1Q84

There are plots that bend and plots that twist. Plots that feel like a roller coaster and plots that are as exciting as riding a stair lift. And then there are plots that feel like you're slowly floating down a river in a shabby boat. The drift is smooth and you can enjoy the surroundings, but at the same time you're anxiously keeping an eye on on the holes that are letting in water, bracing yourself as even the slightest curve may cause your vessel to spiral out of control.

[b:1Q84|10357575|1Q84|Haruki Murakami|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1316729331s/10357575.jpg|18160093] is like that. Not that there's anything wrong with it: the slow pace of the novel allows its protagonists to grow on you, while you join their ever-continuing inner voices during what feels like silent observation. By having the reader eavesdrop on these inner voices, [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1285812707p2/3354.jpg] can show characters in their complete loneliness, a theme that is central in this magical-realist piece of writing.

The inner voices also allows the reader to witness how both main characters -- Tengo, a writer and math teacher, and Aomame, a fitness instructor and hit woman -- realize that what is seemingly free will (namely their inner thoughts and outer actions) is actually determined by their earlier life stories. The way their lives were written has turned Tengo into a single 30-year old with an Oedipal sex relation, while it has made Aomame hunt down abusive men, while courting old men with thinning hair for one night stands. Still, the opening of the book sees Aomame move off the beaten track (to avoid the traffic jam there) in a move that opens a whole new reality to her. She calls this reality 1Q84, a questionable version of the 1984 in which the story is set.

This is not just a casual nod to [a:George Orwell|3706|George Orwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1175614486p2/3706.jpg]'s [b:Nineteen Eighty-Four|5471|Nineteen Eighty-Four|George Orwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327892247s/5471.jpg|153313]. At one point, Tengo has to explain what Nineteen Eighty-Four was about and he then focuses on the rewriting work done by the Ministry of Truth. True totalitarianism is dictating a shared world, he seems to say, as it is this shared world that constrains individual freedom. Unknowingly, his own writing does just that: while secretly acting as a ghost writer on a story brought to him a girl who fled from a mysterious cult, reality start to mimic fiction, all the way down to the appearance of a second moon.

It isn't clear whether everybody in Tengo's world sees the two moons, although Aomame, unbeknownst to him -- as he hasn't seen her since they were both 10 years old -- certainly does, once she enters 1Q84. Of course, neither talks about this (explicitly) with anyone else. While it is sort of silly that they don't find a way to slip it into conversation, Tengo and Aomame's fear of having gone mad once again shows that the outside world expects a certain outlook on life. They may have found some freedom by seeing a unique world, but this comes at the price of loneliness, as an unshared reality is a cold one indeed. This is ultimately what drives Tengo and Aomame together -- a love that is explained by the desire to share a reality that is also your own.

Yet where does the strange world of 1Q84 come from? It has something to do with the book that Tengo was ghostwriting, something to do with the mysterious cult and something to do with the so-called Little People, hybrids between Big Brother and the Seven Dwarfs, who seem to be the source of inner (and outer?) voices. They are a medium for creative thought, for construction of a shadow reality, but at the same time they are powerless if that reality is shared (as with Tengo's rewriting) or made manifest (as with Aomame's unborn child). The ambiguity that surrounds the Little People will certainly frustrate some readers, while others will delight in the Lynch-like incomprehensibility they offer. For me, it did both.

1Q84 is laden with complexity, as love, loneliness, free will, authorship, creativity, faith and alienation are all interwoven through many layers of narrative. Although Murakami's prose is dry and at times even flat, he throws around literary references as if he were [a:Umberto Eco|1730|Umberto Eco|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1319590745p2/1730.jpg]. Perhaps these references provide a hint of what the Little People signify: much as they construct their "air chrysales" by picking strands from the air, Murakami connects thematic strands that he picked up from all the novels he enjoyed himself. The ghostwriting that Tengo did is not all that different from authorship in general -- a process of inner speech that brings together the imprints of the outer world. Whether that speech is meaningful or madness is as impossible to ascertain as the reality of the two moons.