The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Murakami has clearly never met a human woman before
There were so many things I liked about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but what I remember most is the terrible portrayal of literally any woman or girl. Murakami has clearly never met a human woman before. Murakami pigeonholes every woman as either a madonna or a whore with almost no nuance, where his male characters are all well-fleshed-out and given nuance. There are some classic "men-writing-women" quotes in this book and they start fairly early:
“My eye caught the calendar on the wall. This calendar showed the phases of the moon.
The full moon was approaching. Of course: it was about time for Kumiko’s period.”
Is Kumiko a werewolf? We never get an answer.
I have previously read Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, and After the Quake, and what I enjoyed about all of these books, is the surrealism infused into stories that, at their beginnings, seem very ordinary. This book has all of this, but takes it practically nowhere. My edition is 607 pages long and there is a lot of set-up with almost no pay-off.
Toru Okada's cat disappears and in his attempt to relocate him, he meets many bizarre people. Not long after, his wife also disappears. By the end of the book, there are more questions than answers, which is not something I would mind if the book had been better-written.
I am not even sure how to review this book so I will stop writing here, but I made a vlog of my experience reading this book and you can watch me lose my mind in real time:
