The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakawa

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami
pp 607
                                                                                                                                       
                                                         

Exhausting!  Interesting, alleghorical, well-written and a good translation from the original Japanese, but reading this book was exhausting.  I read and read and read and felt like the bookmark never moved very far.  It's the story of a young married man, Toru, who is a pretty passive guy.  He has a law degree but doesn't work; all these crazy characters keep coming in and out of his life and he experiences them in a very passive way through most of the book, yet it is Toru that leads the action in the last 1/8 of the book and finally finds some personal power. The book begins with a missing cat, progresses to a missing wife, finds our main character hanging out in a dry well with nothing but a baseball bat for company and ends with a fairly ambiguous resolution. I can't say I liked this book but I'm glad I read it.  If you like puzzling over symbolism and trying to understand another culture through it's popular writers, then give this one a try.
Kim F