1Q84 by Haruki Murakami REVIEW

Summary:

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.

As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

My Thoughts:

I am still processing this book. Aomame is a sort of assassin for hire, targeting those who have committed sexual crimes. She is approached to assassinate a cult leader, and agrees, even though she knows that she might not survive after. Tengo is a writer who gets the opportunity to revise a novel written by a teenage girl. He is hesitant at first, thinking of the moral and legal problems it may cause, but after talking to the author and being pressured by his boss, Tengo agrees. Slowly, the world starts to mirror the world of the novel, which very few people see, and these characters are drawn back together after not seeing each other since childhood. 

I really like how character-driven this story is. Murakami takes his time to flesh them out to seem like real people, and you can visualize them easily. He also points out the subtle differences between 1984 and 1Q84 very well. On the flip side, we know very little about the Little People, even at the end. It may have been intentional, but it made them seem like a smaller part of the story than they actually were. It is also very obvious that this was written by a man, due to the way the female characters are described. The book is slow-paced and hard to get into until about a third of the way in. I did like the characters and the story though.

My Rating: 3 stars