Part of his light touch comes from his unique method of composition. Murakami writes the first draft of his novels in English (his second language) then translates the second draft into Japanese. By doing this, he achieves a rhythm of concise unembellished sentences and a purity of expression and clean turn-of-phrase with a trim vocabulary.
The resulting story in 1Q84 is one of simple, straightforward engagement that leads to sudden, mind-boggling surprises. As we learn the intimate details of their lives and become familiar with their deep inner thoughts, Aomame and Tengo come alive as smart young Tokyo residents. Both are loners but exceptional only in the way that millions of us have talents or abilities that set us apart.
Aomame opts for a taxi to get her to an important appointment. When they get jammed in traffic, the driver points out an emergency exit that will take her down from the elevated freeway to ground level where she can catch a commuter train. He warns her that sometimes the smallest diversions amount to great change.
As she steps out of the cab, he says, "Don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality." From that point on, she begins to notices differences in the world. First, it's something simple, the cops wearing different uniforms and carrying newer guns. But one night, when she sees two moons in the sky, she realizes that she has entered a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 — "Q is for 'question mark.'"
Tengo's world is still the 1984 he remembers. He teaches math at a cram school four days a week. He has satisfying sex once a week with his older, married girlfriend and he spends the rest of his time writing. Though he has held back from fully launching his writing career, he loves writing. While writing, he says, "You confirm that you exist."
Occasionally working with an editor named Komatsu, Tengo is not surprised when he's asked to read some manuscripts that are submissions to a writing contest Komatsu is overseeing. Both are drawn to a story titled Chrysalis by an author who calls herself Fuka-Eri.
Komatsu wants her to win the contest because the beautiful seventeen-year-old girl is very promotable. When he asks Tengo to re-write the story so that it has an even better chance of winning, despite misgivings, he agrees because the story is so compelling.
We sense that, like Aomame, Tengo has set out on a path that will dramatically change his life. As he reflects on his decision, two key memories of his past emerge. The one that involves a man who is not his father pulling down the straps of his mother's slip and suckling her breasts is painful and even paralyzing at times. His mother died when he was two, so his infant self should not even be capable of such a clear memory.
The other memory fills him with joy. He's ten years old, standing in a classroom when a girl who has been his classmate for two years but who is now leaving the school walks over him and grasps his hand. She looks intently into his eyes as though memorizing his face, her firm grip never letting go of his hand. After a couple minutes, she suddenly turns and leaves with her mother. He has never seen her again.
We learn that Aomame is an assassin. The important appointment for which she risked climbing down an emergency exit ladder was to kill a man known to her employer as an unrepentant wife beater. She's very good at what she does, leaving no trace behind, but the wealthy dowager, who runs a private shelter for abused women, only assigns her cases that have no other resolution.
We also learn why Aomame is a loner. She left home when she was very young but found a way to survive and to thrive as a self-defense instructor. After losing her closest friend to domestic violence, she focused on her work spending little or no time on personal relationships. Escaping her parents and their very strict religious practices, she never looked back. Her oldest memory of love happened when she was ten years old and forced to leave her school. She remembers his name, Tengo. She longs to find him again someday.
Once Tengo's rewrite wins, he learns that the author, whose real name is Eriko Fukada, did not imagine her story. She experienced it. She grew up within a secretive cult, very isolated from the rest of the world. She describes seeing the 'Little People' emerging from the carcass of a dead goat. Because she has the ability to see them when most cannot, she's known as 'a perceiver' and she's somehow inextricably connected to 'the receiver', the Leader of the cult who is guided by what Little People tell him.
We only getting a fleeting sense of what the Little People look like or what their powers are but we know that for some reason they have somehow switched the world to a parallel set of tracks. Our experience of these elusive beings is all second-hand, through the eyes of The Leader and Eriko Fukada.
We come to understand that they have powerful agents in the world, men determined to execute the will of the cult leaders who listen to the Little People. I cannot tell you why without spoiling the plot for you. But, without knowing they share a similar predicament, both Aomame and Tengo become targets of these agents.
It's impossible for my overview to do any kind of justice to Haruki Murakami's storytelling. But believe me. As fanciful as this tale is, it is, at the same time, deadly serious about life and about our perception of the world.
"My mind, here and now, belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already changed into something else." Aomame's declaration speaks to a theme throughout 1Q84. Even in a world that hasn't been side-tracked by outside forces, how often do we have the sense of being left behind as the world changes around us?
As Tengo points out, "Owing to the dramatic expansion of the brain, human beings had been able to acquire the concepts of time, space and possibility."
But Tengo also knew "that time could become deformed as it moved forward." We adjust time for our own purposes. Most of our long-term memories are backfilled. Not pure. Not accurate. By editing our memories, we change the very meaning of our existence.
Counterbalancing the idea of us creating world-views out of false memories, Aomame's protector, a professional bodyguard named Tamaru expounds on the collective unconscious, explaining Carl Jung to the man he's about to kill.
He apologizes to his victim, offering him humanity's irrevocable bond, the knowledge that we all must die. He repeats the words Jung had chiseled into the cornerstone of his lakeside house in Switzerland, "Cold or Not. God is Present."
Murakami has the extraordinary ability to weave complex themes into the narrative without diminishing the tension of the plot. One of his tactics is to switch back and forth between Tengo and Aomame, chapter-by-chapter. Both storylines build with page-turning suspense, but with different timing. When an Aomame chapter ends with a cliffhanger, Teng's story slides into a contemplative mode.
In one such combo, we're left with Aomame running for her life and slide over to Tengo engaged in deep self-examination as he waits for his father to die. But Murakami makes it work. We become deeply engaged in prospect that Tengo's self-discovery might have something to do with Aomame's salvation.
At times, I read 1Q84 so rapidly, got so caught up in the rhythm of the phrases and the easy flow of the narrative, that I'd found myself adrift in Murakami's world, mesmerized. Toward the end, I found out that somewhere along the line, somewhere in the 925-page* narrative, it became a passionate love story.
Imagining herself inside Tengo, flowing through him like his blood, Aomame thinks: "This is the kingdom . . . I have no need to dwell on my spiritual self, because I have love."
The conclusion of 1Q84 is sublime. My heart was pounding, my eyes blinked away tears and my mind felt like it had been set on fire.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
*Note: Haruki Murakami wrote 1Q84 as three books; I was fortunate to find a Knopf publication with all three combined.
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