1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

As we prepare to turn another corner and throw ourselves head first into the new year, we are bombarded with a seemingly endless selection of obsessive compulsive attempts to document the best, worst, and most overrated of everything. Many of the repeated picks will continue to be the best sellers and book club selections of tomorrow, and, by default, the novels most often praised as “great” or slammed as “so not worth the effort” by the masses. One destined to fall under both headings is Haruki Murakami’s 944-page behemoth 1Q84. Page count aside, it’s a work of fiction so thoroughly loaded with Murakami’s trademark surrealism that the story alone is enough to cause derision between avid readers. For some, Murakami’s genre cocktail of fantasy and the undeniably ‘literary’ will likely read as silly indulgence matched by a tediously lengthy narrative arc (and yes, fairly overwritten sex sequences). I won’t say these people are in the wrong. On the contrary, 1Q84 is certainly not for everyone. What I will say, though, is that the tome tops my shortlist of the best fiction writing of 2011. For those willing to take the journey, what Murakami has to offer is a languid, gorgeous read that transports its audience into a realm where time is fluid and the pages fly by. This is pure magic realism. It is a dream in print and should only be read when time allows.

The story defies synopsis, but a very simplified outline may read something like this: 1Q84 is the tale of two protagonists on seemingly disparate paths. The first is Aomame, a cynical woman who has fallen into a job as a hired assassin. Aomame enacts vigilante justice by neatly murdering notorious misogynists. In the book’s opening chapters, traffic has prevented Aomame’s taxi from reaching her next mark on time. In an act of desperation, she leaps from the car and slips through a construction worker’s shortcut that we soon learn is a sort of concrete rabbit hole. Why this is, we do not know. From here, Aomame enters a world in which there are two moons; a dimension she takes to referring to as 1Q84, an alternate reality of her 1984 present rife with allusion, symbolism, and a wealth of complicated mechanics.

Our second protagonist, too, has had his world turned upside down, though in a rather different way. Tengo is an unpublished novelist who, while judging a fiction competition, finds himself hired to ghostwrite a revision of a teenage ingénue’s mysteriously compelling manuscript. She’s a sensation, but insists that the fantastical elements of her story are not rooted in her imagination, but are instead very real. It’s worth noting that our accidental lit celebrity is a wonderful character, a sort of cyborg-like slip of a girl who serves as authorial device and enigmatic presence. As the stories begin to slowly enter parallel paths, they meet in places we couldn’t have expected at the outset, but which reveal themselves naturally in context.

The beauty of Murakami’s style (or, at least, the translation from the original Japanese) is that while we may veer into distraction and detail, we never lose sight of the story. This is not a pretentious book written to deliberately obfuscate meaning or confuse its readers. It’s instead a highly intelligent page turner. You read it, you understand it. 1Q84 is a sort of epic urban fairy tale densely packed with mysterious cults, romantic entanglements, echoing incantations and thrilling, cinematic subplots. Murakami guides us through his otherworld with simplistic prose and lays the cards on the table in ways that are often alarmingly blunt, very nearly mimicking the even-keeled language of a young adult adventure. It’s sharp, smart, wholly unique, but not interested in hearing itself speak.

Still, this is not beginner’s Murakami. While the novel is a beautiful piece of work deserving of those inches on your bookshelf, 1Q84 seems written for those already in love with Haruki Murakami’s past works. It’s the equivalent, perhaps, of those later ‘indulgent’ Federico Fellini films whined about by the movie theater complainer in Annie Hall. 1Q84 is the work of a literary auteur who has been given full license to run with his subconscious, however far that may take him. It’s not overblown, it’s not actually indulgent, it is idiosyncratic and it does take its time. In some ways, you have to want to see what Murakami is willing to show you. I followed him down the rabbit hole wholeheartedly, and the rewards have been invaluable. Months later, I still recall moments of this complex tale in crystal clear detail, which is more than I can say for certain books I read just last week. When a work of art has me stumbling into its world that long after the fact, that, for me, speaks to its ultimate value.