This was by far one of the craziest books I have read recently. The story starts on the morning of Nick and Amy Dunne's 5 year wedding Anniversary, and suddenly Amy is gone. There are signs of a struggle and more and more elements are popping up leaving Nick looking like the guilty one. And his actions and choices don't help to alleviate the suspicion.
This book was great at manipulating the reader, and what you think is reality and who the real victim/victims are here. Did Nick really do something to his wife? What are the events that led this seemingly nice couple to this fateful day? With each chapter there is more and more deception and further questions to answer. I absolutely loved this book from beginning to end. I would recommend if you like thriller/mysteries that are fast pace and really suck you in.
I don't want to reveal too much plot, but there is so much hidden here that it will really keep you guessing until the last page on what happens next.
(Sub note, they actually mention The Wind Up Bird Chronicle in this book, which was the book I had read just before this! It made me laugh.) Also, this is the second book in row in which the husband is trying to find out what happened to his wife, as The Wind Up Bird Chronicle was also mostly about a man trying to find out where his wife is and why she left him. Very interesting...
A must read for me! I loved it.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
15. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
This was one strange book. I mean I am all for pushing the limits on the human mind and the types of things we can do that seem beyond the realm of normalcy, prophesying or communicating with the dead, anything and everything but this novel just took a really long time to go nowhere for me personally.
The story starts off with the main character. Mr. Okada, gets a phone call from a woman claiming he knows her very well and with her mantra "I just need 10 minutes of you time" and from the start of the book to the end you just feel like you are on a whirlwind of events that seem to connect but then never eventually do. Nothing ever seems to actually correlate and come back to square one, and the novel is lacking the cohesion from point a to b to c, as its a to m to i to z. Nothing seems to flow and some of the plot I just didn't get why the author included it or why it was in the novel.
And their cat is missing, so Kumiko, the main character's wife, is trying to get the stay at home husband (Mr. Okada) to search for it. She sends him to a psychic and to the random alley behind their house that leads no where, as it is closed off on both ends.
It got to be a little mundane also because all these other sub characters (Malta Kano, Creta Kano, Nutmeg, the Leutenant, Ushiwayga) they all feel compelled to tell their own min-stories as well. So the plot gets more and more dense with these "other" stories, which you think are revealed to somehow explain the main plot of the novel which is what happened to Kumiko once she leaves the house and never comes back. I kept waiting for the "aha" moment where everything became clear and came back together, but it never did.... I am still waiting for some closure here.
Don't get me wrong, there were some really interesting ideas and philosophies at play here, but it was all so muddled and lost in the book that any meaning or relevance was pretty much lost on my by the end of the book.There were psychics and people who could push the limits of their mind. Kumiko's brother, Noburo Wataya had the power of influence and could make people hang on his every word. Creta Kano could get inside your dreams, Okada had the power to heal people and access some hidden facets of the mind. But there was so much going on that these plots get confused and loose their meanings.
The story starts off with the main character. Mr. Okada, gets a phone call from a woman claiming he knows her very well and with her mantra "I just need 10 minutes of you time" and from the start of the book to the end you just feel like you are on a whirlwind of events that seem to connect but then never eventually do. Nothing ever seems to actually correlate and come back to square one, and the novel is lacking the cohesion from point a to b to c, as its a to m to i to z. Nothing seems to flow and some of the plot I just didn't get why the author included it or why it was in the novel.
And their cat is missing, so Kumiko, the main character's wife, is trying to get the stay at home husband (Mr. Okada) to search for it. She sends him to a psychic and to the random alley behind their house that leads no where, as it is closed off on both ends.
It got to be a little mundane also because all these other sub characters (Malta Kano, Creta Kano, Nutmeg, the Leutenant, Ushiwayga) they all feel compelled to tell their own min-stories as well. So the plot gets more and more dense with these "other" stories, which you think are revealed to somehow explain the main plot of the novel which is what happened to Kumiko once she leaves the house and never comes back. I kept waiting for the "aha" moment where everything became clear and came back together, but it never did.... I am still waiting for some closure here.
Don't get me wrong, there were some really interesting ideas and philosophies at play here, but it was all so muddled and lost in the book that any meaning or relevance was pretty much lost on my by the end of the book.There were psychics and people who could push the limits of their mind. Kumiko's brother, Noburo Wataya had the power of influence and could make people hang on his every word. Creta Kano could get inside your dreams, Okada had the power to heal people and access some hidden facets of the mind. But there was so much going on that these plots get confused and loose their meanings.
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