Rating: 
Summary: Insipid cartoon world
Review: I think Murakami is a frustrated filmmaker. An earlier reviewer's comparison with David Lynch is apt (both are empty) but another (English) reviewer compares it with Point Blank (which he and I love) for its atmosphere; not enough to sustain this leviathan, though.
Rating: 
Summary: A complex, satisfying read
Review: The Windup Bird Chronicle is a complicated, entertaining novel that is not for the casual reader. First of all, it is over 600 pages long but, more importantly, the devices employed by the author create a world where distinctions between physical reality and a spiritual reality, or the world of the unseen, are blurred. This intentional blurring is created by taking someone from the regular, physical world [protagonist Toru Okada] and involving him in a slowly-revealing and bizarre set of circumstances that gradually draw him into that other world. The characters and events that take Okada on this journey are not simply bizarre without meaning, but begin to take on added significance, particularly in the novel's final 150 pages.
On the surface, Windup Bird is a bizarre mystery, and really more like a mystery within a mystery within a mystery as each character encountered by Okada appears at first to have something to hide. They are all extremely interesting and there is almost an Alice-in-Wonderland quality to the bizarreness that Toru encounters [this makes me wonder what Hard-boiled Wonderland must be like].I don't want to give away too much, but I am a rather finicky reader and enjoyed the book thoroughly, even if it did get somewhat laborsome from pages 150-450. In the end, the novel is an investigation of how well one individual can ever claim to know another and the potency of belief, reality, and investigation. Of course, all of these claims are metaphorical, in my view, so you may find something completely different. I believe this is one of those love/hate books -- you either love it, or think it's all nonsense. I would love to give it 4.5 because it is complex and sometimes really makes the reader work, but 4 seems a little shallow for something I really loved. I do plan on reading more Murakami. We read this in a graduate literature class and the reception was mixed. I should also mention that the book has a lot of very humorous occurrences/interactions and I found a lot of it to be quite funny, although the overall effect is serious. I recommend it for the serious reader. It is challenging, but I believe worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Roll out for the Mystery Tour
Review: I become more and more convinced of Murakami's strange worldview with every book. More than anything, I find him to be a master of creating a dreamlike atmosphere, where the strangest things become familiar, and sometimes crawling to the bottom of a well is the only thing that makes sense. Again, I am reminded of Neil Gaimen's comic "The Sandman," where average people encounter the surreal and magical with acceptance and without shock, when the mood is just right, the moon is in the sky and the cats know all of the secrets of the world. "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" is an excellent novel. It is not captivating or demanding or any aggressive adjective. It is complicatedly simple in theme and wording, eluding to an ocean of depth under the calm surface. Pain and joy are told in the same objective manner, from the point of view of a silent observer. Japan's aggression in WWII, marital fidelity, ..., love, nature...all of these hard subjects are exhumed, examined, and reflected upon in silent self-examination. This is not a book of resolutions, of tied-up plots and answers. Like most things mysterious, it is all the better for the final veil never being lifted.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointment
Review: Murakami has got to be one of my fave authors, but this book was a great disappointment for me. There were some interesting stories included in the work, but put together they lacked cohesion. I kept waiting for things to be tied up in the end, but that never seemed to happen. There are many other works by Murakami from which to chose. I suggest you skip this one and go for another.
Rating:
Summary: a troubling masterpiece
Review: This is one of the best books of the 1990's. It is difficult to even begin to describe it. It is a portrait of post-WWII Japan, a confessional of a late 20th century Everyman, and an almost Hitchcockian (or Lynchian on his better days) wild and surreal ride through the unexplainable. After reading some of his other works, the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle does somehow start to make sense, but there are still plenty of powerful and strange moments. I don't have much to add to the several excellent reviews here, but the narratives of the WWII veteran were, for me, the most disturbing and most profound parts of the book; Murakami essentially describes pure evil in unflinching detail. The surreal becomes very real in his descriptions of unbelievable violence and heartlessness. I also found the May Kasahara letters to be touching and funny, and somehow oddly central to whatever "meaning" the book has. One reviewer mentioned that the book was originally published in three separate volumes, and that somehow it was abridged. I think this is unlikely; the paperback version clearly has three separate sections, and says nothing about it being an abridged version. I don't think Murakami ever attempts to resolve the mysterious and strange plot (many things in life have no answers, after all), and focused more on creating a mood and an overall theme of isolation and the surreal in modern life. This will undoubtedly be a book I visit again and again. It's hard to say exactly what it's about, but somehow it becomes a peek into an odd and fascinating world, a world that lives inside all of us.
Rating:
Summary: A Bizarre Book
Review: This book introduced me to Murakami's genius as a writer.
Simply stunning!
Must read for all Murakami fans.
If you like his short stories from The Elephant Vanishes, you'll be entralled by this.
Rating:
Summary: One of Five Essential Novels of the past ten years.
Review: I was lent this book after a failed attempt at reading "Hard Boiled Wonderland". What a revalation. This book made me a Haruki Murakami fan. I've since read all his work and love all of it (or at least most if it) this book still stands above for me.
The recurring Murakami-esqe motifs are all here, the well, the ennui-stricken main character in search of a name for his malaise, the May Kashahara-type; the metaphysical mayhem. But this book ties together both of Murakami's styles (the confessional and the surrealistic romp) seamlessly so that the surreal becomes inseperable from the real, perhaps even more real.
But none of this is what earns it the title of: One of Five Essential Novels of the past ten years. What earns it that illustrious title is the fact that WUBC illuminates a condition of man prevelant here in the last half of the twentieth centry in a way that Kafka did the first half of the century.
Surely these conditions have always existed, at least in potential, but their accutness in there respective eras is remarkable.
what WUBC speaks to is this: We have two types relationships- that with things we can touch and that with things we can't. We have always had this, but here in our supermodern era the second type of relationship has taken a new promenince in our lives. It is about these relationships: With the past, with things out of reach, with people physically distant, with the Television screen that Murakami so eloquently depicts. These relationships have a real and lasting and profound effect on us.
WUBC helps us reconcile with these strange relationships in a way that is profoundly human.
So read it yourself. Nothing I write can replicate the experience. Go ahead. Do it.
Rating:
Summary: Full of sound of fury, signifying nothing
Review: The only thing that kept me going past the halfway point of this 600+ page book was the hope that, by the end, the author would somehow tie together the long and eclectic list of characters and story lines. Alas, there was no attempt at all to do so, the result being a collection of seemingly random people, places, and events that bear little if any relation to one another and serve no purpose in the overall story. I was really looking forward to reading this book after reading the good reviews, but after finally finishing it I wish I had pulled a different book off my shelf.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful and Thoughtful Read
Review: What better gift can someone give you but a wonderful and thought provoking book and that is what this is -- unlike so many books I have read, every page, every thought in this very special book was arresting, involving and took me on a very special journey. What a thrill to be exposed to a writer you have never read before and know that there are other books of that author awaiting you.
Rating:
Summary: Best in 10 years...
Review: When I look back at the 300+ books I've read in the past ten years, "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle" comes to mind again and again as one of the most pleasurable, surprising, and hard-to-forget experiences. One of its chief pleasures is also the hardest thing to define about it, its tone. Is this a Zen mystery, an erotic thriller, a parody? If nothing else, this book proves that a book need not follow a predictable arc to be a classic. The writing is crisp and controlled; the characters fascinating. There is a sense of mysterious gloom at the edges of nearly every encounter its protagonist has, making it irresistibly suspenceful at every turn. I couldn't put it down, and I didn't want it to end. What more can you ask for?
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