1Q84

Two moons, the one paper-like, a cheap lantern, lit from behind and green with dust. Together the moons are a signpost of an alternate reality that the protagonist of Haruki Murakami's novel calls 1Q84. Get it? I'm not sure I do, but it is best to embrace your weaknesses when reading anything written by the master of relativity, Murakami.

I am back, dear reader, albeit not in one piece and not without a few scars. One is a pretty star shape and positioned like a gangster tat. There is only one moon here, but it is anaemic-pink with pollution and on sale.

So it is fitting that 1Q84 is my first review in a few months. It is the codex to my present. It is my white rabbit. It is a post-modern Ulysses sitting next to said tome on my bedside table. It is 1000-and-something pages light, and I read the first 100 pages three times and each time it was a different novel.

The novel is actually a trilogy, but what isn't in the aftermath of Peter Jackson's assault on Mordor? It was first published in three parts in Japanese in 2009 before being translated and published in English in 2011. Since then Murakami has written one more novel: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, which is news to me too.

My books travel with me. I never know when I may find an opportunity - and an almost physical need - to read, from doctors' waiting rooms to coffee breaks to shop queues. I have been (interrupted and) asked to describe this book many many times in many many contexts and each time I flapped my cheeks a few times before sighing, hoping this would suffice. When it didn't, I squinted at the back cover:

The year is 1Q84.

This is the real world,
there is no doubt about that.

But, in this world, there are
two moons in the sky.

In this world, the fates of two people
Tengo and Aomame, are closely intertwined.
They are each, in their own way,
doing something dangerous.
And in this world, there seems
no way to save them both.

Something extraordinary is starting.

"So," I would start. "This 1321-page book is set in an alternate universe, where everything is the same as ours except that there are two moons." I would look up from the blurb then, hoping this would have answered the question. "Um, ok. The story is told from the perspectives of two characters: an assassin-cum-gym-instructor and a writer-cum-maths-teacher. They are separately part of a conspiracy that is loosely bound to a cult that believes in faeries. The Old World kind of faerie. The nasty kind.

"I haven't finished reading it, yet," I would apologise. Still, my audience would stare.

Stop staring.

This standoff reminds me of a mistake I made once of asking an elderly sculptor what one of his pieces 'meant' - I was chewed out in Italian before being given the cold shoulder for the afternoon. Yes, meaning is relative - but meaning is also democratic, sir, and you are responsible for mowing the grass along your stretch of road whether you vote or not. Or something.

I imagine Murakami chewing me out for turning to the blurb for meaning.

In a previous novel, Kafka on the Shore, loose ends flip around like live electrical wires in the street after a violent storm. (The same street whose sidewalks you mow.) In 1Q84, the street is not only triple the length, with triple the number of sparking wires, but it also inhabits all 26 possible dimensions and then some. In other words, the novel is too long to safely sustain relativity.

The problem with the author scrapping his name from the voting ballot and setting fire to all evidence that he was ever there is that, the longer the novel, the more frayed plot points spark in the street and many of these streets are cul de sacs, each with kaleidoscopes of authors hightailing it in all sorts of directions, possibly dimensions, and while I don't mind singing for my supper, I would prefer it if we could stick to one metaphor. Right?

1321 pages is too long for the author to leave me to my own devices.

As if to punctuate this, my pet bunny ate the last 6 pages of the novel before I could finish reading. So, technically, I have not finished the novel. But neither do I have the urge to acquire those 6 pages and read them (imagine me curled up behind a bookshop bookshelf, listening for the footsteps of a bookseller who will politely ask me to buy the book if I want to know how it ends - they don't believe the story about Munroe the paper-munching rabbit).

This review is like one of those puzzles where you have to count how many shapes you see and you are supposed to count shapes in the shapes and shapes made of shapes and the shapes these shapes make. There are multiple blurbs in this post and not all of them belong to the same union. I was going to count them out for you and then I thought, nah, you could do with some exercise after your six-month break from my meanderings.

