This is quite possibly the most difficult review I’ll write for 2024. Yes, please ignore the fact that I’m posting my last 3 reviews (3!!!) for 2024 finished books in 2025. Forgive me, I’m not really on my game, as one would say. No… let me change that. That was absolutely on purpose because I’m doing my reviews in a non-linear flashback-laden fashion in honor of this book. You’re buying that, right? Would you instead believe I’ve been stuck in a well for the whole of 2025 having intense life-changing metaphysical experiences?

Ok, cut the crap and on to the review. Murakami is one of those writers either lauded as a literary genius or despised for his ability to confuse, confound and annoy. There’s rarely an in-between. You either get how the seemingly nonsensical nature of Wind-Up Bird fits together or you rail about your wasted time. Not to be contradictory with my last statement, I do feel I’m somewhere in the middle. My thoughts and feelings were as inconsistent as the plot of this novel. At one point I would be confused, another annoyed, and another completely in awe of Murakami’s ability to wield language. He is a literary genius, but his work is certainly not for everyone.

In this novel, Murakami throws so many different seemingly unrelated elements and characters at us. There’s a narrative with a missing cat, a failing marriage, an overly friendly repeat phone sex lady, a troubled neighbor girl who waxes poetic and talks too much, a prostitute who has psychic sex, a creepy and probably-evil brother in law, a couple of interesting wells, an aging soldier of the Japanese Manchurian campaign in WWII, and a really strange mother and son duo. Did I forget anyone? I don’t know… I’m confused again. Somehow these are all related to our main character, Toru Okada, an unemployed attorney who doesn’t want to be an attorney who seeks his purpose in life.

It gets weird… really weird… and it gets gory and awful in some instances. It’s almost always uncomfortable. Even Toru’s relationships with allies and friends are often a bit surreal and awkward. Murakami challenges us to question our own reality and the boundaries of time and space and whatever other boundaries may exist. Is it better to suffer and die in agony or to live with the agony of years of numbness following trauma? What is the nature of a gift, and is it truly a gift at all if it comes with unasked-for consequences? Honestly, I feel like there are a myriad of questions one could glean from this work, and they are all reader specific. There’s so much tied to interpretation, and there is a kind of brilliance in that. You could sit down with another reader and have two separate conversations about the same book, or possibly four or five. It would be a great book club read, but I guarantee you at least half of your members would be pissed at you for you having chosen it. What a lively discussion that would be.

I think I’ll leave this review with the attestation that it is worth it. It does, however, require full attention. It’s long as heck. It’s surely not a speed-read or a vacation read. It’s a long-haul destination that you really need to stick with. So if you get snowed in this winter for a lengthy period of time with no distractions, give it a try. Overall, I’d say 4 stars.

First published April 12, 1994. This edition published January 1, 1997 by Knopf. ISBN 9780965341981. Paperback. 607 pages.