He is getting older, probably my immediate impression after finishing Murakami’s 1Q84. Like the carnival, it should originally be a happy meal for the readers as all the elements of his work have been included: the year of 1984, the goat, the crow, the déjà-vu, the reality and the virtuality, self-consciousness, loneliness and nothingness, self-actualization in sex, loss in the modern life and city, list of jazz music and oldie films etc. It should be exciting news for readers to have ‘shortly’ after Kafka on the Shore another long novel of Murakami. But like what the character said, ‘maybe I have changed’. What I perceived from the story is more like a clumsy repetition of the writer’s catwalk presentation with his entire world has had. The storyline and the structure, as his trademark, were both decently organized, but definitely the story could be written in half of its length. Reading till the end, the story became more like the declaration of the author’s will and expression - much self-centred from the perspective of a reader like me and yet an unconvincing attempt to quantify or materialize his metamorphic development of ‘another world’. I must admit that reading the Chinese translation in this occasion is not a pleasant, and at the same time, a fair judgment to the writing in 1Q84...(more)
The stylish writing style of Murakami in describing the belongings of the post-modern urban world or the characters’ emotional variation turned to be an excessive meaningless and poetic-less burden in 1Q84. I used to be biased in the beauty and the goodies, and in this case, I am truly unsatisfied with 1Q84. Put this story into a fairy tale way of perception, I cannot still find any way to tune myself into the two-moon world. I feel awkward about the abrupt switch of the emotion of the character, especially that of Green Bean. The story could be more romantic and ‘dreamatic’ but the translated version I read did not provide me with this wishful thinking. Visualising the scenes of the story such as the conversation in the dark hotel room, the windy sunny morning on the Tokyo highway, the young evening on the sloppy playground, the afternoon tea in the greenhouse-like meeting place for Green Bean and the old lady...1Q84 depicted much Hollywood style of scenic set up. The more you love your daughter, the more you find a reason to blame her. This should be the conclusion of the two episode of 1Q84. Book 3 of 1Q84 has been released. Well, readers, probably as always, have little choice but to immerge themselves again into another world of mystery and loss.
