1Q84 Book Three - Haruki Murakami

OK, not the best idea to read book three of a magnum opus with no knowledge of the first two.  But there we are.  This is what I did - and it didn't matter.  Murakami's dystopian world is so similar to the 'real' world as it was in Japan in 1984 that it makes no difference. His big concept is self-explanatory and does not subsume the three main characters, Aomame, Tengo and Ushikawa,  Aomame has crossed into this world and killed the Leader of the Sakigake sect.  She is being hidden by the Dowager but it obsessed with finding Tengo, briefly a schoolmate twenty years ago.  Tengo is a part-time teacher who has ghost-written the sensational bestseller Air Chrysalis for the teenaged prodigy Fuka-Eri, real name Eriko Fukada.  Air Chrysalis is ostensibly science fiction but actually it is an expose of the Sakigake cult.  In this world - which no one has noticed is different, even though the main difference is two moons - the air chrysalis and the Little People who make them are real.  Ushikawa is the profoundly ugly investigator who has been hired by Sakigake to track down Aomame.  He goes to great lengths because he feels responsible, as he was the one who vetted her when she started work for the cult.  Unable to breach the Dowager's elaborate security he decides to track down Tengo instead.

It is an intriguing book, which keeps rumbling on in the mind long after you've put it down.  The Little People, when they appear, are jaw-dropping.  Who is the unseen fee-collector for the national TV service who keeps banging on people's doors - even when they haven't got TVs?  What is his relationship to Tengo's comatose father?  What difference does the smaller, greenish moon make and why has nobody noticed?

Murakami's cool, understated prose makes the bizarre instantly acceptable - and, when the truly bizarre things happen, gives them double the impact.  By focusing on the three main viewpoint characters, and giving them each a chapter in turn, he builds an appreciation of their personalities by sheer accumulation.  Their linking characteristic is a patient stoicism - it doesn't matter how long Ushikawa has to stake out Tengo's apartment; Aomame cannot and will not leave Tokyo for a safer location until she has found Tengo, even though she has no reason to believe he has thought about her since they were ten years old; and Tengo is content to sit by the bedside of the father for whom he has no feelings whatsoever, using his spare time to plod away at his novel.

Superb.  I will be happy to read the other two books (published in a single volume in the UK) but what really appeals to me is Murakami's earlier international successes, Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore.