Toru Okada, an average man living in Tokyo, quits his job and becomes a househusband while his wife, Kumiko, works to support them both. At first, Toru enjoys his newfound freedom and is not in any hurry to return to work. One day, Toru’s cat goes missing and he goes out looking for it while Kumiko is at work. While strolling through his neighborhood, he comes across the Miyawaki residence, an abandoned home with a dry well on the property. Across the road from the Miyawaki residence lives a teenager named May Kasahara, who is taking a break from school while she recovers from a motorcycle accident. Toru befriends May, who offers to help him find his missing cat. May is a rebellious and plain-spoken girl who is obsessed with death. Toru enjoys her company, though he does not know what to make of her. Ultimately, he and May fail to find the missing cat. To me, the overarching theme of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the cruelty that humans inflict on each other. Murakami covers cruelty in many forms. The first example is the cruelty that one spouse can inflict on another within a marriage. When the book opens, our narrator (Toru) is obsessed with searching for his lost cat. However, Toru is focused on the wrong question of "Where did the cat go?" Instead, he should be asking why the cat left in the first place, which is a harbinger for the impending breakdown of his marriage with his wife, Kumiko.

This audiobook however is just, no other word for it, disgraceful. There are times when it is unlistenable. Case in point, I listen to audiobooks while working out, I have just had to pause my workout to write this review as I couldn’t wait for the last five hours to be up. People need to be prevented from listening to this, as not only is it awful, but it may dissuade them from reading the book. She had firm but smallish breasts, and although the ladder obscured her body as she descended, I was confident that the rest of her would soon look familiar. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has been my absolute favourite book for decades now. It’s a surreal journey that is both nightmarish and dreamlike. The language is often poetic and the characters are amazing. A lot of Murakami’s novels remind me of the films of David Lynch and like those Murakami constructs a world with stunning imagery and bizarre events. sister, Creta, who claims that she was raped by Kumiko's brother, Noboru Wataya; Lieutenant Mamiya, a soldier who says he witnessed a man being skinned alive; Nutmeg Akasaka, a mysterious healer whose husband was violently murdered; it features a very ordinary man as its hero _ a passive, affectless sort of guy with a lowly job and even lower expectations. Like those earlier novels, it sends its hero off on a long, strange wild goose chase that turns into a sort of

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Many of these trials, though, aren’t quite as you might understand them, often involving patience, waiting and then facing his inner demons. Most of the pivotal events of the book take place in a kind of dream world, with Toru slipping into another dimension, accessing his psyche, in an attempt to uncover what’s hidden deep within. It’s this inner self, both his own and his wife’s, that he needs to access if he’s to save his marriage.

I feel fortunate to have a long list of novels that I adore. These are books that are beautifully written and where I feel a strong personal connection with the characters and themes being presented. Perhaps most importantly, these are also books that help me to think in a new way, or to somehow broaden and/or deepen my understanding of our place in the world and our relationships with each other. This book has left a permanent mark on me. I feel like it made me deepen my individual self-awareness and also my understanding of human society. Okada reflects on what Kumiko tells him about her difficult childhood, during which her sister, the favorite of the family, had died. Okada, in turn, reveals his hatred for his brother-in-law, a pompous academic with no real conviction and an increasingly prominent presence in the media. Following Toru’s latest trip down the well, the mark on his face disappears. Because of this, Nutmeg tells Toru that they can no longer work together. The following day, she leaves, and Toru never sees her again. Not long afterward, Toru receives another letter from Kumiko. Kumiko tells Toru that her first letter was a lie. She did not have sex with another man; she had sex with many other men. She does not know why she acted the way she did and is deeply ashamed of herself. She tells Toru that she thinks her problems stem from Noboru. Additionally, she says that she plans to go to Noboru’s hospital room, shut off his life support, and turn herself in to the police. There is certainly a strong undercurrent of feeling here concerning Japan’s violent aggression during World War II. But that aside, the whole piece is an affecting and thought provoking narrative. I may not have fully comprehended the totality of the tale but it entertained me, touched me and it has stood the test of time - i.e. when asked to list my top three books it often makes the cut.

HM does not prepare outlines of his short stories of novels. He claims to be as mystified by their origins, and meaning, as his readers. An image, phrase, or idea pops into his consciousness and he expands from that point. When he sits down in front of his MAC every day he has no idea where his story is heading. Side note: with this novel Murakami won the "Yomiuri", a Japanese literary prize, conferred to him by the Nobel Prize Kenzaburō Ōe, previously one of his most ardent critics. What satisfaction! Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. But also because, for example, you are constantly applying the weirdest moral standards to books ever, as in the single note I wrote about this was "you're actually allowed to be sexist if you're really talented."