1Q84: Part 1 of many

The blurb of the book promises: "Something extraordinary is starting." Starting? Does this refer to a point within or beyond the covers? Because this thing is 1300 pages thick, sir. I am a fan. A fan strong enough to blow back the strings of a willow tree. But 1300 pages? I'm not sure I could generate more than a whiffle. A wheeze. A not-quite sigh. So please, by the alveoli of my heaving lungs, let the extraordinary something start, happen and resolve itself with enough space for a conclusion.

Ok, resolution and a conclusion is asking a lot from an author these days. But this is Haruki Murakami. If anyone can bend a convention until its toes meet its scalp, he can. But this is Haruki Murakami. He's allergic to resolution.

1Q84 came out first in Japanese in, wait for it, Japan. Writing in his first language? He's just contrary like that. The English translation came out a year later. Sorry, translations, because three's company - no, wait, that isn't how it goes. Yes, a trilogy. If people started having triplets at the same rate as they write trilogies, the race to inhabit deep dark space (which, fyi, we already do) would intensify out of necessity.

The benefit of having to wait for the translation(s) was that we could read all three together. Like Game of Thrones which I read consecutively. All five and some halves of consecutive.

At 1300 pages, we're talking slightly more than 400 words per book. (I worked that out in my head.) That's a decent length, unless you're a new author and the publisher isn't prepared to waste reams of paper on your mad skills. Then you get 200 pages and really big font. It's a decent length in which to resolve the "something extraordinary", I'm thinking like an amateur allergic reaction.

Kafka on the Shore is my favourite of his books (all three and a bit that I have read). That book has a conclusion. Of sorts. The conclusion being that we make meanings out of symbols we happen to latch on to, like a spiderweb in that willow tree. This has a twin benefit: you can write anything you want and call it literature, and you don't have to commit to anything afterward. Luckily for us readers, Murakami is not anyone and his books are not anything. But still, it's annoying.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is more contradictory. There are episodes that are so symbolic they shine, but  apparently no one else can see them. Just to make sure we know no one can see them and that the symbols are actually dull and ugly, more shiny symbols show up, like rival gangs in West Side Story. Only one can survive. Or neither, but that's another book.

As usual, I'm being facetious, because that is so much more fun than simply liking something. This way, my resolution and conclusion are more surprising, as if I had jumped out from behind your bathroom door first thing in the morning. (This depends on you being there, in both cases.) My readings are imposed, which is the point of all of Murakami's writings, after being entertaining.

I started 1Q84 about a month ago. Today I am 204 pages in. (That's part of Book One, just fyi.) I knew, but still only just remembered, how overwhelming every scene is. Every scene shines, whether the radioactivity spills from people's hands, the material they are wearing, the appliances in the kitchen and their purposes, or a family in a car in traffic. You can't tell whether you are supposed to notice them, you notice them because of your particular neuroses or you are being paranoid. Your neck muscles lock in defence, but you can't be sure you aren't imagining that too.

I haven't quite reached this point in the book, but forewarned is forearmed, and paranoia is a kind of arm.

Another kind of arm is to read other books between chapters. Not Neil Gaiman because I have made the mistake of parading Gaiman (whose plots and characters are so consistent he could write Mills & Boon novels. Maybe he does) in front of Murakami. Murakami wasn't mean, which made it all worse. He was like a Buddhist faced with the pacing and ranting of a fundamentalist. He listened and smiled, and went on adventures in his mind.

Terry Pratchett has survived scrutiny well so far. Maybe because he's so far off in his own direction that he caught up with the Buddhist in his mind. (Which is not to compare them directly, no. But the metaphor ran away with me.) I have read one new Pratchett and reread an old one. Which I realise is probably double what I have read from 1Q84. So it's more like I am reading Terry Pratchett, with some Murakami on the side. Murakami would listen to this and smile, and skip stones across the Amazon River until an alligator came by to debate vegetarianism.

I am trying to describe what I have read so far and what shines and what it shines on and whether perhaps I am imagining it. There are events that stick out, but honestly I would sound crazy if I wrote them here and told you they are a legitimate part of a legitimate novel. There's this and the fact that I am less than one-sixth of the way through the novel, which hopefully is the start and not something else but I cannot guarantee it. I cannot guarantee that page 867 doesn't tell me to go back to the beginning or that it begins to repeat on page 292 and then again on page 1287.

