The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Review)

The first time I finished reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, all I wanted to do was find a deep, dry well, sit in it and contemplate upon my life. It had me convinced. Of what?, I wasn't sure(mind you this was about 3 years back, I would have been 17 or so). The second time I read it, I was more focussed on the secondary stories, which I had seemed to have forgotten by that time. There are a lot of stories which are about incidents that occurred in the second world war, specifically between Japan and China, and then Japan and the Soviet Union. These affect Toru Okada, and in turn the reader, making them think about intuition, destiny and how it touches you in certain moments of your life.

I just finished reading it for the 3rd time yesterday, and having more experience now than I did earlier I'm convinced of a few things.

Haruki Murakami isn't as great a writer as I thought he was earlier. He has a VERY original style of writing, and his books are very easy to read, most of his characters are memorable, or at least quirky enough to stick around in your head, and he's trying to be ambitious with his writing. Or maybe not. See the thing is, The Wind-Up bird Chronicle is a very fun book to read, and there's nothing wrong with that, many people read books just for fun, but he tries to make it bigger and more philosophical than it really is because in the end it really doesn't HAVE a concrete message. I've seen people put Haruki on a big pedestal, as one of the great authors of the modern world, but I truly believe he is an author that only young people can enjoy. I consider The Wind-Up bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore to be his best books and they fall short somewhere or the other. His books are attractive to the youth, with its casual sex, references to music, and weird characters, but in the end they lack true substance.

The Wind-Up bird Chronicle is about lazy afternoons in the backyard, drinking beer at the kitchen table, and not liking the family you were born into. Through all the situations Toru(the main protagonist) goes through, he is strangely detached, as if he cannot do much about it(or chooses not to, because it is destiny?). A passive sorrow, if you will. He wants to do something, but he's never really that enthusiastic about it. To top it off, we have needless characters like Cinnamon(perfectly perfect), which just serve to undermine the rest of the novel. But still, the novel by itself is a very good read, and entertaining through most of its parts. The thing about these Japanese writers is that they have this particular way of writing, that gives you a feeling of environment, a kind of aesthetic quality to their writing, and this sticks with you after you've closed the book and put it down.

*sigh*

I wanted to write about the book but I ended up writing so much about the author. I think that's only because he is grossly over-rated, both by the media and by the general public. He IS a good author, maybe even very good, but 'great'?

No, and a definite No at that.

Itadakimasu!