“Murakami is like a magician who explains what he’s doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers . . . But while anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it’s the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves.” —The New York Times Book Review
The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled.
As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.
A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s—1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet: an instant best seller in his native Japan, and a tremendous feat of imagination from one of our most revered contemporary writers.
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Sexual Content - 4/5
4/5
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Violence - 3/5
3/5
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Language - 4/5
4/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 1/5
1/5
Summary
This bizarre timeshifting novel centers on two characters living in an alternate 1984 version of Tokyo. Aomame (rhymes with edamame) is a female physical therapist who
turns out, early in the book, to be a highlyskilled assassin. Tengo is a young male writer who finds himself involved in a plot to bring down a cult leader who assaults and abuses young girls. Add in some mystical \"little people\" and an Air Chrysalis, and you soon realize this truly strange, slowdeveloping plot line was a waste of time. One of the best lines in the novel is \"if you don't understand it without an explanation, you won't understand it with an explanation.\" Sound like this book. Violence
Detail about how to kill a person. Graphic imagery in several scenes.
Language Several instances of crude language, unnecessary references to human anatomy.
Sexual Totally unnecessary sexual encounters with totally unnecessary detail.
Drug & Alcohol Some mention of alcohol.
Reviewer Name: saiello