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Review: 1Q84

1Q84 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A rather bizarre alternate-world fantasy novel of particularly Japanese sensibility. I was curious at several points about the Japanese-language original version of the Japanese names and foreign loan-words used in the text, as they would have more significance to an original reader -- the translators explained some of the significance of the unusual characters' names. And those characters were indeed unusual and memorable, so precisely described at length (this is a long book). The chapters are episodic and specific to each main character in turn, such that this could well have been serialized, a la Dickens! I raise the language/translation points because I am also reading Mizumura's The Fall of Language in the Age of English. Does she consider Murakami to be great modern Japanese literature, I wonder? I think it could rate, though frankly the ending here was a bit of a letdown, romantically fulfilling though it was -- I wanted other plot points to be tied up as well. The author also includes so many European literary references -- also ironically making Mizumura's point about Japan's reliance on western literature. The old song "Paper Moon" strangely plays a large part of the whole plot!
In sum, Murakami displayed a fantastic imagination, and spun a novel fantasy tale, worth reading for those who like such long stories. I would love to be able to read it in the original!

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