The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I bought this book yesterday and just finished all 608 pages of it, so I guess one might call it a page turner. Murakami is masterful at sucking one in.

Toru Okada is an ordinary sort of thirty year old guy, a sort of legal assistant who quits his job at a law firm because it doesn't seem like something he wants to stick with. That's when his troubles start, when first his cat and then his wife go missing. If you've read Murakami before, you probably won't be surprised that this is the start of some strange adventures, not all of them strictly of this world. He soon finds himself involved in the affairs of a number of rather strange women.

The real world is always present in Murakami's version of magical realism, perhaps most grittily in the reminiscences of a couple of characters from the war in Manchuria and the subsequent captivity in a Siberian mining camp of a side character.

There is no doubt in my mind that Murakami is one of the greatest living novelists. He is equally the master of wit, suspense and deep characterization.

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