Book Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Author: Haruki Murakami

Pages: 607

Genre: Surreal

Reading a Murakami book is easy. But, what is difficult is to understand it and even after u have understood and interpreted it, it is difficult to explain or review it. I have no idea where to start my review from. So, i have decided to break the novel into its various characters and review through them (which is the way the story is told in the novel).

Simplifying the basic plot:

The story revolves around the life of Toru Okada and his wife Kumiko Okada. Toru has lost his job and stays at home while Kumiko goes out to work. One fine day, Toru and Kumiko lose their beloved cat, which they had adopted after their marriage. Kumiko expresses the cat to be the sign of their married life and right after losing it things starts breaking down in their married life. Kumiko without prior warning leaves Toru. She asks Toru to file a divorce through her brother and she refuses to meet him. The whole story from there on revolves around Toru, who desperately wants to get back to his wife and is ready to stake everything to get her. Whether he succeeds or not, you have to read the book to find it out. 

Story so far seems to be simple and social, but beware!! it is layered and complex. There are atleast 6 more characters with their own unique tales intervened. Each tale takes Toru a step forward to reach Kumiko. There are no explanations given and no logics given to occurrence of odd events. Murakami's beauty of writing is that, he leaves the interpretation to the readers.

Toru Okada

A 30 year old man, who has resigned from his job and works at home while his wife Kumiko works as an editor in a magazine. Toru, after being deserted by his wife, meets a lot of people who has their own stories to tell and somewhere in their stories, Toru finds connections and answers for his own struggle of getting his wife back. He develops an obsession for a deserted well with no water in the backyard of his cursed neighbourhood. He finds the well as a passage between his conscious and subconscious world. 

May Kasahara

While Toru's visits to his neighbourhood in attempt to find his lost cat, he encounters a 16 year old school dropout May Kasahara. May has an odd liking for making wigs and later on shifts to an unnamed place where she works as a worker in wig making factory. From there May writes letters to Toru which he never recieves. May has met with an accident while she was on the bike with her boyfriend and something made her close her boyfriend's eyes while he was riding. The boyfriend dies and May is injured. May is obsessed with the idea of death and once when Toru was in the well, she pulled out his ladder and waited for him to die, but she had no intention to kill him. May is the only "friend" Toru has.

Malta Kano

Just as the name, the character is also odd enough. Malta Kano is a fortune reader, who has practised austerities at Malta, where she gets her name for. She meets Toru in order to help him find his cat but turns out later on that she actually has met Toru to talk about Kumiko's disappearance. All of a sudden Malta Kano is vanished from the plot before the reader realises. The reason is not directly stated.

Creta Kano

Creta Kano is Malta's younger sister. She has been defiled by Kumiko's brother and has an even weirder background story attached to herself. She is once a sufferer of immense pain, from which she stops suffering anything at all and after her defilement she turns into an entirely new human being. Creta Kano is a "prostitute of mind". Toru Okada, after their rendezvous stars getting dreams about having sex with Creta Kano in a unnamed Hotel room along with a presence of a mysterious woman he has encountered on phone. Creta Kano operates at an unconscious level, only in dreams but it's effect is seen both on subconscious and conscious level.

Noboru Wataya

Noboru Wataya is Kumiko's brother, who is a professor and later on becomes a big intellectual. Every one knows him and every television channel considers him for his view points. But Noboru has a darker side, he is an impotent and yet he has defiled Creta Kano. Noboru has also defiled his elder sister, who has later on attempted suicide and now his next victim is Kumiko herself. In a letter adressed to Toru, Kumiko says that his brother does not physically defile but does it at a subconscious level. Noboru is Toru's enemy and Toru detests him. 

Lieutenant Mamiya

Lieutenant Mamiya happens to meet Toru for delivering a package from a dead relative but ends up telling Toru his odd tale of working at Army during which he watches his Mongolian friend skinned alive and is trapped in a well yet survives. He also narrates his tale of working at Siberia and encountering the same person who had skinned his Mongolian friend but escaping him with a curse.

Nutmeg and Cinnamon

Nutmeg is not her real name, but she hides it from Toru. She is a fashion designer turned healer and "fits" women who are disturbed unconsciously. She finds Toru, who has developed a bluish mark on his face and takes him to her office. The women there are cured by cuddling and fondling Toru's mysterious bluish mark on his cheek. Toru gets paid for it. Nutmeg has memories of her father's zoo as a child and she talks about the incidents that has happened in the zoo during the Manchuria war. Her father has an uncanny resemblance and similar mark like Toru. She is unable to say whether the stories are fragments of her memories or something that she has made up. Her husband is murdered in a hotel brutally but no one is able to find the murderer or purpose for murder.

Cinnamon is her son who is mute. He has mysteriously lost his speech when one night he sees odd incidents happening at the backyard of his house. He is efficient. Cinnamon has his own world in his computer which drops hints to Toru by revealing files that can lead Toru to his destination.

The Hotel

The Hotel might be an inanimate object but plays a very significant role in the novel. It is a hotel of Toru's subconscious mind where there are long labyrinths and odd incidents occur. Toru's answers lie in room no.208 where he finds a mysterious woman, whose voice only is heard. He thinks that it is Kumiko's shadow which is trapped there and once he saves it, he wil be able to reach and liberate Kumiko. Every time he tries, he fails. 

Will Toru be able to cross the subconscious wall and liberate Kumiko? What will happen to May Kasahara and her obsession with death? Will Noboru Wataya ever get punished for his heinous crimes? Will Nutmeg find the murderer of her husband? Who is that mysterious woman whose voice only is hear? Will Creta Kano return?

 All these questions are answered rather indirectly in the book.

There are many other characters such as, Miyawaki's mysterious house which Toru purchases, Toru's uncle, fortuneteller Mr. Honda who predicts future by the flow of water and the cat Noburu Wataya which returns as Mackerel.

For those who like surreal novels, who have a huge imagination and want to check their interpretation skills, this particular novel is an engaging read.