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Kristin Myrtle 's Reviews > 1Q84
1Q84 (1Q84, #1-3)
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Kristin Myrtle 's review
bookshelves: i-own-it, read-in-2011, manic-murakami-madness, reviewed
Jul 12, 2010
bookshelves: i-own-it, read-in-2011, manic-murakami-madness, reviewed
I just finished 1Q84 and already I've begun to notice strange peculiarities in the world around me. As I closed the book and stood up, I looked around my shabby apartment. Same walls, same badly painted walls, same James Dean poster, but something seemed off. Something infinitesimal. The walls seemed closer or were they further away? And James, wasn't there a cigarette clasped between your lips before? Now you're just staring off into space with that amazing, casual air of indifference. I shut my eyes and shake my head. It's just the residual effect of Murakami's prose, I tell myself. Nothing more. I went about the rest of my day as usual but late that night I fell into a restless sleep. I had the strangest dream...
I dreamt of him. You know... the one. The one I love. The one separated from me because of timing and distance and all the other inane trivialities that prevent us from taking the next logical step. In my dream he was reading 1Q84 as well. Well actually he was just finishing it, closing it with a self-satisfied thwack, for it is quite a tome. Then he just sat there, comtemplatively, his fingers steepled together in a pyramid under his chin. And suddenly I appeared there with him in my dream.
I, like, just walked in from off-stage and sat down on the floor in front of him cross-legged. Is it weird to appear in your own dream? I don't know if that's ever happened to me before. Anyways, we just talked all night about 1Q84, about Tengo and Aomame, the star-crossed, NO moon-crossed lovers. We talked about the people they knew and loved. Ayumi, Komatsu and Tengo's dad. Tengo's married older lover. The dowager that befriends and mentors Aomame and her stoic level-headed gay bodyguard Tamaru. We discussed Fuka-Eri and the strange cult, Sakigake, she escaped, and the stranger story she wrote that Tengo had been hired to ghostwrite: Air Chrysalis. How this story acts as a catalyst for the whole novel, it gets is moving. Ushikawa, Leader, Buzzcut and Ponytail, Tsubasa, Professor Ebisuno, and the three nurses that Tengo meets. How he compares them to the witches from Macbeth. And so many literary references, it's like Murakami is name dropping! Dickens, Proust and Chekov- to name a few.
And The Little People. How could we forget The Little People?! How they just appear strangely and build the elusive Air Chrysalis. The huge, womb-like, peanut-shaped, furry, glowing, egg thingy that materializes by their hands seemingly out of thin air. What does the Air Chrysalis represent? And how does it tie in with Sakigake and Fuka-Eri? And, utimately, what's inside it?
But more than anything, as I looked up into the eyes of the man I adored, we spoke of love. How this is above all A Love Story, and an unbelievably hopeful one at that. Because in 1Q84 true love exists and it matters, it makes a difference! It obliterates obstacles, it takes on a life of it's own. And the connections that we make, that we forge, they last. They live and breathe. They are not ephemeral... they are not gossamer.
And then I just woke up, the dream dissolved as abruptly as it began.
Anyways after that I didn't really notice any changes in the world around me. James Dean looks normal to me now. But maybe I've just become accustomed to it all.
I don't know what Murakami is tapped into, I don't know where his talent, his inspiration comes from, but it never fails to move me. There's an ease and an elegance to his prose. And it is absolutely, magnificently beyond beautiful. He defies classification... I could go on and on. He's a world class writer and this is a world class book.
I dreamt of him. You know... the one. The one I love. The one separated from me because of timing and distance and all the other inane trivialities that prevent us from taking the next logical step. In my dream he was reading 1Q84 as well. Well actually he was just finishing it, closing it with a self-satisfied thwack, for it is quite a tome. Then he just sat there, comtemplatively, his fingers steepled together in a pyramid under his chin. And suddenly I appeared there with him in my dream.
