Murakami - 1Q84 - Comment.

 

This is the most extraordinary novel read this year. To quote a cliche, a real page-turner, all 1318 pages, keeping the reader riveted from start to finish. The novel touches on many themes, including multi-universe theory, assassination by way of vigilante justice; sex, food, love lost and regained; cults and religion, mystery, and murder. 

Murakami is certainly an original author. In most of his novels read so far, cats always play a role in the story. In 1Q84, there's a story about "cat town." A man jumps off a train in a remote part of Japan, entering a well-kept town that is devoid of life. He decides to remain and sleep in the tower of the town's church. Once the sun sets, cats of all shapes and colors appear and gather food, pushing carts of supplies and repairing buildings. At one point, they smell a human man but never find him. Once sunrise, they disappear completely from the town. The man stands at the train station waiting for it to arrive, but it whizzes past him, where he is stuck forever in "cat town."

The story primarily centers on two characters: Aomame and Tengo. Aomame is a thirty-something sports trainer. Her side job is working for a wealthy dowager, who takes in battered women due to domestic violence. Because the authorities are useless in punishing these sadistic powerful men, she hires Aomame to murder them, making it appear like they've had a heart attack. Both Aomame and the dowager feel totally justified in killing these sadistic men. 

Tengo is a mathematics teacher at a cram school and a budding writer. He is pulled into a scheme by his publisher to ghostwrite a novella written by a mysterious 17-year-old girl. He re-writes the novella, and it wins first prize and becomes a best seller. The story is about a little girl who meets the "little people" who create what is called an Air Chrysalis, a womb-type structure made from string captured in the air. Once the novella is published, both Aomame and Tengo believe they've been transported to another dimension, where everything is the same except there are now two moons. 

There is a spiritual connection between Aomame and Tengo. Both attended the same primary school and once they hold hands, that connection remains even though they have never seen each other for twenty-five years. 

The 17-year-old girl was once part of a secret cult that exists off the grid. We come to realize that this cult and the so-called 'little people' are real in this dimension, and the publication of the book exposes their existence, causing strange events to happen. 

The dowager wants Aomame to assassinate the cult's leader because he has Congress with 10-year-old girls. He must be stopped, and Aomame is assigned the task. 

Murakami traps the reader in the mystery of the dimension of two moons and the relationships between all the characters. The writing style, in translation, at least, is elegant and descriptive. Through the reading process, Tengo and Aomame become real, three-dimensional beings, and the reader wants both of them to solve the mystery and be together again. 

Please don't let the size of the text, 1318 pages, put you off from reading the novel. It moves like a top thriller, retaining the reader's attention until the end. 

A beautiful novel.