The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

When the phone rang, I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. 


I've been really looking forward to reading one of Haruki Murakami's books, and this is the one that particularly caught my eye. Murakami's stories and writing are a bizarre mix of realism and a fantasy world. In this book a young man named Toru Okada looks for his wife's missing cat. Eventually, he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a strange "netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo." He meets a whole group of strange characters, allies and antagonists. As the book progresses, it becomes harder and harder to tell what is real and what is not. This book had a great plot, and I really liked the narration of the book. Toru Okada tells the story, and he is matter-of-fact and observant. I look forward to reading more of Haruki Murakami's books in the future.

Read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle:

• if you like Haruki Murakami
• if you like Japanese literature
• if you like bizarre fiction

607 pages.

Very Good! I would recommend this book!