You guessed it, this "part 1 of many" cheat is a device meant to keep you reading. But I could be setting myself up for failure here if I give up just like I did Ulysses (which is not to say I have given up - I am just making a point). James Joyce also swanned around, making faces at meaning, but he also made faces at sentences and the English language. Murakami may have written in Japanese, but this novel (so far) is still easier to read.

The list of magnanimity

Dear reader, have you been paying attention? Have you? Here's a test: do I prefer chocolate or strawberry ice cream? You could answer: by 'I' do you mean the tapper of keys behind this blog or the one who just took a sip of coffee? When in doubt always answer a question with a question. (Just one of the many nuggets I have pilfered from The Office.)

That's not the test. The answer is obvious: chocolate. We'll tackle this later. Now, the real test is whether you have noticed that I have been speeding through some of the classics and some of the strawberry-flavoured books in my local library. Your reply? Should I have noticed? You learn well, my young padawan.

My number one survival strategy is lists, whether written down and colour-coded or mental and therefore quickly lost. This is core to my zombie apocalypse slash hunger games strategy, so I will tell you only that it involves post-its and a tree.

Anyway, last post I abused Borges' library, a really innocuous building that happens to have swallowed all eternity. Which should be paradise for us bibliophiles. (Dibs on 'F' in the fiction section. Ok, fine, 'M' then.) It isn't. It is terrifying. You've heard about the marketing study where they found that too much choice actually drives consumers away. And every salesperson knows to only give a person three options and to place the option that gives you a higher commission first.

The scale of published fiction in the last 100 years is like counting the human population since we first started practising pressing the buttons of video games with our thumbs. Confining the headcount to literary fiction, I mumble guiltily, still doesn't help. This isn't a choice between different scents of floor cleaner (FYI, no scent, especially not made-up ones like Bright Sunshine), no, this is literature!

This eternal library is a case of survival. Instead of killing zombies and other children, we must read everything. That's an exaggeration, you snort (I can hear you, through the microphone, so be please be polite about my bibliophilic delusion).

In the absence of chocolate and strawberry coloured stickers along the spines to guide my quest, I have made a list. Ok, many lists and some were colour-coded. Some are stuck on my fridge but are so faded and blotched with coffee stains you can't read them, others are pinned to a ribbon knotted onto my bedroom door handle, and some are lost in the right hemisphere of my brain, because that's where lost and found is.

The winners of this game are the titles posted on this blog, to the right >>, and those saved on my phone. The one occasion I deviated from this list ended badly, not in a zombie bite, but in disappointment. Point proven; lists are the key to survival. Also, apparently, technology.

Now that I have distracted you from the impending reappearance of the Dreaded List on this blog, here is a condensed list of my approved reads (and future reviews), gleaned mostly from the internet (the most trustworthy, obviously) and recommendations (a mixed bag, except for the ones on FB, obviously):

• 1Q84 by Haruki Marukami (unread; alternate history) I think I've bored you enough with my ravings about this and Kafka on the Shore. That's why bloggers use labels (below right)
• Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (unread; cross-genre) having read a couple of his other novels, I wouldn't rank him above David Mitchell in this category, but then I don't think many short of James Joyce could
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (read; dystopian) the character of the girl at the beginning cinched this novel for me, although I wasn't so thrilled with the book-burning
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (unread; literary) I hereby admit that I have never read this classic novel
• A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers (unread; post-modern look how smart I am) we studied A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I hated it for exactly the same reason others adore it: the the iconoclastic, self-conscious self-deprecation, but I'm willing to give him another go. I'm magnanimous like that
• The Maddadam books by Margaret Atwood (two of three read; apocalyptic) post in proximity, so work, you
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson Mccullers (unread; literary) I'm magnanimous but not perfect. I hate Mccullers just a teensy bit because she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which is beautiful, at 23. Pure jealousy. I will read this but I will feel sorry for myself the entire time, so prepare yourselves
• The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain (read; noir fiction) only 116 pages but perfectly paced. I don't usually enjoy crime novels but this was a satisfying, meaty use of the conventions
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (unread; satire) I have faith but I need it because I read Cat's Cradle recently. It is a few marbles short of Philip K Dick's drug-fuelled novels. So, yes, I need it
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein (partly read; science fiction) the beginning reminds me of A Brave New World, although I can't say why. Also reminds me of the soundtrack to Lost Boys: "People are strange when you're a stranger"

