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Maboneng street art by Carsten ten Brink

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Book Reviews: Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84  - What’s to like & learn?

Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 is a love story like no other. Tengo and Aomame, theirs is a love so strong it can travel worlds, perhaps even create worlds.  The book is a colossus, in length, in depth.  While it slowed in places, snaked around in others, it is more than worth joining its journey. It is a story of love in a brutal world, of belief and retribution, of lamented and unlamented loss. There are poetic scenes, everyday scenes, and disturbing scenes – making us dream, anchoring us in 1Q84 reality, and creating an uncomfortable tension that drives the reader forward and deeper. Underneath it all is human yearning and the scars that make us, philosophical and metaphysical questions as to what is life about, what religion is for, and what the place is that we call home.

In addition to being a totemic read, Murakami’s 1Q84 teaches us about writing. Some take-aways for me that I thought I’d share:

Fully inhabiting a scene – so that while one is there, it is everything;

Specificity anchors reality – Tengo’s seafood linguini, mussels, cucumbers;

The importance of names – Tengo and Aomame, to me sounds like I have (tengo in Spanish)  your soul (ame in French);

Characters create atmosphere – the 17-year-old author Fuka-Eri with her knowing stare and questions without question marks;

Physical features are keys to people – Aomame’s beautiful face distorted by a frightening grimace; Ushikawa’s deformed head;

Conflicted “villains” make them three dimensional – the Sakigake Leader’s kindness and understanding, despite the apparent depravity; Ushikawa’s honour and perfectionism, despite his underworld role;

Contrasts create power – the everyday language and politeness, with the non-puritanical sex scenes, and death acts; and finally,

Leaving things unsaid can keep the story alive after the book is shut and shelved – we wonder how 1Q84 continues, how our world continues and how the new world with the Esso tiger looking right starts.

An author’s sure literary hand holds the reader’s – one stays at his side, happy to be guided through the multiple plots to an ending on couldn’t have expected when one started; oh, and:

Twists – but I won’t give you examples of these.

 Over to you. I hope you enjoy the book too! 

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Portrait of Harold Pinter Playwright by Patrick ten Brink Via Flickr: Portrait of the late Harold Pinter, one of the great playwrights of the 20th century and also part of western social conscience through his public criticism of political mistakes. Nobel laureate in 2005 he argued (inter alia) that the citizen has a responsibility to distinguish the true from the false. Sadly passed away 24 December 2008; his works, words and ideals will live on.

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Willi Baumeister at work. You can see his work at the Kubus in Stuttgart, Germany.