Skip to main content

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!

View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World

Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World by James Carroll My rating: 4 of 5 stars Fascinating comprehensive worldview, with Jesuitical logic in a broad sweep that links religion in a circular way to violence and the solution to violence. The author shows a great command of history and religion, with extensive endnotes to support or expand upon most of his claims; however, some sweeping indictments will certainly be resisted by the more fundamentalist People Of The Book (that is, the Abrahamic religions). A core symbolic thread is Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac on Mt.Moriah, the supposed site later called Jerusalem -- the author deftly cites that scene throughout the many centuries since the original event, demonstrating the human tendency to misinterpret that near-sacrifice in order to rationalize our own tendency to violence and scapegoating. I started the book in audio form, but found it unlistenable -- the author's c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kite Runner is with us again

 Six or so years ago, I taught The Kite Runner to three successive sets of tenth-graders, and marveled at the effect the novel had on me and on these adolescents.  That age is a marvelous time for a humanities teacher, as we see callous children grow out of their self-centered cocoons and flex their world-empathic feelers.  They grow into the world outside them and realize they truly have agency -- or will have agency and responsibility for human actions.  Amir, the main protagonist of Kite Runner is so identifiable with those adolescents learning to take responsibility for their callous actions.   And of course we think of Kite Runner now that Afghanistan once again plunges into Taliban rule -- we particularly worry about the fate of the Hazara (news stories already cite random executions of Hazara men).   We can only wring hands and pray that the Taliban will have to adapt and tolerate more than they did before -- but I am not optimistic. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Related Reviews: This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race then Attack Surface

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth My rating: 5 of 5 stars And the hits just keep on coming! This excellent book details an unrelenting onslaught of cyberattacks, and outlines the author's own gradual realization of the dangers of internet warfare. It is a lengthy but worthwhile read -- actually, I lost the book for a while because I did not want to read it at bedtime, for fear of nightmares or disrupted sleep! Indeed the book is changing my stance toward online security -- multi-factor authentication, definitely! As with most of us, the author first downplayed the fear tactics promoted by sellers of security packages; but after years of research she has come to wonder that more disaster has not happened yet. She briefly but baldly calls out the recent presidentical administration for wreaking havoc on US defense, by eliminating a cybersecurity department, incensing the Iranian and Chinese gover...
Post a Comment
Read more