I, like, just walked in from off-stage and sat down on the floor in front of him cross-legged. Is it weird to appear in your own dream? I don't know if that's ever happened to me before. Anyways, we just talked all night about 1Q84, about Tengo and Aomame, the star-crossed, NO moon-crossed lovers. We talked about the people they knew and loved. Ayumi, Komatsu and Tengo's dad. Tengo's married older lover. The dowager that befriends and mentors Aomame and her stoic level-headed gay bodyguard Tamaru. We discussed Fuka-Eri and the strange cult, Sakigake, she escaped, and the stranger story she wrote that Tengo had been hired to ghostwrite: Air Chrysalis. How this story acts as a catalyst for the whole novel, it gets is moving. Ushikawa, Leader, Buzzcut and Ponytail, Tsubasa, Professor Ebisuno, and the three nurses that Tengo meets. How he compares them to the witches from Macbeth. And so many literary references, it's like Murakami is name dropping! Dickens, Proust and Chekov- to name a few.
And The Little People. How could we forget The Little People?! How they just appear strangely and build the elusive Air Chrysalis. The huge, womb-like, peanut-shaped, furry, glowing, egg thingy that materializes by their hands seemingly out of thin air. What does the Air Chrysalis represent? And how does it tie in with Sakigake and Fuka-Eri? And, utimately, what's inside it?
But more than anything, as I looked up into the eyes of the man I adored, we spoke of love. How this is above all A Love Story, and an unbelievably hopeful one at that. Because in 1Q84 true love exists and it matters, it makes a difference! It obliterates obstacles, it takes on a life of it's own. And the connections that we make, that we forge, they last. They live and breathe. They are not ephemeral... they are not gossamer.
And then I just woke up, the dream dissolved as abruptly as it began.
Anyways after that I didn't really notice any changes in the world around me. James Dean looks normal to me now. But maybe I've just become accustomed to it all.
I don't know what Murakami is tapped into, I don't know where his talent, his inspiration comes from, but it never fails to move me. There's an ease and an elegance to his prose. And it is absolutely, magnificently beyond beautiful. He defies classification... I could go on and on. He's a world class writer and this is a world class book.
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Quotes Kristin Liked
“It was her personal view that people who are overly choosy about the drinks they order in a bar tend to be sexually bland. She had no idea why this should be so.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“As I see it, you are living with something that you keep hidden deep inside. Something heavy. I felt it from the first time I met you. You have a strong gaze, as if you have made up your mind about something. To tell you the truth, I myself carry such things around inside. Heavy things. That is how I can see it in you.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Aomame closed her eyes and, in a split second, reviewed the long span of years as if standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, surveying an ocean channel below. She could smell the sea. She could hear the deep sighing of the wind.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Her partially open lips now opened wide, and her soft, fragrant tongue entered his mouth, where it began a relentless search for unformed words, for a secret code engraved there. Tengo's own tongue responded unconsciously to this movement and soon their tongues were like two young snakes in a spring meadow, newly wakened from their hibernation and hungrily intertwining, each led on by the other's scent.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Something in her small eyes caught the sunlight and glistened, like a glacier on the faraway face of a mountain.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years-- all he had seen, all the words he has spoken, all the values he had held-- all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter's wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Wasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core-- a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Tengo could hardly believe it-- that in this frantic, labyrinth-like world, two people's hearts-- a boy's and a girl's-- could be connected, unchanged, even though they hadn't seen each other for twenty years.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.... We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with them since long, long ago-- from a time before good and evil even existed, when people's minds were still benighted.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“I was reborn," she said, her hot breath brushing his ear.
"You were reborn," Tengo said.
"Because I died once."
"You died once," Tengo repeated.
"On a night when there was a cold rain falling," she said.
"Why did you die?"
"So I would be reborn like this."
"You would be reborn," Tengo said.
"More or less," she whispered quietly. "In all sorts of forms.”
― 1Q84
"You were reborn," Tengo said.
"Because I died once."
"You died once," Tengo repeated.
