I hesitated reading 1Q84 as it is such a tome of a book. Picked it up on a whim, and surprisingly it is quite easy-going, easier than some much thinner books. Like other Murakami books, there's no need to ponder too much. Just go along with the ride and a helluva one it will be. ( )

Boom goes the dynamite. I finished it! Took me 44 days, but it never was really a slog. At its core, its a basic star crossed lovers, who met as children, moved apart and always thought of each other and wanted to find each other. But its Murakami, it can't be that simple, and it isn't. He's a struggling author who ghost writes a book by a girl who escapes from a religious cult, that's about these mysterious creature who are causing havoc. She's a fitness instructor who is also an assassin who grew up in another religious cult and some how gets transported to an alternate earth, maybe as a result of the mysterious creatures that He was writing about? Yeah its very weird but in a very good way. Even though I think it falls under my theory that once an author gets "too big for his britches", his editor can't keep him contained and large tomes are the result.

The book was originally published as 3 separate books, but when combined to 1157 pages, I think it could have used a bit of trimming. Some of the exposition might not have been entirely necessary. Despite that, I still enjoyed the book a lot, would recommend and Murakami continues to be one of those authors I will always read when given the opportunity.

Book Quote:
And is that why we joined our bodies? Tengo wanted to ask Fuka-Eri. In that wild storm last night. What did that mean? But he did not ask those questions, which might have been inappropriate, and which he knew she never would have answered.

If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation, Tengo's father said somewhere. ( )

This is a book sorely in need of an editor. It reminds me of the narrative flabbiness of the Harry Potter books after book 3. Once writers become famous, it seems that editors become more timid with their editing. I skipped entire chapters in the second half of the book without losing much in the way of plot. This is a bad sign.

The story itself is a bit flimsy and didn't really interest me. I really enjoy Murakami's writing style ( through his translator), so I powered through as well as I could, but I definitely lost interest by about page 600. The story just felt stalled.

This is my first full-length Murakami novel, which I understand to be a bad place to start, but it was the first title available at the library. Murakami still intrigues me, bit I'd recommend skipping this doorstop of a novel. ( )

DNF @ 17 Percent (7h45/ 46h45)

Not rating because of the relatively earlier DNF.

This was my first Murakami. After seeing his novels constantly dominating any list of the top modern surrealist and magic realism literature lists, I have been so very excited to sink my teeth into his full and lauded library. I had heard that his handling of women wasn't great, so I tried to go in with that in mind--trying to make an effort to be aware of it, but get past it to enjoy the loudly proselytised wonders surely on offer.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do that.

I was intrigued and entertained by Murakami's prose and approach from the beginning. There is an tonal aspect that reminded me of the Kazuo Ishiguro artful restraint, particularly of the narrative texture of Klara and the Sun with just the slightest hint of an almost Chuck Palahniuk edge of grim whimsy (grihmsy?). It's funny, I found the airlessness of Klara and the Sun, especially compared to Never Let Me Go and Ishiguro's musical short story collection, too cold and clinical for me to really engage, whereas a similar air in 1Q84 felt stark, but less stilted. This dual human perspectives and their details certainly breathed more life into the prose.

The towards the coming strangeness and how it seems grounded in the story had me excited, but at nearly eight hours in it was starting to feel like unnecessary edging. This is one of my biggest issues with the book, it feels bloated and unedited. The precision and effectiveness of the prose itself simply doesn't reflected in what appear to be extraneous and over long scenes, and dialogue that goes to lengths that might approach reality, feel lugubrious and interminable.

I wanted something to happen.

It is made very clear that the men care too little or too much about the women in their lives, particularly those under their care and authority. The male lead is concentious and caring gentleman, so it's 'OK' if he's a bit of a creep over a teenage girl. Like, this is all I can really say about him, beyond him being a teacher and a writer.

It is made excruciatingly clear that the female protagonist fucks. She has a thing for middle-aged whose hair is starting thin with odd-shaped heads and average to slightly larger penises. Murakami was around 60 when he wrote this. The frank discussion of sex and how uncomfortable it made the men she approached in bars was amusing, but the amount of time spent on her proclivities seems incredibly excessive for establishing that she is single, sexually confident, and likes want she she likes. She's also an assassin (this is a representative amount of text on these subjects). She has a special ice pick weapon and she is trained in the deadly art of kicking people with penises in the balls. She was even training ball-kicking classes until the men were made uncomfortable.

The disparity in the above descriptions is also representative of the physical detail we get about the protagonists and characters that share their gender. Men are dudes who might have some clothes and a bit of a face. Women are ravishing creatures with detailed breasts and agonising detail who draw the eye of the men and narrator in to focus on lascivious details, when they aren't thinking about how good the morning after some food good dick feels inside--I described this crassly on purpose, but it doesn't approach the way Murakami describes it.

Look, I'm not a prude. I'm a woman who appreciates other women, and I'm certainly not adverse to a sex scene or smut. What I don't like is clinical sex-less sex and creepy, voyeuristic description characters and narrators who aren't being played that way, and a gaze and description that is purely there for the cis fellas.

Ultimately, I was putting up with how agonisingly slow it was going, but the fact that it was being padded out with what is, frankly, pervy old man shit, was more than I could take, so I had to stop. To an extent that's on me for not being able to get past it, but I shouldn't fucking have to be honest.

I'm rather devastated and had to pull myself out of an autistic meltdown because I've been so excited and heard so much praise and I hate being left out and feeling like a wokescold. I want to be clear, I think that this stuff is shitty and maybe even go so far as to use the P-word, but I don't think there's anything wrong with reading and enjoying this book if you can get past that. I certainly don't want to take this conversation to social media or even think about the C-word. I just think it sucks and I'm disappointed and I'm actually pissed off with my own ambivalence about whether or not I want to know anything more about magic goats, tiny people and religious communist insurrectionists or whatever this book might actually be about another ten or so hours in.

*Disappointed.GIF*

Unraveled slowly, but beautifully. Well-worth the many pages. Although told in third-person, the point of view shifts between three different characters. Yet, Murakami narrates as if hanging over the character's head. It was lovely and charming. The story itself was mysterious and metaphysical yet straight-forward and simple. I've finished the book, but I'm not sure if I entire understand it all. I'm still thinking about it, which is a mark of a good novel. ( )