Haruki Murakami - The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

I've had less than a pleasant day. I'd originally gone to town to do some reportage work, but was blind sighted by a whole ordeal with a pair of Converse. I won't go into it, but let me assure you I wasn't in the mood for anything afterward. I'll try again next week, if due to some horrific twist of fate I don't end up going to meet a friend back in Preston. I'll keep updating and all that, don't worry. As a matter of fact, here's a book review, and a book that I hold close to my heart.

Written in 1994 by Japanese master of the craft, Haruki Murakami, the book plays with concepts often used but never quite worked, yet Murakami nails it with almost surreal story telling, and characters who, despite being far from ordinary, can be identified with in a strange sort of way.
The book's main protagonist is a simple 30-something man named Toru Okada, who after being unemployed for some time, has been living quite a banal but blameless, easy going life doing tasks around the house whilst his wife, Kumiko, works. The story kicks off with the realization that the cat, named Noboru Wataya (after Toru's brother-in-law), has gone missing.
In the search for said cat, we meet many characters who all have a profound effect on the story, sometimes taking entire chapters for exposition on said characters, which I have to say, Murakami does very well. Whilst at parts it does tend to drag on just a little too much, it picks up rather sharply; it's like literature whiplash, in a good way, mind.

Adding to this, another thing the book does well is it focuses its attention on all of the main characters, rather than just sticking to, say, Toru Okada the whole time. It really gives the story a sense of depth, and you feel like you can identify with these characters as if you knew them in real life; you learn their interests, their professional lives, and even moments that the reader is sure the characters would not want them to know.

The book plays with themes and scenarios, which as different as they seem, all intertwine with each other in relation to the main story. We are taken numerous places during the character's backstories; for example, we are taken back to Japan and various other countries in east Asia during World War 2, in different circumstances; we are told of events which occurred in the Mongolian desert, a small zoo in Hsin-ching, and even what seems to be a Russian gulag for Japanese prisoners. As well as World War 2, we go even deeper when we delve into the minds of characters such as May Kasahara, a 16 year old girl who seemingly lives alone, and enjoys talking about morbid subjects such as death, even when the conversation is completely irrelevant. It is this sort of personality that drolly pushes the story on, when Toru begins taking extreme measures to find out what he is really about.

Whilst the book's theme does take a turn for the unpleasant (we are told instances of rape, murder, etc.), it is still enjoyable in the way that you are not left feeling repulsed by the dark tones which come from out of the blue. At times it does feel rather forced, but not to the point where it feels like Murakami decided his book wasn't dark enough and shoe-horned it in; it feels legitimate, hell, we live in a screwed up world, the topics talked about in this book are no surprise to anyone who has taken a step out of the front door.  Despite the way the book thrusts you into these instances, it grounds the story in a believable way, because let's face it, these kind of things happen. Murakami could have so easily gone too far and incorporated, hell, anything into the story and it would just make the whole thing seem rather silly.

If you are interested at all in Murakami's other work, or you feel like reading something which is as compelling as a lot of the best novels out there, consider giving this a read. It is a very long book in comparison with others I have read, but I reassure you, you will be rewarded greatly by this piece of brilliant, clever piece of story telling by one of Japan's best writers.

Whilst we're here, I'd like to post something I had done for a project a few months ago, in which we had to design a Guardian Review cover for a book we had read over the holidays. Without any representation of the characters in any other media, this was a test of how closely we paid attention to the smaller details of the book.
I should note that I posted this on my other blog, but it can't hurt to post it again now, can it?

Hopefully I'll have some more illustration for the blog in a few days, and not what I did in the coffee shop today; a full written tirade about the fact Office don't accept returns.

"I might just draw furries all night, the world feels less sh*t when I do that. Yiff yiff."