Tengo and Aomame are two characters that meet this description. I’m tempted to say they’re level, but after detailed dive, they’re puzzling with tortuous histories, their distance more the result of alienation than poor construction. Murakami’s characters in this novel were engaging, eccentric, and far-fetched to me. I was fascinated by their enigmatic meeting and couldn’t get enough of it. His symbolism was really powerful, his thought-exchanges were consistently engaging, and the storyline was both deliberate and chaotic. I had no idea what would occur straight away. I became engrossed in the first few hundred pages like a young child reading a fable. I agree with these observations, and I’m awed by Murakami’s ability to tap into his own subconscious, but everything appears to be grounded in reality.Īnyway, I consider these earlier nuggets of wisdom to be quite self-evident.

Perhaps Murakami embellishes dreams to a large amount as he accounts for their successes, failures, wants, and fancies. I have read reviews equating Murakami’s writing to dreams and horrors while reading reviews of his works. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.Īs Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women a hideously ugly private investigator a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 -“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her.

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