zeroes in on the ordinary, on to characters’ breakfast choices, their periods looking at clouds or the moon from the top of a playground slide and then wakes you up with a burst of violence or surrealism or sex. Then again you could also argue your time would be better spent reading 1000 pages of mind-blowing sci-fi, or “A Dance To The Music Of Time” or, indeed, Proust which Aomame herself decides to dip into while sitting out the plot in her safe house. Your choice. The closest you’ll get to “1Q84” is the recent return of “Twin Peaks” which also, by God, had its longeurs (Dougie…) and featured dopplegangers and eggs flying around the room with spirits inside them but got by on the immense goodwill of its niche audience who collectively decide to go along for the ride. That’s what you do when you read Murakami; you surrender to the ride. It’s just that in the case of “1Q84” it’s a counter-productively long ride.

We need to talk about Haruki

My other possible title for this review was “Now I know how to quit you”. You see, I have a long, complicated relationship with Murakami. I read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle something like thirteen years ago. I devoured that book. It was weird and fun and compelling. And deeply unsatisfying. Much like his other books, the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. And yet, I keep reading more. I’m honestly not sure why, when there are so many books to read in this way-too-short life.

That decision is even more questionable with 1Q84, a 1157-page novel in three volumes, “boxed, like Proust” (apologies to Auntie Mame). I bought it on impulse from the Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and early on the book, when one of the main characters stopped into the same bookstore a few times, I thought I’d made a great choice.

I could not have been more wrong. I say this without exaggeration: this is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. By way of quick synopsis, the book concerns two seemingly unconnected people in Tokyo who both stumble into intrigue involving a religious cult. Of course, it turns out that the two people knew each other, tangentially, when they were in school together at age 10. The girl was an outcast, and the boy treated her kindly once. The girl held his hand. After that, they never saw each other again, but it turns out that each has been deeply in love with the other ever since.

Except, very little happens. There are a few moments of action swimming in a sea of repetition and explanation. So much monologuing and dialoguing of exposition. So much doing the same thing over and over, describing things in the same way over and over, especially the shape of breasts and the magnificence of erections. I won’t even talk about the fantasy elements because they amount to nothing more than elaborate red herrings.

This is a one-thousand-one-hundred-fifty-seven-page shaggy dog story just for a meet cute.

That would be infuriating enough. But it’s so much worse than that.

Murakami uses an impressive battalion of rhetorical gymnastics to not only justify pedophilia but to BLAME IT ON THE GIRLS BY CLAIMING THE GIRLS WERE RAPING THE MEN. There’s a whole religious experience involved, and this completely ridiculous and unearned excuse that they’re not real, only empty vessels, and he stresses over and over and over that the men didn’t enjoy it, they hated it, they were paralyzed and couldn’t stop it, they didn’t consent, they were just used by the girls, blah blah blah YOUNG GIRLS RAPED HUGE GROWN MEN.

What kind of fucked up mind not only thinks of something like this but also thinks it’s a good idea to center a novel around it? Murakami. That’s who.

At least I won’t be wasting my time on any more of his books.

(This review was originally published as part of Cannonball Read 10.)

We need to talk about Haruki

My other possible title for this review was “Now I know how to quit you”. You see, I have a long, complicated relationship with Murakami. I read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle something like thirteen years ago. I devoured that book. It was weird and fun and compelling. And deeply unsatisfying. Much like his other books, the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. And yet, I keep reading more. I’m honestly not sure why, when there are so many books to read in this way-too-short life.

That decision is even more questionable with 1Q84, a 1157-page novel in three volumes, “boxed, like Proust” (apologies to Auntie Mame). I bought it on impulse from the Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and early on the book, when one of the main characters stopped into the same bookstore a few times, I thought I’d made a great choice.

I could not have been more wrong. I say this without exaggeration: this is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. By way of quick synopsis, the book concerns two seemingly unconnected people in Tokyo who both stumble into intrigue involving a religious cult. Of course, it turns out that the two people knew each other, tangentially, when they were in school together at age 10. The girl was an outcast, and the boy treated her kindly once. The girl held his hand. After that, they never saw each other again, but it turns out that each has been deeply in love with the other ever since.

