The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Ratings438
Average rating4
It was fine I guess. The ending was unsatisfying, and the book is exceptionally long, which is not a great combination. The world building is interesting and there are a lot of intriguing questions, but ultimately, like Lost, the book doesn't deliver on them.
The wind-up bird chronicle is a fascinating book. An oneiric tale full of surreal elements mixed with real-world stories of a rather heavy nature. To me it somehow was like a mix of David Lynch movies with magical realism of Marquez all bathed in Teriyaki sauce. Besides the main story line we get involved in the story of Lieutenant Mamiya from the time of WWII. This was truly a gem for me, especially that I did not know anything about the events in and around Mongolian territory from that time. It surely is a grave and sad story, but also a great study on human nature.
As a whole I see the book more as a parable of human life. A single person lost between forces which move him around the world without any consent. The paradox of life in society, but being isolated from it in the same time. The, sometimes, disastrous influence of traditions and social norms on one's life and well being (not in material sense).
Personally reading this book was a great adventure for me. Not only because of the aforementioned elements, but also because how much it was put in Japanese culture. It was my first true experience with Japanese literature and now I want to discover more of it :)
You can always count on Murakami to provide a magical escape - to a place full of absurdities where you can't always tell apart the boundaries between dreams and reality. One of his better works.
Amazing. Wonderful ending. Don't read anything about it before you read it. (Some parts were a little rough to get through but totally worth it. Beautiful ending!)
I rarely re-read books because there are so many, and so little time. I made an exception here because I read it it first in a delirious whirl of Murakami books. I was falling in love with a writer and was giddy with his peculiar mix of the banal and surreal.
For some reason I didn't see beyond the oeuvre to the exceptional nature of this work so I only gave 4 stars. I fixed that now with 5. I was so totally absorbed in each section that I didn't see how all the parts were played out as a whole.
I recently listened to Patti Smith's “M train” where she becomes enamoured with the book so I knew I had to go back and give it the time it deserved. I'm glad I did.
An interesting story that (in typical Murakami fashion) mixes the real-world with the fantastical and surreal without any real explanation. As I read more and more Murakami, he continues to be one of my favorite writers.
what did I just read?!?!
This was my first Murakami, and I still don't know if I want to read any other.
This was a mind boggling good book, after 600+ pages I still have no idea what the book was about, but I loved it.
it took me away from my own mind and worries and issues, and somedays that is all a book needs to do, confuse your problems away.
The Chronicles was just perfect and I cannot explain why, but I do agree with some of the reviews. either you love this book or you hate it. there can be no in between
Always love the prose and world-building from Murakami, and this is no exception. Don't expect it to make perfect sense and you might enjoy it.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami was originally published as Nejimakidori Kuronikuru in 3 volumes in 1994-1995. I've heard a lot about this author and I've been meaning to get around to his work for a while now. The thing that finally convinced me was when Murakami and this book in particular were both heavily referenced in the last novel I read, Number9dream by David Mitchell. Mitchell wrote his novel as a response to this one, and it was fascinating to see all of parallels in the stories, but It would have been nice if I had read these books in reverse order.
This book is really fascinating as it is about a man trying to hold his life and his marriage together, but he does so by stumbling through other people lives in a surreal dream-like way. The multiple stories all tie together quite nicely but they don't resolve each other as you might think. In a way, they seem to push each further along, providing more interpretations of the book. The author addresses a lot of themes such as dreams in relation to reality, the inhumanity of war, and emasculation in Japanese society. The novel itself is a bit jarring because I am used to more resolution in my plots, but this is definitely one of the most interesting books I've ever read. This is a book that I'm sure will be completely different to me if I were to return to it later in life.
I recommend this book to anyone who has any interest in the surreal or the meta-physical. If you like identifying themes and putting puzzle pieces together, then you will have a blast with this book.
L'uccello che girava le Viti del Mondo (Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru) è un romanzo del 1994-1995 del noto e ancora una volta mancato, premio Nobel, Murakami. La prima edizione italiana è del 1999 di Baldini&Castoldi, tradotta dal giapponese da Antonietta Pastore, adesso in edizione Enaudi. Per questo romanzo, Murakami ha vinto il prestigioso Premio Yomiuri-bungaku, conferitogli da uno dei suoi più acerrimi critici precedenti, il Premio Nobel Kenzaburō Ōe.
Il romanzo, ambientato principalmente a Tokyo tra il 1984 e 1985, è scritto in prima persona, e contiene numerose interruzioni in cui viene raccontata la storia precedente dei vari personaggi. Nella terza parte del romanzo, la narrazione lineare lascia il posto ad una serie di capitoli frammentari per stile e cronologia. Il titolo si riferisce al nome che il protagonista dà a un uccello di cui sente il verso, e che immagina avere la funzione di stringere le viti del mondo, e che si ripresenterà in seguito in alcune delle storie che vengono raccontate. Il soprannome di Toru nel romanzo è Uccello-giraviti.
