The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
pages: 607 | rating: 2 / 5

Hello friends, it's been quite a while since I've posted and I honestly have no excuse besides just being very lazy and unmotivated. Before summer started, I picked up Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. A bit of background, the first book I read of Murakami's was Norwegian Wood. Honestly, I wasn't too enamored by the story as it seemed to be for other readers. Before giving up on Murakami, I had read that he himself considered Norwegian Wood overrated. So, taking that into consideration, I decided to try another one of his other works in hopes of sparking the same sentiment of critical acclaim towards him. After reading this, I've decided that Murakami is not the writer for me. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is told through the perspective of unemployed Toru Okada, who through the process of the story loses both his cat and his wife. Despite the blandness of the main character, the female characters seemed to throw themselves at him from high school girls to anonymous women over the phone. The plot stretches and the lives become convoluted and unnecessarily complicated as more factors are introduced. If there were significant symbolism presented during the course of the novel, it either flew over my head or I was so tired and bored of trying to get through the novel told by an unappealing protagonist that I ignored it simply to try to finish the book. It should speak loudly of my opinion of this book considering that it took me close to four months to finish it. That's all I can say honestly. So, goodbye Mr. Wind-Up Bird, you had quite a tedious life.