Thursday 8 December 2011

1Q84 (Book One) - Split-Decision

It is getting late, and Tony is still pacing around his study, mulling over the events of Book One of Haruki Murakami's latest novel, 1Q84.  He is tired, but he feels that he won't be able to sleep until he at least begins to get some ideas down,

so he walks over to the computer and begins typing...

so he walks over to the computer... then he changes his mind.  The next day, after a good sleep, some exercise and a light dinner, he decides to spend the evening typing up his review...

1Q84 is, so far at least, a rather intriguing book (fairly intimidating in its gargantuan physical appearance) and both familiar and unfamiliar to those who have already spent many an evening exploring Murakami's worlds.  At the start of the novel, Aomame, a twenty-nine-year-old woman, is sitting in a taxi, stuck in traffic in mid-eighties' Tokyo.  On the advice of her driver, she gets out and climbs down an emergency ladder by the side of the expressway.  From this moment on, the world she is living in seems somewhat unusual, different from the one she is used to, and she decides to name this reality 1Q84, with the Q standing for question mark.

Meanwhile, Tengo, a young maths teacher with literary aspirations, is asked by his editor to polish up a first novel by a mysterious young writer.  Despite his initial hesitation, he decides to accept the task, one which leads him into a series of bizarre occurrences, which may or may not have something to do with a mysterious cult.  Oh, and there might also be a link to Aomame there somewhere too...

Tony writes that if you were in a critical mood, it would be easy to think that Murakami is repeating himself here, as anyone with more than a passing knowledge of his back catalogue will be able to spot parallels with earlier works. Tony decides to focus on the wonderful parallels with Murakami's earlier works and the way in which the writer has taken ideas and themes from other novels and integrated them here in what will probably turn out to be a much more ambitious and fascinating novel.

Evil cult?  Try his non-fiction work, Underground.  Mysterious old lady and talented young man providing an unusual and discreet service?  I'll raise you Cinnamon and Nutmeg from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  Dual-stranded plot, and alternating chapters with a fantasy slant?  Hard-Boiled Wonderland..., anyone?  By opting for a two-strand approach to the novel, one previously used in Hard-Boiled Wonderland..., Murakami opens up more scope to pursue his ideas, and he is able to use the themes he has worked on in his past fiction to work around the fascinating topic of one of his non-fiction books, the rise of the cult in modern Japan.  Obviously, Murakami-san is a little light on new ideas...

...and this new book is full of info-dumping, long paragraphs of 'necessary' information, thrown into the path of the narrative, bringing it to a shuddering halt, and, of course, running at over 900 pages in this version, 1Q84 is a densely-plotted book, with a wide selection of characters and appropriate pacing - if you're going to cover 900+ pages of writing, you don't want to push things along too quickly at the start!

Of the two main characters, Tengo is the more familiar to Murakami lovers, another example of the writer's everyman characters, ordinary men thrust into extraordinary situations, a pale shadow, a bad imitation of earlier characters like Toru Okada or the 'boku' of Murakami's early fiction.  A time-wasting, unambitious teacher, too weak to actually break into the literary world, things just happen to him, and he is actually slightly more distanced than Murakami's usual protagonists, allowing us to be a little more detached, not looking over his shoulder, allowing us to see more of him than is usually the case (perhaps something which makes him more three-dimensional?).

Aomame is a rather more intriguing development though.  Several of Murakami's earlier works featured young women as secondary characters, many of them slightly kooky and special (for example, the pink-loving home-schooled grand-daughter in Hard-Boiled Wonderland..., or the precocious neighbour in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), but here we have one of these bit parts elevated to centre stage, and it shows that Murakami struggles with writing believable women because Aomame is a very thin character.  While Tengo is a knock-off, at least he is a well-rounded one - Aomame could be ripped directly from a straight-to-video Hollywood/Kung Fu movie...

And Murakami's demeaning attitude towards women just gets worse with the way he has Aomame and Yuki sleep around, the constant references to needing sex, the unnecessary lesbian experiences.  At times, you think the story is turning into soft porn, but the more you read, the more you realise that these outward shows of sexuality may be rooted in something deeper, and darker.  The slow pace of the novel allows the writer to gradually reveal elements of his characters' earlier lives, changing what could be pornographic into thought-provoking and worrying.  And as we are in 1Q84 (and not 1984!), we're never really sure how much of the action to take on face value...

Tony stands up, stretches and walks over to the window in his study.
Tony stands up, stretches and walks over to the window in his study.
He yawns, rubs his eyes and starts as thunder cracks outside.
He yawns, rubs his eyes and starts as thunder cracks outside.
Wanting to look out at the approaching storm, he opens the blinds -
Wanting to look out at the approaching storm, he opens the blinds -

He stops, puzzled.
Somehow, the sky looks slightly odd tonight...