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A review by svrye_docx
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Did not finish book. Stopped at 50%.
This if the first Murakami book I picked up in a while after having inhaled a whole bunch in my late teens and early twenties. And boy did everything bad I'd read about Murakami prove kinda true with this book. Those critiques notwithstanding, I though I would finally give this book ago though. I remembered loving some of his other books as a younger reader and I had always wanted to read what many called his magnum opus so there I sat down with it.
How Murakami managed to turn one of the more concepts for a story into a meandering, unfocused, slice-of-life narrative with glacial pacing still stumps me to this day. I suppose there's some craft in taking a potentially action and intrigue heavy story and turning it into a slow-burner but I couldn't, for the life of me, get behind any of it. I felt nothing for the characters and could barely detect any motivations or personal drive from any of the main and supporting characters so when I finally managed to get to the 50% mark I decided that I'd given it a worthwhile chance and I did not finish it.
How Murakami managed to turn one of the more concepts for a story into a meandering, unfocused, slice-of-life narrative with glacial pacing still stumps me to this day. I suppose there's some craft in taking a potentially action and intrigue heavy story and turning it into a slow-burner but I couldn't, for the life of me, get behind any of it. I felt nothing for the characters and could barely detect any motivations or personal drive from any of the main and supporting characters so when I finally managed to get to the 50% mark I decided that I'd given it a worthwhile chance and I did not finish it.