The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Review)

Published in BCNWEEK
Issue # 1o
July 21 - 27, 2006

THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE /// HARUKI MURAKAMI /// THE HARVIL PRESS, LONDON

Many weird and wonderful things have come out of Japan, and Haruki Murakami’s novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle can be added to the list, being perfectly though inadequately defined by the two aforementioned adjectives. The book is weird. The book is wonderful.
It begins in a tranquil Tokyo suburb in Toru Okada’s kitchen, where he claims to have found the perfect music for cooking pasta. It’s an opera (read it to find out which and your tortellini will never be the same). As a recently unemployed law clerk, Mr. Okada leads a quiet life in his quiet house, ironing shirts when he’s nervous and cooking pasta at 10:30 in the morning. Then he gets a strange phone call. Then his cat disappears. Then his wife disappears. And Mr. Okada is left in his shell of a life without a clue.
All of a sudden, with his life flipped upside down like a tortilla espanola, the phone starts ringing off the hook. Strange women with strange names know things about him they shouldn’t know. Old memories spring back into focus and new mysteries take odd twists as Mr. Okada tries to sort through a convoluted web of clues in order to find his wife, Kumiko.
The journey is surreal to say the least. All in the name of understanding, Toru Okada is taken through suspicious meetings, wet dreams, trespassing excursions, and even back in time, to wars and battles fought long ago between Japan, Outer Mongolia, and Russia. Yes, the book is weird. But to find out the meaning of self, and to understand how the past creates the future, connections must first be made between executed zoo animals, manskinning Russian intelligence officers, prostitutes of the mind, an unseen bird and its unique sound, and a random blue facial mark. Yes, the book is weird.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is an incredible, original and creative book that puts deep, deep life questions into a smooth, exquisitely written context within modern Japan and the minds of its residents. Will Toru Okada find his wife? What about his cat? Are we really free in our lives, or is fate pulling us towards some unknown end?