Stepped into an another world

It took weeks but at about 12:30AM today I finally finished Haruki Murakami's 925 page work 1Q84. It was a lesson in endurance that in the end proved worth the effort.

The prose is dense, Proustian at times and Proust is being read by one of the characters to pass the time.

Aomame (sweet peas) is a thirty year old woman who is a contract killer. On the way to a job she descends a staircase next to a highway and finds herself in an alternate reality. One with two moons.

Tengo is a thirty year old teacher who is an aspiring novelist. His father worked for NHK (Japanese television) as a fee collector. His mother is absent from the scene. Tengo does not think the man who raised him is his father.

Fuka-Eri is a seventeen year old girl who wrote a manuscript that was rewritten by Tengo that becomes a best seller. Fuka-Eri has secrets.

A lot of stuff happens, as you'd hope in a book of its size. The chapters cut back and forth between Aomane and Tengo as their paths begin to cross. Naturally the mystery will be if, how and why? There's a lot of wit, magic and sadness which is typical for Murakami.

The prose can be rather thick to get through at times. The details can be a bit maddening but it's a good book to read through a couple of short chapters at a time, then digest and repeat.

I do not think it's a book for people who have not read Murakami before, nor is it strictly a fans only novel. It's not a bad book to have by your bedside, to absorb a few pages before going to bed.

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I liked reading this with whisky and will real something a much lighter as a follow up.