FEBRUARY 2014 - AudioFile
Adam Sims projects the unrequited desire of the male narrator of this novel, featuring a love triangle of unfulfilled longing. Sims’s narration is melodic, dreamy, and wistful, characteristics that are all suitable, even necessary, for a first-person point of view that meanders through recollections of love gone awry. Die-hard Murakami fans may be distracted by the pronounced American accent used to portray the cast of Japanese characters. Interestingly, Sims doesn’t affect Asian-accented English for this volume as other narrators may have done; his choices likely will highlight the universal nature of love for the majority of listeners. He treats female characters with the same steady tone he gives the male protagonist, rendering this an overall even performance. M.R. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
bn.com Review
The Barnes & Noble Review
Haruki Murakami's seventh novel to be translated into English is at once a moving tale of an extraordinary love and a haunting mystery, complete with Murakami's signature touches of magic realism.
Sumire, the novel's heroine, is a young, aspiring writer who considers herself to be the ultimate rebel. She chain-smokes, dresses like an unkempt little boy, is obsessed with Jack Kerouac, and seems to reject -- almost on principle -- all the mores and manifestations of normal society, including love and sex. According to the narrator, "If she did experience sex -- or something close to it -- in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity." Sumire spends most of her time writing stories with which she is never satisfied and discussing the meaning of life with her best friend, a levelheaded Tokyo schoolteacher with a penchant for sleeping with the mothers of his students. To the reader, and to Sumire herself, it seems as if she is waiting, primed, for her life to truly begin.
Life does in fact begin -- and almost end -- for Sumire when she meets an elegant older woman named Miu at a cousin's wedding. Sumire, who has never known love, falls head-over-heels for this mysterious woman, and the two develop a close friendship. Miu seems determined to become a mentor to Sumire and offers her a job as her personal assistant. When Miu and her new assistant take a business trip to Europe, the story becomes increasingly dreamlike -- or, more accurately, nightmarish. In Europe, Miu finally confides in Sumire about the experience that forever changed the older woman's life, an experience that psychically broke her in half and left behind only a shell of the person she once was. In her determination to become closer to and fully understand Miu, Sumire sets out on her own world-shattering journey to the "other side," a trip that nearly leads her away from Miu and from her life in Japan forever.
The novel is told in first person, but not from Sumire's perspective. Instead it is told by Sumire's best friend, the Tokyo schoolteacher who for years has been secretly in love with her. The narrator's inability to fully understand the journey that Sumire takes during the novel imparts an added aura of mystery to her already unfathomable pilgrimage. But his love for and faith in Sumire allow the reader to believe that, unlike Miu, this young woman will find the strength to survive her ordeal and return intact. (Laura Beers)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Murakami's seventh novel to be translated into English is a short, enigmatic chronicle of unrequited desire involving three acquaintances the narrator, a 24-year-old Tokyo schoolteacher; his friend Sumire, an erratic, dreamy writer who idolizes Jack Kerouac; and Miu, a beautiful married businesswoman with a secret in her past so harrowing it has turned her hair snowy white. When Sumire abandons her writing for life as an assistant to Miu and later disappears while the two are vacationing on a Greek island, the narrator/teacher travels across the world to help find her. Once on the island, he discovers Sumire has written two stories: one explaining the extent of her longing for Miu; the second revealing the secret from Miu's past that bleached her hair and prevents her from getting close to anyone. All of the characters suffer from bouts of existential despair, and in the end, back in Tokyo, having lost both of his potential saviors and deciding to end a loveless affair with a student's mother, the narrator laments his loneliness. Though the story is almost stark in its simplicity more like Murakami's romantic Norwegian Wood than his surreal Wind-Up Bird Chronicles the careful intimacy of the protagonists' conversation and their tightly controlled passion for each other make this slim book worthwhile. Like a Zen koan, Murakami's tale of the search for human connection asks only questions, offers no answers and must be meditated upon to provide meaning. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Murakami's (Norwegian Wood) seventh book in translation is a love story wrapped in a mystery packaged in a light-side/dark-side philosophical wrapper. While in college, the narrator falls in love with untidy novelist manqu Sumire, who wants only to be best friends. They talk and talk. Sumire later falls hard for Miu, an older, married woman for whom she begins working. Then, on a business/pleasure trip to Greece with Miu, Sumire disappears. From a plot standpoint, this disappearance, which occurs a third of the way through the book, is the first time that anything interesting happens. The narrator's fixation on Sumire is not all that fascinating, nor is its object. As for Murakami's vaunted writing, one gets more dead-hit metaphors per ream from "commercial" writers like Loren Estleman. The philosophical black/white/doppelganger stuff is not without interest, but not normally the stuff of the (American) mass market. Recommended for Murakami initiates and large fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/00.]--Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
From the Publisher
Grabs you from its opening lines. . . . [Murakami’s] never written anything more openly emotional.” —Los Angeles Magazine
“Murakami is a genius.” —Chicago Tribune
“Murakami has an unmatched gift for turning psychological metaphors into uncanny narratives.” –The New York Times Book Review
“An agonizing, sweet story about the power and the pain of love. . . . Immensely deepened by perfect little images that leave much to be filled in by the reader’s heart or eye.” –The Baltimore Sun
“[Murakami belongs] in the topmost rank of writers of international stature.” –Newsday
“Murakami’s true achievement lies in the humor and vision he brings to even the most despairing moments.” –The New Yorker
“Perhaps better than any contemporary writer, [Murakami] captures and lays bare the raw human emotion of longing.” –BookPage
“Murakami . . . has a deep interest in the alienation of self, which lifts [Sputnik Sweetheart] into both fantasy and philosophy.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“Not just a great Japanese writer but a great writer, period.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review
FEBRUARY 2014 - AudioFile
Adam Sims projects the unrequited desire of the male narrator of this novel, featuring a love triangle of unfulfilled longing. Sims’s narration is melodic, dreamy, and wistful, characteristics that are all suitable, even necessary, for a first-person point of view that meanders through recollections of love gone awry. Die-hard Murakami fans may be distracted by the pronounced American accent used to portray the cast of Japanese characters. Interestingly, Sims doesn’t affect Asian-accented English for this volume as other narrators may have done; his choices likely will highlight the universal nature of love for the majority of listeners. He treats female characters with the same steady tone he gives the male protagonist, rendering this an overall even performance. M.R. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
