The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Looking back at my review for Kafka on the Shore, I feel like I understand the novel better having more Murakami experience. The WInd-up Bird Chronicle is my favorite book of those I have read. It is less violent and seems more psychological and has a tidier conclusion than the other two novels.

It opens, of course, with the search for a missing feline. The feline belongs to a couple, Toru Okada and Kumiko Okada. An essential bit of information here is that the cat is named after Kumiko's brother, whom is detested by them. Of course there is a cat psychic (Tokyo must be full of such) whom Toru is supposed to work with to find the cat, but it turns out that they (the cat psychics are a two sister team) play a larger role helping Toru to reconcile to his wife's sudden and unexplained disappearance.

Toru's attempts to understand what led to her departure and how to get her to return take up ~600 pages, perhaps not for the faint of heart. There is a significant strand of story concerning the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria which I admit I knew nothing about. What the book does best is to describe the psychological process of understanding using dreams and "real" characters as manifestations of aspects of people. At least, that is how I am choosing to interpret the book.

Muriel Spark

 A friend passed along two books to me by Muriel Spark. I thought they were interesting although stereotypically British.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was the better of the two.  I thought it was surprisingly (since the outcome is know from the beginning) suspenseful. The setting is a girl's private school in Edinburgh where one teacher, Miss Jean Brodie, tries to mold a group of girls into a clique. The main narrator is Sandy, and she "betrays" Miss Jean Brodie to the school administrators. What is interesting is exploring the recollections of each girl about that period of their lives, especially Sandy's. Understanding her motivation is what keeps one reading to the end.

The Only Problem is a darkly humorous story. It is also much less interesting to read than TPOMJB. In its attempts at being funny I found it hard to relate to or take seriously. I didn't feel sympathy for any of the characters as they were all equally bad. Bad in the superficially realized, this is an archetypically-chummy-wealthy-British-man-living-abroad character. This is his best-friend-from-college-chum who wants to help his wife get a divorce. Add lots of improbable events in, without allowing any real emotion or connections to be created and you get the story.
Muriel Spark is a talented writer and TPOMJB reminded me, because of the repetition, of Stein. Although she was writing after Stein, perhaps benefiting from her influence.