"1Q84" by Haruki Murakami

    This is the latest novel by Murakami, made available in English only last year.  It is similar to other Murakami novels in style and structure, but foregoes the first-person narrative which has become Murakami's trademark.  This has been held against him by some reviewers, but it doesn't seem to me that detracts from the atmosphere and the beauty of the book.  I must say that I felt this novel is weaker than several of his other books that I have read and loved.  It is definitely the largest of all, counting at over 1000 pages, but it seems to me that it could have been at least 1/3 smaller without significant loss of meaning.  It feels like the author has tried to write an epic book, something that will be monumental, but Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, although about 1/3 shorter, feels like a story of much more epic proportions.
  The book introduces us to Tengo and Aomame, the main characters who met when they were 10 years old and fell in love, something that they didn't truly realize until they became 30.  Aomame is a fitness instructor who kills abusive husbands on the side, while Tengo is a part-time mathematics teacher and full-time writer.  Things get more complicated when a secretive pseudo-religious organization "Sakigake" and Aomame murders their Leader, a man with telepathic and telekinetic capabilities, which seem to be just the surface of his powers.  The characters move from the original world of the story happening in 1984 to another world, that Aomame calls 1Q84 (Q (kyu) in Japanese means 9), where there are non-material beings called "the little people" who "talk" to special people called "receivers" and create entities by incubating them in floating cocoons called Air Chrysalis.
  Although the "little people" are never fully explained, as other Murakami's books, it is suggested they have always shared this planet with humans and communicated with special representatives of the human race. The book is a combination of a love story, fantasy story and description of Japanese society in the mid-80s.  The correlation with Orwell's 1984 world is quite subtle, having to do with the Big Brother concept, of which the "little people" and the Sakigake members could be seen as proxies.  Overall, I was left underwhelmed by the book, even at 1000+ pages and over 48 hours on audio, it still fails to rise to the heights of "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", "Kafka on the Shore" and even "Norwegian Wood."  It is a great book, but not mind-blowingly-amazing like the afore mentioned Murakami titles.