The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

I'm going to be haunted by this book for some time and I don't know why. I'm not really sure what this book is about. I may not even know what really happens in the story but I keep thinking about it.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami tells the story of Toru Okada who is looking for his wife's missing cat. But this is just a McGuffin, to borrow Hitchcock's term, to throw the reader off track from the real story. Or maybe it's the key to everything that happens afterwards.

Okada lives a rather secluded life in a Tokyo suburb with his wife who is the breadwinner. Okada spends his days trying to figure out how to spend his days. His search for himself is interrupted by three events, the missing cat, the disappearance of his wife, and a phone call from a strange woman.

The novel becomes a sort of detective story as Okada looks for the cat which he believes will help him get his wife to return and tries to figure out who the woman that keeps calling him is. Soon several women enter Okada's life and the story takes a turn towards David Lynch territory. The first woman, Malta Kano and her sister Creta Kano are both sort of psychics who give Okada clues to both his past and his future. They are strangely involved with both his wife and his brother-in-law, and may have the ability to find the missing cat. The mother-son team who Okada calls Nutmeg and Cinnamon find Okada has psychic abilities himself and use these to further their own goals. The neighbor girl May Kinsahara traps Okada in a well on a friendly whim and sets in motion a series of events that end with the possibility that Okada has murdered his brother-in-law, a powerful up-and-coming politician. All of these events seem to be connected to what happened to Okada's friend Mr. Honda in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation and after.

Confused? I certainly was at many points while reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle but I felt compelled to continue reading. Haruki Marakami is certainly a wonderful story teller. In The Wind-up Bird Chronicle he keeps several story threads going throughout the novel, giving the reader just enough to keep you interested, without telling you what is really going on, which actually makes you more interested. Along with the story telling, there are many scenes and images that haunt the reader: a man who goes into a well to find a good spot to think and ends up trapped there for days, amassacre in a zoo in occupied China, an internet conversation between a man and what he believes is his lost wife.

I admit that I am still trying to figure it all out, puzzle it all together. I will be for several days at least. For that reason, I am giving The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami five out of five stars.