1Q84: HARUKI MURIKAMI

Nine hundred and twenty five pages later, I am now finished with my fourth Murikami book, his longest and perhaps his best.  I read the first half on my Kindle until my library card expired.  I read the last half on a hard copy, a huge tomb that makes you see the advantage of a Kindle.

Like all of Murikami's books, he combines Japanese culture and settings, with lots of allusions to Western culture, especially music and books.  And, also there's the element of magical realism, something that I am not crazy about but it's less obtrusive in this book or perhaps less essential to the story.

The story begins twenty five years ago, in grade school, when the school's prodigy, Tengo, steps in and defends the lonely, isolated born again Christian Aomame from her peers.  Later in the day, she waits for him, gazes in his eyes, holds his hand, then walks away.  That's the beginning, as they don't meet again for twenty five years though they never lose the memory of this moment.  The story really begins when both are thirty, Tengo a struggling writer and cram course teacher.  He gets offered the chance to rewrite a 17 year old girl's original story; he does reluctantly, and it eventually wins a Major prize.  Unfortunately, the young girl is a run away from a cult and the story unveils many secrets behind this  group.  Thus, Tengo gets drawn into the anger of the cult's leaders, who are searching for not only the writer but Tengo, who are responsible for this 'kiss and and tell.'

In a parallel story, Aomame has become a respected trainer at at a gym; she ends up befriending a wealthy dowager, who takes interest in Aomame, invites her to her home for training, but eventually Aomame becomes a surrogate daughter(her daughter committed suicide, a result of her husband's abuse).
The dowager begins taking in battered women, creates a shelter and eventually begins taking the step of punishing the abusive husbands, with Aomame's help.  Aomame ends up becoming a specialist in inserting a needles in the neck of the abusive, unsuspecting victims, killing them instantly, making it seem as if they had a heart attack.  Unfortunately, her final victim is the leader of the cult (who they suspect of abusing preadolescent females).  Before she kills him, he tells her he has been expecting her, wants to be put to death because he is in severe pain.  He also manifest strange powers, levitation as well as ability to see into the future, predicting for Aomame a few details that guide the rest of her life.  She puts him to death, at his request, flees to a safe house but the followers of the leader, unaware of his wish, pursue her for the rest of the story.  Much of the story is taken up with her thoughts, of her beginning search for Tengo, the boy who befriended her when she was about ten, the sense that will inevitably meet, that it's meant to be.  She mysteriously becomes pregnant(the night she puts the leader to death), and is  convinced that it's Tengo's child though they have not met since grade school.

Tengo meanwhile is watched by agents of the cult, unknowingly, as he harbors the young girl who wrote the expose.  The night of Aomame's meeting with the leader, Tengo is mounted by the young girl (the cult leader's daughter) and has sexual relations with her though there seems to be no desire for either partner.  Tengo ends up, during this time, visiting his dying father, spending days with him, reading though the father is unconscious, a kind of expiation for his neglect of him earlier in his life.  Slowly, the two parallel stories begin to merge, as their fates eventually become intertwined.  Tengo and Aomame managed to evade the cult and their surrogates, with the help of the dowager, leave the new world of 1Q84 and return to the normal world (this is the magical realism part I will not go into; it also includes two moons and little people that come out of people's mouths and seem to have evil powers that are countered by Aomame and Tengo).  Carrying Tengo's child, they escape to begin a new life together, living in the present, 1984.  The novel plays with the idea of fate, of connections, of the occult, of what's meant to  be and, of course, the love of two people. This combination of Japanese and Western culture, a good story, a bit of magic realism, interesting, original yet recognizable characters,  make Murikami unlike any other writer I have read.