1Q84 Book 1 by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 has been sitting on my “to-read” list for quite a while.

Google “books set in Japan” or “Japanese novelists” and 1Q84 comes up on the top spots. When it was first published in 2011 the trilogy smashed the best-sellers list and it continues to be a feature in every Waterstones’ offer table in the country.

Given its ambiguous front cover and cryptic blurb, it’s hard to find out what 1Q84 is actually about without uncovering any spoilers. 

The internet has come to a unanimous vote though:
Haruki Murakami is a writer who is obsessed with cats and boobies.

I brought Books One and Two together, a hefty whooper numbering at 805 pages.

Book One is split into two character viewpoints: Aomame (pronounced Ah-oh-mah-meh) and Tengo. 

Aomame and Tengo live their seemingly separate lives; one an unmerciful assassin with a peculiar fetish for bald men and the other a struggling writer who has been given a risky literary task. At one point I found myself thinking that apart these stories would have made great novels.

Eventually by page p231 connections start to form, but there’s no sign of any cats.

Asking why Haruki Murarkami has such a preoccupation with a particular part of the female anatomy may be posing a wider question to straight men across the ages.  However as the novel progressed the fixation became so bizarre I could hear his female creations screaming out “Hey Murakami, I’m up here!”

The plot reads like an Orwellian misogynistic mesh set in 1980s Japan. The slow reveal of character’s private tales lure you into completion and I am hoping Book Two will answer the reason for the mammary obsession… either that or it will supply long compensating descriptions of the female character’s eyes.