MURAKAMI IS AN EVIL GENIUS.
Free time does not exist in my stream of consciousness. Free time for me is like a superfluous moon that only a tiny handful of people are privy to. To those of you who are wondering where the hell that particular metaphore came from, I'll explain. Somewhere toward the middle of last year, I watched a YouTube video of a TED Talk by one of my favourite book cover designers, Mr Chip Kidd (The link is below for those of you who want to do themselves a favour). Towards the end of the video, Chip goes into detail about his thinking behind the jacket and cover design of Haruki Murakami's magnum opus, 1Q84. I won't go into any spoilers here story-wise, sufficed to say that Chip outdid himself in terms of the contents of the book being a continuation of the story that started on the outside, so much so that I was immediately intrigued and, were it not for the fact that I was unemployed at the time, would have beat down the door of my nearest book seller to get at a copy. I started back at work last month and, needless to say, got my hot little hands on 1Q84 on my very first payday and started reading it immediately.
Wow.
Never in the history of literary science fiction has there been a novel that is so slow-moving, yet utterly gripping at the same time. Seriously. I was about six hundred pages in before anything major happened, but I didn't give a shit because I was hooked. Most book vloggers who have made Murakami videos do not recommend 1Q84 as a first time Murakami read, and I can understand that if you are the sort of person who needs a jolt at the end of every chapter to motivate you to keep going. Until I started this book, I was one of those people. Then Murakami got his hands on my brain and stretched it like a wad of unworked dough. Reading 1Q84 is very much a hypnotic experience. The prose is so natural and matter-of-fact that before you know it, you're twenty pages in, and you've fallen into a state of tranquility so deep that when a twist does occur, it jolts you to your core. It's been three weeks now and I am on the home stretch, having just started book three, (the novel is divided into three volumes, which I suggest you buy complete), and as I see it, it is a near perfect work of fiction.
I say NEAR perfect because there are two small flaws that personally don't bother me so terribly much but others, judging by the comments I've seen on Goodreads, find quite jarring. The first is Murakami's breast obsession which, I am told by more seasoned Murakami readers, is not unique to this novel. Yes, I did find the female protagonist's constant lamenting over her small knockers a tiny bit creepy but, to be honest, it was a nice change from all the fallic worship we've had to suffer over the years. The second and much more serious flaw in my opinion is the repitition. Murakami does have the habit of driving a character's personality quirks home to the point where you want to stand up and scream 'We get it! She's not like other girls!'
These are minor transgressions when you consider the whole work, which is every bit as compelling as it is insane, and if this is indicative of the rest of Murakami's books, I think Charles Dickens has some serious modern-day competition. The orphans and waifs have been usurped by expressionless juvenile exiles, the workhouse has become a cult, and dazzling but dirty Dickensian London is no match for late twentieth-century Japan, where the pick-pockets invade the bodies, minds, and souls of the vulnerable, and true love is a means to an end. To those of you who see the term Literary Science Fiction and say 'I don't like to think when I read' I say give it a go anyway. 1Q84 is the rare sort of book that envelops the reader like a cloud of anaesthetic vapour, its story boring into your mind and tinkering with it while you dream away, unawares. It's that fucking good. Read it...now.
Oh, and here's the link to the above-mentioned TED Talk by cover designer and fellow evil genius, Chip Kidd: https://youtu.be/cC0KxNeLp1E
