The Book Depository 1Q84: Book 3 by Haruki Murakami
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Price: £12.18
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Description: 1Q84: Book 3 : Paperback : Vintage Publishing : 9780099549055 : : 02 Aug 2012 : Book Two of 1Q84 ended with Aomame standing on the Metropolitan Expressway with a gun between her lips. But things are moving forward, and Aomame does not yet know that she and Tengo are more closely bound than ever. Tengo is searching for Aomame, and he must find her before this world's rules loosen up too much. The Book Depository 1Q84: Book 3 by Haruki Murakami - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9780099549055
MPN: 9780099549055
GTIN: 9780099549055
Author: Archie
Rating: 5
Review: I was not a fan of the additional perspective of ushikawa in the story, however it is logical and the conclusion of his segment of the story was intense, satisfying and overall worth it.
Author: Jonathan
Rating: 2
Review: You're considering reading Volume III of Murakami's 1Q84. This is because, despite the fact that it was woefully written, absurdly translated and tediously repetitive, there was a sort of bonkers charm to the preceding Volumes' glacial plot that made you want to find out if Tengo and Aomame would ever hook up, what the sinister Sakigake cult were up to, what Fuka-Eri's secret was, who the Little People were and whether Tengo really was his own father through some sort of time loop. Well (SPOILERS) you don't find the answers to any of these questions except the first one - and there's no surprise about that one anyway. On a positive note, the translation is better. Jay Rubin's inane Anglicisation of Volumes I and II is replaced by Philip Gabriel, who can render functional dialogue in place of Rubin's inauthentic exchanges and who conveys a sort of austere poetry in occasional descriptions of skies, moons and dreams. Unlike the preceding volumes, this is not prose that makes your brain ache and your eyeballs rebel. But not even a sympathetic translator can redeem the abject standard of narrative going on here. A kind reviewer might point out that very little happened in Volumes I & II. An unkind reviewer might single out two quirky murders, the emergence of the Little People and the "Town of Cats" episode as the only incidents of interest or significance in 624 pages. Any kind of reviewer at all would acknowledge how extremely repetitive these books were. Well, prepare yourself. In Volume III even less happens, but it gets repeated three times. The sheer crashing dullness of it is, at times, maddening. Aomame sits in a flat. Tengo sits in his flat or in his father's bedroom. A private detective sits in his room. Every now and then, someone goes for a walk. That's it. The eventual reunion of the two lovers achieves some sort of cathartic release not because the author invests it with any drama or romantic insight, but simply because finally, at last, there has been some development. But, determined to rob us of even this sense of relief and achievement, Murakami pollutes the relationship with a sex-scene of toe-curling crassness. Bleugh. Look, it's not that I'm against sex scenes (though Murakami's are terrible) or demand that novels be strings of action-packed episodes, like "The Three Musketeers ". I like meditative fiction. But in 1Q84, nobody meditates. They just sit about wondering where each other might be, remembering things that have already happened, engaging in occasional speculations of the most anodyne sort, then prepare themselves odd Japanese meals. There is truly nothing going on here. The author clearly struggled with the alternating Point Of View (POV) narrative structure in I & II. In III there is introduced a third POV character and the artistic demands this imposes quite overwhelm the author. A common feature of POV narratives is that events described by one character with only limited understanding will be made clearer when described, later, by another character. The effect can be ironic. intriguing, even exhillerating. Murakami, in an act of striking literary ineptitude, narrates events in full for the first character, then repeats the incident as seen by other characters with less and less insight. The repetitious effect would be numbing enough if the flailing author wasn't forced to abandon POV-narrative altogether, reaching for the "Omniscient Narrator" toolkit to get over awkward plot hurdles or point out obvious implications to readers who might have nodded off. Desperately, desperately badly done. So, this is a shaggy dog story without even the merit of being engagingly told. Yet, this is a best-seller - number 2 in Amazon's best-selling list of 2011. Many critics have gushed. There are reviews on this very page by people who don't appear to be fools yet find it in themselves to praise this work. How can this be? Well, "Emperor's New Clothes" goes a long way to explain how a cult author like Murakami can produce adolescent cast-offs like this and still win praise. But why would Murakami publish something so sub-par? He can in fact write, as his earlier output attests. Hubris might be an explanation. There are hints in the text that "1Q84" itself is meant to be Tengo's book, the novel the main protagonist is writing throughout the three volumes. So Murakami has set himself the task of writing in the style of an author who is a semi-Aspergers maths prodigy with the emotional depth of a puddle, supplemented by insights from a female sociopath. No wonder it's a tough read! Authors at the top of their game might shrink from such a narrative challenge, but it can be done (check out Sarah Waters' "The Little Stranger "). The trick is to make the narrative relatively short and pack it with incident. Any editor would have told Murakami his draft was too long and too short on incident, but Murakami is presumably too elevated in the literary establishment to bother with what editors have to say (just as Tengo sidelines his own editor Komatsu, in a case of art imitating life, I guess). Or maybe this is genuinely a self-indulgent, misconceived mess of a book by an author of limited range whose early promise has expired. Hardcore fans will read it anyway and find something to love in these unlovable characters, but the general reader looking for a thriller/romance/supernatural mash-up or anything in the "magical realism" vein should look elsewhere (maybe Gabriel García Márquez, Laura Esquivel, Salman Rushdie - you know, the usual crowd). You'll have fonder memories of the patchy first two volumes if you spare yourself reading this one.
