| | Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide. Matthew Strecher .
Part of the Continuum
Contemporaries series that gives perspectives on contemporary
fiction, Matthew Strecher tackles The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by one of Japan's most popular authors Haruki
Murakami. Originally released as three separate volumes
in Japan (the third coming after public outrage over the
author ending the series after two books), english translations
gather the three volumes into one, though no definitive
text exists for one of the author's most ambitious and complex
works. The novel centers on character's Toru attempt to
recover his wife from, as Strecher describes, "a peculiar
kind of entrapment." While this may start to sound
somewhat conventional (though vague), Murakami strays from
conventional narrative, using extended flashbacks, various
points of view, and what can be described as a Japanese
spirituality to entrance the reader in something she may
not have a clear grasp upon. This confusion - or better
open-endedness - can be attributed to Murakami's stream-of-conscious
writing style where events unfold in the writer's mind shortly
before the words hit the page, as opposed to working from
an outline. Strecher's long essay gives insight that helps
the reader navigate the text, though just like the original
much is left to the reader's interpretation and imagination.
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