Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Sputnik Sweetheart
Book Review: Special
Summary: 5 Stars
I received the book yesterday, went without sleep and carved my way through the book into the wee hours of daylight..... It has that same laconic style as "Norwegian Wood" and the grace and glow of "South of the Border". But more so, "Sputnik" is like meeting an old friend on a winter's day - greetings are dispensed, you launch straight into conversation. A special delivery, hard to tackle and follow at first, but remains as satisfying and comfortable read many hours after the final pages have closed.Book Review: Five stars of lonliness
Summary: 5 Stars
Fitting snuggly somewhere between the surreal-realism of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and the rain stained melacholia of South of the Border, Sputnik Sweetheart is totally compelling, beautifully inexact, bafflingly comprehensible study in love and heartache.From the first sentance you can hear the music that resides in the background of all of Murakami's fiction, the quiet lullaby of a world like ours but slightly skewed, like watching the world through a tear soaked whiskey tumbler. The story of K (One of many nods to Western Fiction through the book) and his doomed affair with wannabe writer Sumire, who may possibly be gay or may be not, it follows a conventional line, a simplistic plot until things begin to divert, digressing into the bizarre in the way that Murakami does so well. People disappear, people drink beer, people talk about man eating cats, people talk at night, see magical music bands on hills and get arrested for shoplifting.It is Murakami's genius that both the mundane, and the mythical feel as real as the chair you sit on.
To describe what happens is to take away the delicious pleasure of Sputnik, is to somehow denigrate the sheer delight of the prose and the characters. It's like falling in love with somebody you shouldn't have fallen in love with, only to find that you should have after all. Make sense? Possibly not, but neither does life or love, a fact Murakami is comfortable exploring and the reader is happy to discover.
As essential as sunscreen in summer and log fires in winter, Sputnik Sweeteheart will hold you till the last page and make you feel you've got loving arms around you for months. Wonderful
Book Review: A little more Western but still just as fine.
Summary: 5 Stars
Like most of Murakami's novels, Sputnik Sweetheart treats its subjects with a remarkable degree of tenderness and affection that readers can help but empathise with. As a young female novelist in love with an older woman, Sumire is wistfully portrayed, whilst the older Mui seems alluring but distant. Unlike most of his other novels, Sputnik Sweetheart mainly plays out in Europe and shows increasing evidence of a Western influence. As Murakami has been living in America for some time this is hardly surprising.
There's also a strong relation to David Lynch, with themes of multiple personas and hair-changing experiences which may be familiar from Lost Highway and Twin Peaks. Nonetheless, Sweetheart remains a distinctly original and moving novel.
Book Review: A real treasure
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first finished this book three weeks ago, my knee-jerk reaction was that Haruki Murakami must be the world's greatest living author.Well, I've had time to calm down a little, but that still doesn't change the fact that this is a amzing book by a writing genius.
The narrotor, K, is in love with Sumire, but she has secretly fallen in love with Miu, an intriguing, elegant older woman with a mysterious past. Sumire and Miu go on a business trip to Europe, where Sumire vanishes 'like smoke'. K travels to Greece to help Miu search, but she remains nowhere to be found.
Just why this book is so unbelievably good is beyond me. The plot is relatively straightforward. The language is fairly commonplace. But there is something about this novel that makes it breathe with life.
I think it has something to do with the particular window on the world that Murakami gives us. Through his protagonist, a straight-up good guy, as reader I look out on a world that I recognise, but with heightened tones of beauty and sadness and the fragility of happiness and the relationships between people, the past and future.
Murakami writes utterly convincing dialogue, and has also the rare ability to capture the most fleeting, inarticulable moments. His arts are so subtle but so devastatingly affective - Philip Gabriel must have done a fantastic job in translating this book.
Since then I've read The Wild Sheep Chase, and Norwegian Wood. The former is one of his early novels, and was a little too disjointed and digressive for my tastes; but if anything Norwegian Wood is even better than Sputnik Sweetheart.
The one criticism I would hesitatingly make is that Murakami tends to make his narrators too nice - they're all sensitive, perceptive, unassuming - I'd like to meet one with a great flaw, or point of conflict. And I do not share the author's fetish for women's ears - along with the moon, and cats, uncovered ears seem to be a Murakami trademark.
Overall, though, I'm happy to find that the newest of my favourite authors (whom I discovered because Murakami came before Nabokov on the bookshop shelf) has another four or five books for me to read.
I highly recommend this novel.
(F, 26)
Book Review: Breathtaking in its simplicity and beauty
Summary: 5 Stars
Other writers use pyrotechnics to get the effects that Murakami can achieve with calm and precision. This story follows the simpler style of Norweigan Wood, but with some of the surreal qualities of his earlier work too. The characters are all much more likeable than Norweigan Wood. The lead female Sumire is similar to Midori, in that she is prone to be demanding, thinking nothing of ringing the narrator at three am, but during the course of the book, she grows up, has to become more adult, learns disappointment.
There is little point describing the plot, which is summed up neatly on the flap of the book jacket. The plot isn't the point, anyway. Of course love not returned plays a part, as does a disappearance - themes familiar in Murakami's work. And also, a narrator who is ordinary and watches life is pressed into actually doing something for his friend.
Listen to this :- 'Ever since that day, Sumire's private name for Miu was Sputnik Sweetheart. She loved the sound of it. It made her think of Laika the dog. The man-made satellite streaking soundlessly across the blackness of outer space. The dark lustrous eyes of the dog gazing out of the tiny window. In the infinite loneliness of space, what could Laika possibly be looking at ?'
It is easy to see that Murakami spent time translating the works of Raymond Carver into Japanese. If you love Carver and wished he'd ever written novels to really get your teeth into, then Murakami is the answer to your prayers and more besides.