"On a night when there was a cold rain falling," she said.
"Why did you die?"
"So I would be reborn like this."
"You would be reborn," Tengo said.
"More or less," she whispered quietly. "In all sorts of forms.”
― 1Q84
“Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Those five fingers and that palm were like a display case crammed full of everything I wanted to know--and everything I had to know. By taking my hand, she showed me what these things were. That within the real world, a place like this existed. In the space of those ten seconds I became I tiny bird, fluttering in the air, the wind rushing by. From high in the sky I could see a scene far away. It was so far off I couldn't make it out clearly, yet something was there, and I knew that someday I would travel to that place.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: 'At the time, no one knew what was coming.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Things can be seen better in the darkness," he said, as if he had just seen into her mind. "But the longer you spend in the dark, the harder it becomes to return to the world aboveground where the light is”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“I was in my house, alone in the living room, anxious about you, watching the flashes of lightning. And a flash of lightning lit up this truth for me, right in front of my eye. That night i lost you, I lost something inside me. Or perhaps several things. Something central to my existence, the very support for who I am as a person”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers-passageways- for genes. They ride us into the ground like racehorses from generation to generation. Genes don't think about what constitutes good or evil. They don't care whether we are happy or unhappy. We're just means to an end for them. The only thing they think about is what is most efficient for them.”
― 1Q84
― 1Q84
“You don't get it" she said
''Don't get what?"
''We are one"
''We are one?" Tengo asked with a shock.
''We wrote the book together"
Tengo felt the pressure of Fuka-Eri's fingers against his palm.
...
''That's true. We wrote Air Crysalis together. And when we are eaten by the tiger, we'll be eaten together.”
― 1Q84 Book 1
''Don't get what?"
''We are one"
''We are one?" Tengo asked with a shock.
''We wrote the book together"
Tengo felt the pressure of Fuka-Eri's fingers against his palm.
...
''That's true. We wrote Air Crysalis together. And when we are eaten by the tiger, we'll be eaten together.”
― 1Q84 Book 1
Reading Progress
July 12, 2010
– Shelved
October 25, 2011
–
Started Reading
October 25, 2011
– Shelved as:
i-own-it
November 4, 2011
– Shelved as:
read-in-2011
November 4, 2011
–
Finished Reading
December 23, 2011
– Shelved as:
manic-murakami-madness
April 12, 2019
– Shelved as:
reviewed
Comments Showing 1-50 of 103 (103 new)
message 1:
by
Niran
(new)
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rated it 5 stars
Oct 31, 2011 07:09AM
I am just 5% done.. :P
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Exciting, you got through this one quick! I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on the 1Q84 forum.
I loved the book, He has a way of bringing his character to life in a way that makes me believe they are here in the present :)
What is with this Murakami guy? Why are people drooling over his every novel? Maybe I should read one. But still. Everyone!!! (Great review).
MJ - Sometimes it's fun to rally around something almost everyone can agree upon. (But I'm sympathetic: Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was one of my postmodern gateway drugs a decade ago).
Your review made me glad to have purchased it.Your dream, makes me long for my lost love-to discuss this book with him-he was that kind of guy-talk for hours about writing, books, music, art, films-the deep talks that stay with you always.
You really whipped though this mighty tome.
I'll read one. But that sulphurous whiff of "mainstream" is off-putting.
I have a feeling that he may not be as mainstream-y as Goodreads makes him look.
Not mainstream here you cant find his books in the trendy stores ! I have yet to see a book in real life.
he's not mainstream as much as he has a cult following. More of a Don DeLillo type of popularity rather than a Jonathan Franzen. His name gets around, but only a select group actually read his stuff.
In the UK his books are in train stations beside the chick-lit and pulp mulch. Evidently he's more popular here . . . ?
MJ wrote: "In the UK his books are in train stations beside the chick-lit and pulp mulch. Evidently he's more popular here . . . ?"Really? That is definitely not the case in the US or India. Outside of Goodreads, I know only one person who has heard of Murakami.
right on! You just made me apreciate this book moee than I already do!
