Daniel Morales has read Haruki Murakami’s latest mammoth new novel, 1Q84 and tells all about it. It actually gives a lot away, so you might want to read some and then stop. But who knows when It’s going to be published in the United States, so you could probably read it and then forget it all when the book comes out.
Morales begins:
1Q84 sprawls 1055 pages in the hardback version and chronicles a large portion of Japanese history in passing, but the main narrative concerns just a handful of characters over a six-month period in 1984. Murakami uses his favorite device to frame the novel – alternating storylines with separate protagonists that become more closely linked as the plot thickens. These protagonists are Aomame, a fitness and martial arts instructor in Tokyo who grew up in a fictional missionary group called the Sh?ninkai (???, literally “Association of Witnesses”), and Kawana Tengo, a prep school math instructor and aspiring writer who has never met his mother.
I love it when Murakami writes big sprawling books: like A Wind up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. His short stories are good and I didn’t really like After Dark, but the longform gives him the ability to go anywhere with it. But Morales says that’s the problem saying it’s too long and repetitive at times. We will have to wait and see.