I voti di gradimento sono molto alti, ma io decisamente ho apprezzato di più altri suoi romanzi come per esempio “Norwegian Wood” o “After Dark” o anche “Kafka sulla spiaggia”; questo per me risente troppo dell'adattamento da racconto (che era la prima stesura trovabile in “L'elefante scomparso e altri racconti”) a romanzo. Mi è sembrato troppo dispersivo e, per certi versi, anche troppo sconclusionato. Prolisso, ridondante, inframmezzato di racconti, per carità notevoli, ma che c'entrano poco con lo svilupparsi della storia. Gli eventi si sviluppano in modo caotico, le coincidenze appaiono forzate e le trovate bizzarre mancano di coerenza, anche per un libro che fa dell'onirico, la sua base naturale.
Il romanzo segue la vita del protagonista, il trentenne Toru Okada, disoccupato per scelta che riceve una strana telefonata da una donna che non conosce, la quale, però, conosce lui molto bene. Oltre a questa strana situazione, la scomparsa del gatto domestico segna il momento in cui la vita di Toru prende una piega imprevista, fitta di difficoltà, che lo porta ad incontrare bizzarri personaggi: May Kasahara, un'adolescente che ha deciso di non frequentare più la scuola e di lavorare per una fabbrica di parrucche, il tenente Mamiya, che racconterà a Toru tutte le sue vicissitudini durante la seconda guerra mondiale, Malta Kano, una sorta di medium che ha cambiato nome dopo un'esperienza ascetica sull'omonima isola, la sorella Creta, sua aiutante e “prostituta della mente”, Nutmeg Akasaka, una misteriosa donna e suo figlio Cinnamon Akasaka, muto dall'età di sei anni, con i quali vivrà storie ed esperienze diverse, in una girandola di situazioni all'insegna del surreale e dell'onirico. Protagonista materiale ma fondamentale: il pozzo asciutto che si trova in una casa abbandonata nel quartiere che diventa il tramite per accedere ad un mondo parallelo attraverso cui è convinto di poter ritrovare la moglie.
Ho apprezzato molto la prima parte di questo romanzo, quell'aurea di mistero, di intrigo, di suspense che si dipana dalla misteriosa telefonata iniziale, ma poi è come se Murakami avesse unito forzatamente due o tre romanzi e li avesse mescolati ad altrettanti racconti brevi. Un minestrone a tratti stonato. Lo stile narrativo è come sempre eccelso, sempre impeccabile, molto reale nel dipingere l'irreale.
L'autore è indubbiamente uno dei migliori scrittori contemporanei, ma questa volta ha esagerato con l'irreale come se si fosse lasciato troppo prendere la mano creando una storia troppo complessa, troppo arzigogolata, con troppi personaggi e situazioni che si sovrappongono tra loro. Non ho amato molto questo lungo romanzo. Ci sono sicuramente dei passaggi mirabili ma non lo eleggo di certo tra i miei preferiti e decisamente è possibile rinunciare quasi alla sua lettura non aggiunge nulla a quanto già scritto dall'autore, anzi.
Uno spezzatino che mischia troppi ingredienti e rende il piatto indigesto.
It may have taken me a year exactly to finish this book, but not because the book itself didn't hold my attention...just blame it on a growing stack of must-reads from my public library addiction. Although bits here and there did seem a bit long winded, in hindsight I would not wish for any of them to have been edited out. I have to agree with everyone who calls Murakami a genius- this is unlike anything else I have ever read and I will most certainly be reading more of his.
I don't usually read much in the way of fiction, always preferring the fantastical to the mundane, but I have to give credit where credit is due, and Haruki Murakami definitely delivers in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. Each character, including the cat, seem to be well defined and at the same time oddly aloof. Their interconnectedness brings the otherwise disparate story lines into one powerful, cohesive, and utterly riveting plot.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It follows the story of Mr Okada, a seemingly ordinary fellow at the outset but his life becomes weirder and weirder as the story progresses. My favourite chunks were the stories of Lt Mamiya. It's kind of built up of different people's stories, all of which affect the protagonist and leads to his becoming much more self aware.
It's a somewhat quirky tale that is quite unlike anything I've ever read before. It grabbed a hold of my attention like a thief in the park and kept a hold of it until the end of the story. I normally read fantasy or sci-fi so this is a bit of a step outside the box for me and one that I'm very glad I took. I'm recommending this to pretty much everyone I know and for good reason.
Thanks to Steve Betz for the recommendation!
Simply wonderful. I read it as slowly as possible, sometimes putting it down after each chapter to give the latest developments time to sink in. A beautifully intertwined fractal, filled with Murakami's signature combination of unforgettable characters, strange portents, and vivid details of modern Japan. One of those books I want to pick up and start over immediately after finishing.
I read like 9/10ths of this book before I left for the States and was LOVING it. And then I didn't want to bring such a big book with me on the plane when I had hardly any left to read, and then when I came back and finished it I was a little like, what? It was almost shocking to abruptly re-enter the vaguely magical world Murakami had painstakingly set up throughout the book. Still though, wonderful.
‰ЫПYou can‰ЫЄt keep it up forever, though. You‰ЫЄre going to burn out sooner or later. Everybody does. It‰ЫЄs the way people are made. In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get in trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don‰ЫЄt worry, you‰ЫЄll burn out.‰Ыќ
Six hundred and ten pages of exotic imagery and Jungian thought. A masterpiece.