Haruki Murakami- 1Q84 Books One and Two

1Q84- Books One and Two

Vintage

Haruki Murakami

2009 (Japanese)/ 2011 (English)
Translated by Jay Rubin

Other Murakami Reviews- A Wild Sheep Chase - Dance Dance Dance - Underground - Sputnik Sweetheart - after the quake - After Dark - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - 1Q84- Books I & II - Book III - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage - Strange Library

'Autumn quietly deepened… Aomame tried her best to keep her mind clear of any thoughts, but it was impossible not to think of anything. Nature abhors a vacuum. At the very least, thought, she felt that now there was nothing for her to hate. There was no need to hate her classmates and teacher anymore. Aomame was no longer a a helpless child, and no one was forcing her to practice a religion now. There was no need to hate the men who beat up women. The anger she had felt before, like a high tide rising up within her–the overwrought emotions that sometimes made her want to smack her fists against the closest wall… She wasn’t sure why, but those feelings were entirely one.'

It was not without a great deal of excitement that I began reading this book, and I certainly wasn't the only one. Such is the popularity of the once-obscure translated Japanese author's work that bookstores in the UK were reported as opening at midnight for the release of this, the first two volumes of 1Q84, elevating Murakami to the appearance level of a Harry Potter novel; somewhat bizarre on the surface when you consider the strange nature of the stories woven by an author described as a modern-day Kafka.

1Q84 is Murakami's first 'epic' length Odyssey of crafted characterization and surrealism since 2002's amazing Kafka on the Shore, and like that book contains two main protagonists, Tengo and Aomame, living initially separate stories that begin to entwine with greater and greater detail as the book progresses. Tengo is an aspiring author who is enlisted by a publishing friend to ghost re-write a powerful and mysterious (Murakami-esque, in fact) surreal fantasy novella by a 17-year-old school girl, only to find himself becoming entwined within her own strange personal history. Aomame, meanwhile lives a dual life as a personal trainer and as a hired killer with specific targets. One day she gets out of a taxi on a crowded Tokyo expressway and climbs down an emergency escape staircase, advised by the taxi-driver that doing so might change the very nature of reality itself.

As the story continues it throws up new twists and turns at a quick pace, as Aomame and Tengo discovers the differences of the parallel world of 1Q84 that Aomame stepped into, including a religious cult, it's mysterious leader, and the even more mysterious but entirely sinister 'Little People'. It's a thoroughly absorbing and exiting trip through a world of uncertainty and underlying themes that, with Murakami's usual smooth effortlessness, become overlying plot points and events without skipping a beat. This isn't a tightly-constructed mystery, instead reveling in its tangents and unexplored questions while at the same time hurtling towards certain inevitable confrontations. Despite his relatively new found worldwide fame, Murakami pulls no punches, makes nothing simpler for his readers, and this book is all the better for it.

While the Japanese readers had to wait a year for the unexpected third installment of 1Q84, the English was published very shortly after, and although I almost can't wait to get to book three, this first installment of two parts reads well enough as a stand-alone story, leaving plenty of both solid and vague philosophical questions for the reader to think about, if you're partial to that sort of thing. This might be Murakami's magnum opus, which is no small feat. Simply phenomenal literature from the best author of the millennium so far.