My closest library loans out books for two weeks at a time. That gives me 16 weeks to finish all eight of the unread books. But don't worry, I'll sneak in some unexpected reviews just to see if you've been paying attention. You.

Starting position: 1Q84

A trilogy? How blasè, we moan, hand to forehead like Scarlet O'Hara. (We're a dramatic bunch, us readers. After all, we choose to experience more lives, more stories. For fun.) These 'trilogies' are false promises: the episodes breed until, five books later, you're waiting for your favourite character to... die from old age. (My favourite died in Book 3. He wasn't old. There are a lot of pages to wade through after heartbreak like that.) Anyway, this trilogy is the Rhett Butler to your Scarlet O'Hara.

You know what book it is - the title is in the title of the post. So I can meander. Haruki Murakami's novels are not easy reads, in any sense. It's like James Joyce: You either think he's a genius or a hack. (Guess which side I am on. In both cases.) And that has a lot to do with the book you start with.

I started with Kafka on the Shore and didn't know what to think until the novel was almost finished. The author tells multiple stories at the same time and, although I enjoyed each story, I couldn't figure out where this was going. Then, like those clowns who twist and knot balloons into shapes (I hate balloons, incidentally), he tied everything up into a neat... poodle.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was not as pleasant. I disliked it for the same reason I liked Kafka. The stories are sequential, not parallel. And like everything Murakami writes, the characters are symbolic. So you're carrying your interpretation through the different stories, and it's supposed to be 'maturing' as the novel develops, but the clues keep mutating. Your poodle is suddenly a sausage dog and then it's not even a dog - it's a giraffe!

Both novels are intentionally cryptic, I think to make you aware of the process of interpreting what you read and to give you the freedom to essentially create your own novel with the author. All very post-modern hurrah. In Kafka, Murakami beckoned me on to a shaded verandah to create our balloon animals. In Wind-up Bird, he herded me into a kids' party and went to run some errands.

With a win-lose ratio of 50:50, you might doubt my objectivity here. Surely I need another round before proclaiming his novels Monarchs of their own Bookshelf? Consider that, after Kafka, I could not read anything for weeks. The first books I read after both of Murakami's novels were Neil Gaiman's. After Murakami's plot contortions, Gaiman's novels seemed staid. I'm sorry! I can hear you O'Hara-ing again! My point is only (settle down, please) that I was almost literally transfixed by each book, regardless of my review of it.

So here we go: 1Q84. Released in three instalments in Japanese only, it was translated and released in English a year or so ago. (The delay between the Japanese and English editions amounts to the same anticipation at the delay between installments. Clever.) Now, I have my eye on a copy and that copy is mine - all 1318 pages, bound in a black cover, with a spine that will crack beneath the weight of the words and their symbolism...

But you don't eat a biscuit at once. No. You twist the pieces until you can get to the centre: creamy, chocolatey, jammy, whatever. You eat the centre first and then the biscuit pieces. That is The Only Way. Cease and desist. Put away that balloon.

So first, I will place the book on a central surface (my kitchen counter). Second, I will manhandle it for a few days: ruffle the pages to feel their weight, open the book up to examine the typeface, examine the cover (front, spine and back), read the introduction, read the blurb and (this is the real test of an editor - I'll save the story for another time) smell the pages. Only then will I begin to read, armed with a bookmark and settled in a warm spot.

Trilogies might be tired, but we still buy the books and read them - Robert Jordan would be a lot quicker to write if he needed the money to pay off a car. Trilogies are epic. Unlike other trilogies, though, Murakami is going to abandon me standing on a stage with a handful of limp balloons and a clown costume. Guaranteed. This isn't The Lord of the Rings.