Reviews

1Q84 by Ursula Gräfe, Haruki Murakami

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helianthus13666's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Finally finished reading all three books in the 1Q84 series. Phew! What a literary journey it was. I would now like to give my honest review for this series.

All the characters in the book were described down to their minute details which helped me to create a mental persona of them. So, kudos for that. Each character was written in such a way that there was something to respect as well as loathe about them.

The books tried to maintain a constant pace for the story but I truly feel that the book could have been shortened to two books instead of three. There were a fair amount of excessive drawn out chapters.

The ending felt a bit unsatisfying. There were many questions that were left unanswered. I like a book that ties all the loose ends together but this one felt incomplete.

In short, unnecessarily lengthy but a good story, memorable characters which had their good and bad sides, fairly okay chapter spacing with an unsatisfactory ending. So, I think those 4.0/5 stars are justified.

I would very much like to read other books from Murakami san but hopefully they aren't this lengthy! I enjoyed reading it :)

kimmeham's review against another edition

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5.0

Selv etter nesten 1200 sider er 1Q84 en stor leseopplevelse. Historien er så snedig fortalt, og det ligger en herlig nerve og lurer gjennom hele dette siste bindet. De siste 200 sidene er ulidelig spennende, selv om det egentlig går ganske tregt fremover. Tidvis blir det kanskje litt i overkant mye meta, og som seg hør og bør klarer Murakami å få presset inn litt incest mot slutten. Men jevnt over er dette en glimrende historie, som er fortalt på en fengende, humoristisk og smart måte. Jeg kan tåle litt postmodernisme når alt annet er så sabla bra. For øvrig vil nok det å høre «It’s Only a Paper Moon» aldri bli det samme igjen. Favorittsitat: «Jorda har overlevd nazismen, atombomben og samtidsmusikken, så da overlever den nok dette også». Anbefales på det grøvste.