All of this is especially true of Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel, “1Q84” (translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011, 928 pages). The wildly popular Japanese fictionist already melds reality and in his poetic prose, but “1Q84” is his thickest, most ambitious book to date. The book’s dense structure is due to the fact that it was originally published in Japan as three separate volumes from 2009 to 2010.
As for the story of “1Q84” itself, it is a many-branched tale of romance, science fiction and not just a little weirdness. It possesses many tangents, including story beats that it would later abandon completely and then pick up new ones towards the end, all of it distilled in Murakami’s lovely if sometimes overly precious prose.
It is the year 1984, and a woman named Aomame spends her time as an assassin, killing men who are guilty of domestic violence. But as she departs from one such assignment, she rides a cab, getting off near a highway where she finds a hatch that leads to somewhere else.
“After you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little,” the cab driver reminds her. “Things may look different to you than they did before. But don’t let that fool you.”
She finds that she is now in another world, one with two moons, a world very similar to her own except for some subtle but important differences. Aomame dubs this new world “1Q84,” with the “Q” meaning a question mark: “Like it or not, I’m here now, in the year 1Q84. The 1984 that I knew no longer exists. The air has changed, the scene has changed. I have to adapt to this world-with-a-question-mark as soon as I can. Like an animal released into a new forest.”
Also finding himself in the same world is the seemingly ordinary Tengo, a man who teaches at a cramming school but seeks to be a writer. When an editor friend ropes him into a plan to win a literary award by rewriting “Air Chrysalis,” the novel of a highly enigmatic 17-year-old named Fuki-Eri, Tengo finds himself in a strange world where fiction may not altogether be untrue.
Convoluted
That’s the simple version. The actual story contained in “1Q84” is much more complicated and convoluted, depending on your tastes, a somewhat epic tale of personal tragedies, romantic destiny, sexual identity, the cult phenomenon and possibly supernatural beings called the Little People, among many others.
In short, Aomame and Tengo must somehow find a way to escape all that pursues them in this strange parallel world. While it is catnip for Murakami followers, any reader without a supernatural amount of patience may not be able to finish “1Q84.”
Finishing “1Q84” is a particularly formidable task because the book starts slow, then gets even slower in the middle even as it unloads valuable exposition and only gains speed right near the end. Nevertheless, it is an inventive story, once you sort through the paragraphs and once read completely, shines as an enigmatic achievement as well as a sheer physical undertaking.
It is as heavy a dose of Haruki Murakami as you can get, with “1Q84” as an overloaded example of his myth-making prowess. It is as Tengo himself observes: “Time stopped, and the world ended. The earth ground slowly to a halt, and all sound and light vanished. When he woke up the next day, the world was still there, and the things were already moving forward, like the great karmic wheel of Indian mythology that kills every living thing in its path.”
Available in hardcover from National Book Store.