Except, very little happens. There are a few moments of action swimming in a sea of repetition and explanation. So much monologuing and dialoguing of exposition. So much doing the same thing over and over, describing things in the same way over and over, especially the shape of breasts and the magnificence of erections. I won’t even talk about the fantasy elements because they amount to nothing more than elaborate red herrings.

This is a one-thousand-one-hundred-fifty-seven-page shaggy dog story just for a meet cute.

That would be infuriating enough. But it’s so much worse than that.

Murakami uses an impressive battalion of rhetorical gymnastics to not only justify pedophilia but to BLAME IT ON THE GIRLS BY CLAIMING THE GIRLS WERE RAPING THE MEN. There’s a whole religious experience involved, and this completely ridiculous and unearned excuse that they’re not real, only empty vessels, and he stresses over and over and over that the men didn’t enjoy it, they hated it, they were paralyzed and couldn’t stop it, they didn’t consent, they were just used by the girls, blah blah blah YOUNG GIRLS RAPED HUGE GROWN MEN.

What kind of fucked up mind not only thinks of something like this but also thinks it’s a good idea to center a novel around it? Murakami. That’s who.

At least I won’t be wasting my time on any more of his books.

(This review was originally published as part of Cannonball Read 10.)

Well, shit, it's over. Took me three months to read this one, and after that last page, I want to start all over again. I got to know Aomame and Tengo in every way possible, and I will miss them like old friends.

1Q84 is the third longest book I've read, as far as page count is concerned. It is also one of the only books over a thousand pages that I've read which was not written by Stephen King. I plan on fixing that over the next year by reading Gone with the Wind and Alan Moore's newest, Jerusalem, and any other 1,000-page motherfuckers I can find. Not too interested in fantasy novels, but I might throw The Wise Man's Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss, in there too. We'll see how the mood strikes me.

What should you know about 1Q84? Well, it's a slow burn. It's definitely not a page-turner. It's literary fiction, so don't expect action and fight scenes and too much in the way of straight-line plot progression. It's magical realism, so expect to find some weird shit going down that people are overall okay with. Two moons in the sky? Why the fuck not. Exploding dogs? Okay then. Whatever you say.

Will you like it? See, that's the question I cannot answer with any certainty. If most of you in my friends list asked me if you should read this book, I'd likely say no. It's long and can be boring if you do not become invested in the characters like I did. I say that because you will learn every little detail about Aomame and Tengo, and you might not always be interested in their pasts.

I, however, loved every minute of this book. After two duds from Murakami (The Elephant Vanishes and Wind/Pinball... I guess that's technically three duds...), 1Q84 was a welcome return to the style I fell in love with after reading After Dark and Norwegian Wood. However, you should definitely read a shorter Murakami book before reading this one. I can't imagine anyone starting here. It would be like skipping the jungle gyms on the school playground and rushing straight for Mt. Everest.

This epic novel is broken up into three books. I believe that the original Japanese text was released in three completely different volumes. I never saw a clear ending point after book one, two, and three, so had I read these separately, I don't think I would have liked them as much. I did find it fascinating that I could tell the difference between the first two books and the final book. Something felt... off, is the best way I can explain it. Then I read the copyright page at the back and I find that the first two books were translated by Jay Rubin, whereas the third book was translated by Philip Gabriel. To me, there is an obvious difference between these two translators, but, if asked, I could not put a finger on what made the experience different. Odd.

Murakami nails the opening and closing of the novel. At the beginning, you can feel the shift from 1984 into what Aomame comes to call 1Q84. The last time I felt so certain that I was in a different place was while watchingDisney's Alice and Wonderland as a child. The cool part is that there isn't much difference between 1984 and 1Q84, only this feeling that 1984 is the real world, and in 1Q84, anything goes.

In summation: This review will likely grow as I digest more of this stunning novel, but for now, this is what you're getting. Air chrysalises and Little People and Sakigake and Buzzcut and Ponytail and Ushikawa and Aomame and Tengo are all part of my life now. I will never forget any part of 1Q84and I will definitely reread it on occasion. One of the best novels I've had the pleasure to experience.

Final Judgment: Magic.