1Q84

1Q84 Haruki Murakami 925 pp.

Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 is a masterpiece. There, the review is over. It is a perfect book. Stop reading this review and go read 1Q84.

Would I recommend 1Q84? Yes, without any hesitation.

Score: 5/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar

You’re still here?

In that case, I’ll actually talk about the book. On its surface, 1Q84 is a novel about Tengo, a writer commissioned to ghostwrite a young girl’s mysterious novel, Air Chrysalis; and Aomame, a physical trainer who murders abusive husbands in a manner so subtle it comes across as simply a heart attack. This, however, only describes the book in the grossest possible sense. 1Q84 is a tour de force of magical realism, as Murakami brings Tengo and Aomame closer and closer together with an achingly slow pace, small shifts begin to occur in the world, twisting the rules and conventions we bring to understanding reality.

Air Chrysalis functions in the novel as a guidebook, hinting at and demonstrating much of the shifts which take place in Tengo and Aomame’s lives. Towards the end of 1Q84, a certain element of metatextuality begins to shape the reader’s understanding of the novel. You start to find yourself wondering how dissimilar it is to read 1Q84 in our unquestionably real world from the fictional characters reading Air Chrysalis inside of the novel. Murakami explores the notion of two worlds existing side-by-side throughout the story, exemplified by the two moons hanging in the sky over the characters’ heads. After reading this novel, one would find it difficult not to step outside on a clear night and stare at the sky, ensuring that the number of moons has not changed.

I tremendously enjoyed Murakami’s feminism in the gender dynamic between Tengo and Aomame. Through the course of the novel, Tengo’s role tends to be slightly more passive, he is largely acted upon by the other characters, achieving his own agency in two ways-first by giving birth to the finished Air Chrysalis, and second by coming to terms with the emotional relationship between his father and himself. By contrast, Aomame’s agency works primarily through acting upon other people, pursuing her sexual desires and shaping the course of events around her. It would have been all to easy for Murakami to compose this story with the gender roles more common in fiction, but it was with tremendous pleasure that I found Aomame to be not only a “strong” female lead, but a fully developed and interesting character in her own right.

I will be honest, I have only scratched the surface of this book, but that is in no small way because I don’t believe I can do it justice in this format. At some point in the future, I will put together an essay delving into some of the finer points in this novel, but a short review is not the right place to really get into this gem of a novel. I’ll close this review in the same way I opened it. Go read 1Q84.

-Mr. Cheddar