Did the wind-up bird forget to wind your spring?

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

Here is my summary, which is somewhat deliberately confusing.

Cat (Noboru Wataya) goes missing.
    Kumiko (Toru's wife) leaves.
          May Kasahara becomes Toru's friend, dubs him 'Mr. Wind-Up Bird'.
               Toru meets Creta and Malta Kano, mystical sisters.
                  Toru goes to the well; almost gets stuck there.
                         Creta Kano comes by and saves him.
                              Toru meets Nutmeg, Cinnamon, starts working with them.
                                  Toru makes money and buys the well.
                                       Cat comes back (renamed Mackerel).
                                 Ushi comes on Wataya's behalf (brother-in-law, not cat).
                              Toru won't negotiate, demands to speak with Kumiko.
                          May goes to work in a wig factory far away.
                       Cinnamon and Nutmeg disappear without warning.
                    Toru returns to well, finds/rescues Kumiko on a separate plane.
                 Kumiko shares her plans to kill her brother (Noboru Wataya).
              Toru visits May at the wig factory, tells her the whole story.
            Kumiko on trial for murder, but confident she did the world a favor.
         Toru will wait for Kumiko.
      With their cat.

Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Here's a line that captures how I felt after reading this book: 

The one thing I understood for sure was that I didn't understand a thing.

I won't say that I hated the reading experience; it's more that I felt unsatisfied at the end of all the mystical twists and turns. I thought we were going to come into some kind of epic understanding when it all came together, and instead, when I finished, I just thought, hunh. That's all? 

I definitely appreciated the 'dreamlike' quality of Murakami, and would be curious to read more. That said, I'd most recommend if you're looking for a mystical, existential, wandering journey.

Theater of the Absurd
That's what this book reminded me of the most, in the same way as The Master and Margarita. Not so much magical realism, as things happening that just feel almost nonsensical, yet absolutely meant to happen. I'm not sure I'm correctly capturing the Theater of the Absurd, but whatever. That's what it felt like to me. 

Missing cats
As I mentioned in the plot synopsis, the missing cat is a fairly central theme in this novel. It does eventually return, but after reading too much Murakami on my holiday break, I became nearly convinced that Susan was at death's door. This is partly my fault, but I also blame it partly on the depth of the cat's loss in the novel. In case you were worried, Susan is alive and well. 

Trigger warnings
I don't believe in banning books, or censoring them, but I will say that if you're looking to read this one, I'd offer a few potential trigger warnings for readers like myself. Including but not limited to...

• Sexual references (not the romantic pleasant kind)
• Graphic violence (think human beings getting skinned alive)
• Dark existentialism (like, really dark.)
• Exploration of death (and the meaning (or lack thereof) of life)
• Rape/defilement (physical and mystical. yes. you read that right.)

This book in a nutshell
I loved the theme of the wind-up bird, though I'm sure I missed the greater meaning it played throughout the book. Here's a line that captures it nicely, I think. 

It was a narrow world, a world that was standing still. But the narrower it became, and the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving. And every time the wind-up bird came to my yard to wind its spring, the world descended more deeply into chaos.

Love is a many-splendoured thing
I enjoy reading about various depictions of love, and perhaps my interest is heightened by never having been in love myself. In any case, I enjoyed this particular version of it, and thought to myself, now that isn't so flashy, but that sounds downright delightful.

Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a dear old friend."

Referents and Reverberations
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

- Inception (film) - reading this book definitely made me want to re-watch Inception. 

- A Separate Peace by John Knowles
While I didn't totally understand the thread of WWII flashbacks that peppered the novel, it was interesting to hear such similar sentiments expressed on the Japanese generation to what I just read about in A Separate Peace. 

• We were just ordinary young men, the same as you. I never once thought I wanted to be a soldier.
• It was, of course, a make-believe peace.

It seems that everywhere the world was full of would-be soldiers who just wanted to be men. 

Title possibilities
Here are a few lines that were in the running. I think they give a nice image of the story. 

• Malta Kano - No one ever calls me. I am the one who makes the calls. 

• The point is, not to resist the flow.

• In the distance, I heard the wind-up bird cry.

• I felt as if I had become part of a badly written novel, that someone was taking me to task for being utterly unreal.

• Some kind of memory was trying to find its way out.

• Staying very still in the darkness, I became less and less convinced of the fact that I actually existed.

• The way it stands now, your life is probably just going to get weirder and weirder.

New words
shoji paper - In traditional Japanese architecture, a shōji is a door, window or room divider consisting of translucent paper over a frame of wood which holds together a lattice of wood or bamboo.

I'll leave you with this line that I enjoyed, in reference to the wind-up bird - Every day it would come to the stand of trees in our neighborhood and wind the spring of our quiet little world.

Here's hoping there's something winding the spring of your quiet world, and that you haven't spent too much time at the bottom of deep dark wells lately (literally or metaphorically). Onwards to Uncle Tom's Cabin.