Based on the buzz surrounding 1Q84 I expected a departure from Haruki Murakami’s standby themes. I stopped reading him a while ago because after six or seven novels it felt like I was reading the same repackaged story, the innovative and exciting qualities that struck me after first discovering him now seemed stale. Within the first few hundred pages of 1Q84 I found myself distracted by mentions of cats or ears or cooking spaghetti, like playing a literary version of I Spy.
Anyway, 1Q84 is a thriller and was so creepy and disturbing that reading it before bed started to interfere with my sleep. Murakami is an expert at building tension and the prospect of resolutions and explanations for the bizarre happenings kept me going through all 923 pages. The ending didn’t provide the satisfaction I was looking for and felt anti-climactic—the main characters ran away from the danger rather than facing it head on.
If you’re new to Murakami or have only read a few of his books I would recommend 1Q84, assuming you have the stomach for 900+ page books. If you’ve read a lot of his work and are expecting something fresh it might be best to take a pass. This is not to say I think the book is uninteresting or poorly written, it’s a great piece of work and I have a huge amount of respect for Murakami’s talent—Kafka on the Shore is one of my all time favorites.
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