The year is 1984. Aomame sits in a taxi on the expressway in Tokyo. Her work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a stand-still, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next job will lead her to encounter the apparently superhuman founder of a religious cult.
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Reviews
The Independent
Boyd Tonkin
“Which other author can remind you simultaneously of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and JK Rowling, not merely within the same chapter but on the same page? Viewed through the "postmodern" lens, his exemplary blend of a light touch and weighty themes, of high literature and popular entertainment, ticks every box. Posh and pop, sublimity and superficiality, history and fantasy, trash and transcendence: they switch positions and then fuse as the metaphysical speculations of an Ivan Karamazov meet the death-defying adventures of a Harry Potter.”
21/10/2011
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The Los Angeles Times
David L. Ulin
“Make no mistake — this is a major development in Murakami's writing; while I've generally enjoyed his books, only a few transcend a trademark mix of contemporary rootlessness, pop culture riffing and what I've come to think of as magical realism lite. Novels such as "A Wild Sheep Chase" (1989) or "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" (1997) come off as 21/2 dimensional, as if they don't quite have a fully nuanced sense of life. With "1Q84," however, Murakami evokes a fully articulated vision of a not-quite-nightmare world, in which reality goes its own way and we have no choice but to adapt.”
23/11/2011
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The Evening Standard
Jerome Boyd Maunsell
“Like Kafka on the Shore, Murakami's last long novel, 1Q84, already a bestseller in Japan, is an overabundant, chaotic book, with many loose plot lines, as ever with this writer, being abandoned in the end with a shrug (perhaps the classic Murakami gesture). Yet for all its haphazardness, 1Q84 is an extraordinary feat of sustained imagination, even if it essentially merely extends Murakami's now familiarly surreal and slightly tired fictional formula over a much broader canvas than usual.”
20/10/2011
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The Guardian
Steven Poole
“In outline, this vast novel's plot is elementary: boy and girl meet, part, and look for each other, with the kind of melancholy yearning that Murakami has long had tuned to a high art. The novelist has said, however, that he wanted to make this "simple" story as "complicated" as possible. That he has certainly accomplished, and the book's sheer length virtually guarantees that a certain scene near the end, in a playground, will be tremendously affecting. In order to make sure, however, Murakami has had the courtesy to write it with exquisite tact.”
18/10/2011
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The Observer
Tim Adams
“In its overblown complexity and constant arch reference points to other works in the author's canon, it can read like a stubborn effort to write the definitive Murakami, the Great Japanese Novel. While there is generally plenty to keep your foot tapping along the way, the result is that too many notes and digressions feel forced or fall flat.”
16/10/2011
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The Spectator
Philip Hensher
“It is the large design of 1Q84 that is rather thrilling, with its effects of doubles, and questions about who, exactly, is existing in a fictional created world, as well as the steady, thrumming approach of the Little People towards the human action ... What I missed were those exquisite turns, and lines and delicacy of mood and expression on the small scale that make Dance Dance Dance and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle so irresistible. ”
22/10/2011
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The Daily Telegraph
Anthony Cummins
“1Q84 features an immaculate conception, telekinesis, transmigrating souls and a talking crow. But the more blatant oddness of Murakami’s plots tends to distract us from their roots in emotions that are just as unaccountable. A virtue of his writing is that, carried away, you rarely sense the strain ... Perhaps the best line in the book comes from Tengo’s editor, who says, "Don’t think too hard about this stuff. This is the magnificent world of a picaresque novel." He means the ghostwriting shenanigans, but it serves just as well for this mammoth shaggy-dog story.”
21/10/2011
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The Independent on Sunday
James Urquhart
“Identity and belonging, the porous membrane separating stories and reality, and a whole host of Murakami icons from talking cats to one-way portals all contribute to this rich and often perplexing mix. But ultimately, 1Q84 is a simple love story that ends on a metaphysical cliff-hanger.”
23/10/2011
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The London Review of Books
Christopher Tayler
“Some of the numerous breast-obsessed passages – Aomame notes that she must have worried about the size of hers ‘at least 72,000 times’ – are plainly humorous in intent, but they raise questions about cross-cultural transmissibility. A lot of the social satire and criticism – on cults, on attitudes to women and sex, on competitions for first-time writers as mass media events – loses force outside its original context. ”
15/12/2011
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The Literary Review
Toby Lichtig
“Either brilliant or boring depending on your constitution and level of exposure. Diehards will celebrate it, newcomers be seduced by it and even those in advanced stages of the sickness will find much to admire. But it doesn’t do anything new and, despite the fantastical dual-narrative story, can in no way be deemed surprising or remarkable. ”
01/11/2011
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The Sunday Times
Robert Collins
“...frustratingly, neither the world of 1Q84 nor of the Little People is much developed beyond its sketchy, initial concept. As a result, the book suffers from the double agony of being staggeringly overlong and staggeringly underdeveloped. It’s further hamstrung by the disastrous choice to render the story in the third person (the first time Murakami has done so in a novel), depriving the narrative all but completely of the freewheeling, conversational charm that drives his other novels.”
23/10/2011
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The Daily Telegraph
Matt Thorne
“When, after 900 pages of crepuscular sex scenes alternated with sentimental thoughts about adolescent sexuality, the novel turns out to be a shaggy dog story, it no longer seems a guilty pleasure but instead a tremendous waste of the reader’s time.”
25/10/2011
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The New York Times
Janet Maslin
““1Q84” has even his most ardent fans doing back flips as they try to justify this book’s glaring troubles. Is it consistently interesting? No, but Mr. Murakami is too skillful a trickster to rely on conventional notions of storytelling. Is it a play on Orwell’s “1984?” Vaguely, but don’t make close comparisons. Is it science fiction? Well, there are those two moons, plus several references to Sonny and Cher. And is it actually about anything? Don’t be silly. Mr. Murakami is far too playful and allusive an artist to be restricted by a banal criterion like that one.”
09/11/2011
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