The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

So I realized that I hadn't updated the books I read in like 3 months though I don't actually know if I've read a lot many books in that time span anyway. Oh well.

So I read Norwegian Wood (don't think I posted that one) and liked it so I decided to read this one. Apparently its one of his more surreal novels or something like that.

I really liked it. Sometimes, if books are surreal or if they contain elements of the supernatural, it just doesn't seem to fit with the novel. Usually it's because it's random and inconsistent with the rest of the book. This one book by Stephen King that I read a looooong while back had that. It was about a woman trying to get away from her abusive husband and he's "taken care of" by this monster that looks like her. I might have been too young to catch the symbolism behind it (maybe it was an illustration of her mental and emotional struggle against him and his influence on her?) but I just remember thinking it was really random and really weird.

Murakami on the other hand, completely incorporates the sense of the surreal throughout the novel and it really contributes to the overall mood. The surreal aspect of the novel really enhanced the plot and made the character seem more real because it was so different. All the things that were happening to him were believable and I felt like what happened to Mr. Okada/Mr. Wind-Up Bird in real life was almost a mirror of what was going on in his mind.

The writing was fluid, the plot engaging and everything was steeped in meaning. I really like how Murakami played with that idea. In novels, the seemingly random is never random and all actions have meaning. However, in real life, such is never the case and it is up to the individual to glean meaning from the mundane. So it all goes in full circle. What seems mundane and meaningless in the novel isn't because it is a novel. Yet because it is a portrayal of real life, the meaningful seems meaningless to those involved. But it's not meaningless because it all works toward an end.

Anyway, he definitely made me think of a lot of things and I want to come back to this novel someday. I feel like this novel is accessible to most people though if I were to recommend a Murakami novel (of the whopping two that I read), I would recommend Norwegian Wood first because the plot's more "normal."