1Q84

I finished 1Q84, Murakami's latest book, on Saturday, but I needed to mull over it before posting.  At 926 pages, I took nearly a month to read it, and unlike many books I read, I wanted to take time over the prose.  I get so impatient with much writing these days, but for some reason, Murakami's words, though translated from the Japanese, require me to enjoy each sentence.

Like Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, I was drawn into the characters and their world from the first page.  Along the way the plot gets strange (yes, it's Murakami), and occasionally I felt as though there was too much effort in explaining this strange world.  Some of the criticisms of the story are valid (loose ends left floating), but I could easily overlook those because the whole of the novel fully satisfied me.

Many reviewers (Alan Cheuse, Ulin, Dirda) gave positive reviews.  Janet Maslin from the NY Times (among a few others) did not.  My reading friends fall into two definite camps on Murakami, but he is one of a few authors that the four members of my family can agree we all like.  Now I have to wait patiently for his next one - or, better yet, read some of his earlier works that I have not yet read.