1Q84 book review 1Q84 is an epic novel by Norwegian Wood author Haruki Murakami in three 'books', book one and book two published in one volume together to great acclaim in Japan and book three following a year after. They concern two central characters whose stories are told in dual narrative, alternating between the two, in a roughly coinciding time frame. We are first introduced to Aomame who is stuck in traffic on Tokyo's expressway; she is running late and decides to exit her taxi and make down the emergency ladder. It is this moment, she later reflects, that she passes into an alternate world - the year of 1Q84, the 'Q' standing for 'question mark', as apposed to '1984'. Although she notices immediately that things are not right when she has climbed down, she continues with her task: she has been commissioned to kill a woman beating husband in his hotel room. Meanwhile, Tengo, a struggling author, is contacted by his friend, a publisher and screener for a literary competition Komatsu. Komatsu proposes that one of the manuscripts that has been sent to him titled Air Chrysalis is rewritten by Tengo as, despite the narrative's imagination, the author clearly has no literary skill. Resentfully he accepts, knowing that this deception may lead to his undoing, and introduces himself to the seventeen-year-old author of the manuscript, Fuka-Eri. Both Aomame and Tengo are connected in ways the cannot realise and are destined to collide again, but before that many things may stand in their way. This dual narrative works well to tie the two together, but is somewhat undermined by Aomame's story being hugely more interesting than Tengo's - each chapter is considerably long, and by the time one has waded through Tengo's chapter to rejoin the more exciting Aomame, the pace is often lost and has to be kindled once more. I can imagine that if one were to read a few hundred pages at a time the effect of this constant shifting may cause a 'rubber band' effect - i.e. the persistent changes in tension make the rubber band snap. Also although 1Q84 is written in the third person there are large sections in free indirect thought which are italicized; why not write in the first? Another narrative problem I found was that the novel is far too long and needlessly so. For example, there are a lot of 'references' to other books, to music and to history which are often found in the form of large chunks of directly pasted text. The novel also has a good number of characters telling long-winded stories to one another which seem not to relate much to the central narrative. These stories are often similar to each other; presumably this decision was warranted in the author's mind by a 'creating of a sense of togetherness' as the central protagonists come together, but I found the effect to be nothing like the charming imagination of Les Miserablés but more like the monotony of a stuck record. The book's title is reportedly how the Japanese pronounce Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four from which 1Q84's author Murakami takes inspiration (however, his is a parallel universe novel and not a dystopia). 1Q84 has a running theme of Fuka-Eri's manuscript, Air Chrysalis, and the similarities it has with Fuka-Eri's past #life as her antecedents grow. But it faces a similar problem to Nineteen Eighty-Four near the end; i.e. it effectively prints the novella Air Chrysalis discussed within 1Q84 just as the manifesto is printed by Orwell (though here Murakami pens a paraphrase). For me in both novels this is unnecessary and kills pace; I should imagine that Murakami passed it by the editor claiming it an intertextual reference, but it does more to hinder the novel than aid it, not least due to Murakami's frequent references to how amazing Air Chrysalis is in the run up to its appearance. A couple more things I disliked: Some things are made almost offensively obvious by using repetition, bold type or italic type. There is an inconsistency in type and punctuation use. An over consistency of certain words or phrases; which, rather than hint at the duel narrative characters' similarities, layers important information on an adds yet more unnecessary words. Almost all of the characters possess some sort of unbelievable power or omniscient presence who each hint at their abilities about as subtly as being hit with a baseball bat that has 'power' written on it in alternate bold and italic type. Each chapter is titled with a line from within itself - a show of self-love and postmodernist reference which, rather than being witty or clever, is simply self-conscious and, again, unnecessary. There are frequent Americanised spellings - clearly this translation is aimed at the American market. Having said all of these scathing criticisms, I must say that the story itself is not terrible, merely deeply undermined by the style, and that there are a couple of properly theatrical twists. Despite the obvious attempt to make 1Q84 serious, it becomes, for me, far too inconsistent, irreverent and mostly erroneous to be taken seriously. But if one can read it passively and try not to let the characters' preternatural powers put one off, it's an enjoyable - but needlessly long - novel. Depending on a reader's patience, 1Q84 is a flawed yet not unenjoyable novel written with an evident love of culture and a blissfully untamed imagination. The numerous criticisms I have of it are, of course, subjective to my own view of literature; however, I would be wary of recommending this book as its style, ludicrously and sheer length are almost not worth the pay off. Taken from my blog: matthewhurstfilm.blogspot.co.uk