Spoiler Warning: I didn't reveal the essence / the ending of this story on this entry, but write about some parts of this story. If you want to read Murakami's latest work without any advance knowledge, I recommend you to leave this entry.
For non-natives of Japanese: In Japanese, the pronunciation of "9" is the same of "Q". Why "1Q84?" not "1984"? After you read this book, you'll find the meaning.
[Introduction]
In 1984, Tokyo. Aomame (female), nearly thirty years old, is an instructor at a luxury sports club. She also has another job requiring "expertise and training". Having done the job, she gets out of a taxi on a heavily-congested Metropolitan Expressway, and begins to walk towards the emergency stairway to the ground.
Tengo (male), nearly thirty years old, is a math teacher of a prep school and sometimes submits his novels into contests for new novelists. An editor he knows approaches him to rewrite a prodigious novel "Air pupa" which was wrote by a female senior high school student.
[My impression]
Like other Haruki Murakami's full-length novels, this work made me to want to discuss it with other people who have read this novel. As usual, he never explains to readers the meaning of the curious and heart-swaying story. It is open to interpretation, depending on us. Yes, I understand that many people think that his works don't need interpretation but impression. In both case, I want to ask and tell readers "What do you think about the events / the sentences of "1Q84"?"
Compared to other Murakami's works, this book mentioned many groups that has clear real models (for instance, Jehovah's Witnesses(Wikipedia) and The Yamagishi Association (a agriculture commune) ) and concrete place-names appeared. That adds to the realism and shows up unreal aspects of this story. However, his new style of camera-eye describing which was apparent in "After Dark" isn't found. I think that this work doesn't show Murakami's new frontier - for example, new describing style or new composition of a story, etc. This work is the successor of "Kafka on the Shore" due to the same styles of using two main characters.
Needless to say, for me, this novel is incredible excellent for being a unpredictably page-turner story, simple and wonderful appropriate metaphors, and sentences which has good rhythm and are easy to read. Such Murakami's work's brilliant characteristics have not diminished yet over time. Through fifteen hours of reading, I never felt boredom but felt seamless stimulation. I feel it is difficult to find such novels.
Nonetheless, I am not satisfied with one point. I anticipated his answer to events in this novel: violence to females and kids (not only physically but also mental). Ordinary, a story has a beginning and an ending. However, I feel that this work has a beginning but doesn't have the ending of the events. (This is my feeling, maybe other people have other feelings.) Due to this point and other points (I refrain to explain them in detail now), I think this novel have not completed. There is possibility to release the sequel in future, I anticipate.
Above all, I want to discuss this Murakami's latest work – How do you think / feel about the events / the sentences? When is the English version released?
2 comments:
Agreed. I think there are many loose ends. What really happens at the end of Chapter 2/23? Can we be sure Aomame's dead? Would the novel have been even better with less fantasy and more realism? One of the best passages to my mind was the descriptions of Tengo's childhood Sundays. Hoping there is a sequel of some kind . . .
Thanks for your comment. I think Aomame's last scene means a foreshadowing to a squel. Did Tamaru set something at a gun?
I was also impressed Tengo's childhood Sundays, and the last conversations between Tengo and his father. The latter is salvation in this novel.
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