“Don’t marry girls with powerful, shady, and politically-motivated brothers”

Overview: In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

It is quite difficult for me to describe what this book was like. It is surreal and psychedelic. It is mysterious, something out of this world. You just need to stop questioning things and let yourself get carried away. But getting to the end of the book was also like being rudely woken up from the most wonderful dream. And I didn't want this dream-like experience to be over.

I forced myself to continue reading Wind-Up Bird by telling myself that a highly respected author like Murakami would eventually tie up all the loose ends. When it became obvious that these ends would remain loose, I still finished it but wasn’t happy with the ending.

Try as I might, I couldn’t find a message Murakami was trying to express through The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Murakami did include a character that thoughtfully reflects on war crimes in World War II, but even this subplot was unfocused, and by the end of the novel this story within the story fizzles and suddenly ends without reaching a climax.