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The Wind-up Bird Chronicle |  | Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
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Seller: UKPaperbackshop
Rating:  80 reviews
Sales Rank: 2933
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 624
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 1.7
ISBN: 0099448793
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780099448792
ASIN: 0099448793
Publication Date: April 22, 1999
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.p Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. IThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle/I is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.p If it were possible to isolate one theme in IThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle/I that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --ISimon Leake, Amazon.com/I
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 80
 No man is an island September 25, 2000
64 out of 70 found this review helpful
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.pWind-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.pThis 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...pWell, 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.
Startling discovery December 30, 2003
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
How bizarre, to end up subsumed in the world of this book during my first trip to Japan. A random airport selection I became completely mesmerised by it, and have spent the rest of my trip working my way through Murakami's other books. Truly unique and rather wonderful.
Insanely entertaining and thought provoking. January 10, 2003
40 out of 48 found this review helpful
I grabbed this book off a shelf, never having heard of Murakami before, a few years ago before taking a plane to Greece with some friends. We were celebrating finishing our exams, staying at a tacky resort and basically drinking and sunbathing, but after a couple of days I found myself ducking out of bar crawls to head back to my room to read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle!pThe Wind Up Bird Chronicle is a bloody difficult book to explain. There are so many different, and seemingly bizarrely unrelated, strands to the story. The only real constant is Toru, the main character, and as with many other works by Murakami he is a somewhat passive presence, trying to get his head round the flurry of unusual events, emotions and observations on life. His life is turned completely upside down, but rather than over-focusing on the strange goings on, we also have beautifully written pieces about such banal events as making pasta. On one level the Wind Up Bird Chronicle is almost fantastical in nature, so bizarre are the events, but Toru acts as a grounding force. His doubts, worries, and an imagination that all too often causes him pain, are very normal aspects of any person. It is his very mundanity and passive nature that allows the events to occur - many of the characters he meets simply because he doesn't have anything else that he could rather be doing, and therefore expands his mind and perspective.pToru as a character provokes sympathy, but it is the events around him that provoke our interest. As a character he is purer, for want of a better word, than the central character of other Murakami books. In some ways he is simply a convenient centre on which to secure the rest of the story, which at times threatens to scatter out of control. Yet I became so convinced by the view of the story through his eyes that I felt quite close to him as a character, and felt that my own reaction to such events would be similarly bemused, or self doubting.pThe Wind Up Birds Chronicle IS a confusing book. There were many times when I had to go back two or three pages to reread, largely in a case of 'double-take' - I wasn't sure, or couldn't believe, that something was happening in the way it was described. But considering the various strands, it's an impressive achievement to draw them together as effectively as Murakami does. This book is, in my opinion, a true classic.
A beautiful, complex and enlightening read March 25, 2004
Victoria Craven
18 out of 22 found this review helpful
Having heard good things about Haruki Murakami's most highly-acclaimed work to date, I decided it was about time I gave it a read. The story follows a thirty year old Japanese man named Toru Okada as his life spirals out of control, becoming more and more bizzare with each new mysterious stranger that enters his world. The events unfold as Toru searches for his missing cat - strangely absent from its usual territory - and copes with the traumatic fact that his wife has disappeared without so much as a goodbye.pThe book oftens reads like a series of interwoven short stories. Coupled with the fact that the novel often focuses on specific aspects of Japanese culture, I was greatly reminded of the enchanting 'Ghostwritten' by David Mitchell, which I would reccommend whole-heartedly.pI frequently found it difficult to relate to the character of Toru Okada, largely because his character was never fully developed. He rarely expressed an opinion, and we learn next to nothing about his personal history. Saying that however, this could well have been the author's intention, as Toru is such a magnet for eccentric characters, it was inevitable that he would fade into the background whilst in their presence. Such personalities include those of the Kano sisters - often called upon for their psychic abilities, and frequently able to project themselves into Toru's dreams. The mysterious 'Nutmeg' too, along with her mute son 'Cinnamon' play a significant role in Toru's ever-changing circumstances.pI think it would be fair to say that the author was keen on employing many philosophical and spiritual ideas within his story: aspects of Zen, cause and effect, and even Feng Shui make an appearance. There is a certain amount of paranormal activity too, with phenomena such as the previously mentioned psychic ability, astral projection, lucid dreaming and spiritual healing. Although these ideas are prominent throughout the book, it is essentially a psychological detective story, beautifully written with an intelligent and sensitive narrative.pI found the book to be reminiscant of 'The Magus' (by John Fowles), which is similar in terms of its unusual take on psychological aspects of the personality. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a stunning novel, and is written with such warmth and wit that I was literally unable to put it down, and whizzed through the six hundred pages in no time at all. Haunting and many-layered, it is a truly magnificant book, which I can't recommend highly enough.
His best since Dance Dance Dance June 27, 1999
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
As with all his books Murakami allows you to identify with his ordinary hero, not only through the most extraordinary things that happen to him but also through his descriptive powers of the ennui of everyday life which somehow makes it fascinating to read about. Everyone likes to see how others live their lives. What adds to this general fascination for the Western reader is to be able to get into contemporary Japanese urban culture - every paragraph tells you something new about this ultra modern country and how it retains its links with tradition. Indeed it is the past which adds an extra dimension to this novel and makes it truly memorable. How many people outside the immediate protagonist nations have any notion of the 1939 campaign fought in Mongolia between Japan and the Soviet Union? How you may think could someone weave such a story into a modern day tale, running parallel, set in suburban Tokyo with some very normal characters and yet who experience some supernatural happenings? Murakami masters it all with ease in his own accessible yet challenging way. Read this book: and I recommend you to seek out any other by the same author too.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 80
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