The Wind up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Caramelizing the wind up bird chronicle.

From the outset of chronicle Haruki Murakami’s “The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, you're initial impression is that this isn’t a Japanese book: his characters read Turgenev and Jack London, listen to Rossini and eat spaghetti. His protagonist is a soft, irresolute man, a homebody going through a period of inertia while his breadwinning wife is dynamic with a dynamic breadwinning wife; a picture which constrasts the frenetic, male-dominated ethos of modern Japan.

''The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,'' which first published in 1994 deals with a wide spectrum of heavy subjects: the transitory nature of romantic love, the evil vacuity of contemporary politics and, most provocative of all, the legacy of Japan's violent aggression in World War II.

The story of ''The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'' (the title refers to a weird, unseen bird, whose cry is a recurring harbinger of evil) is a hallucinatory vortex revolving around several loosely connected searches carried out in suburban Tokyo by the protagonist-narrator, Toru Okada, a lost man-boy in his early 30's who has no job, no ambition and a failing marriage. When his cat disappears, he consults a whimsical pair of psychics, sisters named Malta and Creta Kano, who visit him in his dreams as often as in reality. Then his wife leaves him, suddenly and with no explanation, and he spends his days hanging out with an adolescent girl named May Kasahara, a high-school dropout obsessed with death, who works for a wig factory. At one point, seeking solitude, Toru descends to the bottom of a dry well in the neighborhood, and while he's down there, he has a bizarre experience, which might or might not be another dream: he passes through the subterranean stone wall into a dark hotel room, where a woman seduces him. This experience leaves a blue-black mark on his cheek that gives him miraculous healing powers. Eventually, he's rescued by Creta Kano, who reveals to him that she has been defiled in some hideous, unnatural way by Toru's brother-in-law, a politician , and as the plot thickens it becomes harder to decifer what is real and what is fantasy..

Dennis chose the book and was memorized and recognised Kafkaesque chord. He loved it; but didn’t know why. He recognised it was not a book for everybody, but pearls of wordsmith followed one after the other;”bents cats tails, well an baseball bats”.

Mark thought that the writer at times tortured the reader- the quality of the writing was high and the sentence construction amazing.

Kevin and Alena loved the book, especially the World war two stories which could have been novellas themselves.

Leanne also loved the book; her brain was exercised with the grappling of thoughts, and ideas of reality and fantasy. The well provided a place of complete sensory deprivation- to let go of everything in the midst of wandering down streets, but getting stuck in a mazes.

Whereas Andy didn’t know what to make of it-the oddness drew him in; but at the same time kept him at a distance. There was a strong framework for ideas for the narrative and the philosophical dissection was wrapped up in spun coffee. The meaningless of the book did enable him to embrace the book at time but he unlike the others who embraced the mace; he felt he was stuck more in a cul de sac.

Scores for April’s BBC

Dennis (hatted chef, bon vivant and stylist of tre chic apartment) 81/2

Andy: 5

Kevin 8 ½

Leanne 8

Mark 8

Alena 8 ½

Average score 7.8

The next book is "The Finkler Question" by Howard Jacobson.