I don't want Murakami to get too mainstream. And I don't think he will, he's too flippin' weird. Thanks for all the comments!
I have always judged any new bookstore I find by the number of Muakamis that they have on the shelves.I think he came very close to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.
Therefore, there is a real chance he might win one in the foreseeable future.
This won't necessarily make him mainstream, but he might not remain just a cult writer (it seems weird to describe him as a "cult" writer, given what he writes about.)
No doubt, he won't be to everybody's taste, and there'll be lots of unread Murakami's around as well as big Murakami sections in second hand bookshops.
There's a bookstore here in Sacramento and it has a whole shelf called "Murakami Madness." needless to say, it's my favorite bookstore :)
The frustrating thing is that usually you can't or don't buy them, because you already have them all.But what it does is establish a bond, a bit like finding Murakami shelves on other GoodReaders' pages.
Maybe I should start my own Murakami Madness shelf?
I haven't done any author specific shelves, but always find myself typing Murakami into the search box, even on my own shelves.
BTW, what's the name of the store?
OK, I did it, I now have a Murakarmic Wonderland shelf.
Awesome LOL. The store is called Beers Books.
Beers Books. These are two of my favourite things.
but do you think his books will stand the test of time ? or are they only of this time 1Q84? Honestly some of the noble prize winners I want to say WHY? so Im not convinced on who decides that ... Obama got one for what?
Good question. Who knows how long there'll be a market for books about love, meaning, sex and politics?
Well I can say I have only read about 3 of the noble prize winners books and I dont think I read Hemingway if I did it was non memorble.
When Hemingway won the Nobel Prize, he was unable to attend the ceremony, because of ill health.His speech was read by the US Ambassador on his behalf.
Here is the speech:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...
Later, Hemingway recorded his speech and posted it on YouTube ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoI9Og...
It's short and it's worth reading/listening to, like all Hemingway, I guess.
thanks so much cillian!
I could not of said it better myself.. perfect.. im nearly finished book 2 cant wait for book 3....
thanks siobhan! p.s. awesome name :)
I don't think it's possible to write a better review of this book.
wow thanks so much Tony!
'been looking for just a couple more reasons to pick this one up... you nailed it for me; thanks.
thanks robert! it's really a wonderful book
Awesome review. I really enjoyed that. Murakami rocks! :-)
Kristin wrote: "thanks siobhan! p.s. awesome name :)"hey hun...just started book 3 it is soo good did not expect creepy old man to be added in..oh my name is a very common Irish Gaelic name...actually its as normal as u get... it really is siobhán think it means joan in english...but thanks its not everyday day someone says my name is awesome :)
So strange. When I finished the book, I also had a dream that same night about someone I've had feelings for for so long. But never was it so intense and realistic. When I woke up I forced myself to write down what happened and what I was feeling. Murakami is honestly helping me figuring out myself.
wow alexander that's trippy. Murakami definitely has some sort of magical mojo going on.
woot i got 100 likes!
Deservedly. But don't stop 'til you get enough.
From one Kristin to another... you should write a book. Your review was prose at it's best.
Wow Thanks so much Kristin! :)
Thanks so much Wilson! Oh and you too, Elaine!
Wow, Kristin, 124 likes! Well done!
If I was questioning whether or not I should read this book, there is definitely no question now. Thank you for the terrific review! :)
i am reading it now and looks like i am rear skeptic in this group of funs, the review remind me more of the romantic dreamers of 17 years old.
wow 200 likes! Thanks everyone!
Great work Kristen! congrats.
Very interresting and personal review - he certainly does seem to be able to plug himself and us into something extra ordinary. And what is his scheme, what does he want to say? In all his books (except for the boring romantic ones) he sems to have some hidden purpose..perhaps your Murakami induced dream is a sort of answer to that question?
A great read! I cant believe I read it all! too voluminous too me.
