Rating: 
Summary: Dreams, Double Identities, Dystopias.
Review: There aren't too many writers who can deal with metaphysical issues in fiction as deftly as Murakami can. A part of the reason is Murakami's style of narrative. His prose is more American than most modern American writers. Murakami is a self-professed admirer of Raymond Carver's laconic prose and he translated Carver's stories in Japan. He also has an affinity for American hard-boiled noir fiction, and the cool, ironic first-person narrative infused with laid back, unassumingly spare prose makes Murakami's stories strangely approachable.But more immediately impressionable upon a reader is the sheer agility of his imagination and his fearless courage. Not only does Murakami tackle stories of high improbability, he succeeds with all the virtuosity in the world. In
"The Wind-Up...", there's a main story of Toru's quest to find his vanished wife, and surrounding the mysterious disappearance are labyrinthine subplots that traverse different eras and parallel worlds. Hats off to Murakami for making the stories somehow believable! There are surreal characters that appear and disappear in Toru's life, such as the prescient Kano sisters who operate through dreams, Nutmeg and her son Cinnamon who deal with the affluent women and help them with strange 'spiritual' ailments, Boris the Manskinner, etc etc... The stories of these characters all have to do with a metaphysical search of some kind of 'truth' that is always apparent in Murakami's fiction. For instance, the well that Toru climbs down into serves as a portal that leads to a world where dreams and alternate personalities exist. Murakami does an eerie job of making the 'unreality' seem more real and pertinent than the actual world in the novel. It disconcerts the readers and makes us question the reality of the world that we take for granted. It is true that Murakami leaves a lot of plot elements and questions tied up and unanswered, and a lot of characters disappear without a trace. But Murakami's project is not in dispensing solutions, but in calibrating our sights to see, or strain to see what happens at the fringes of reality. It's a testimony to Murakami's mastery that the horrors, lusts, sadness, and yearning in "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" are more palpable and immediate than in any other fiction I've read recently. The characters, especially May Kahasara, the teenage girl, come to life and stay in your memory long after reading. And for all his off-hand, disarming humor and narrative style, Murakami's metaphors cut to the heart with a frightening accuracy and have the power to invoke whatever world he wants to describe with unflinching emotional honesty. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" deals with Toru's loss of everything he had come to believe to be the founded and accepted fact of his life. Through his tale, and his quest to regain his life, the readers will come to realize that there's something much bigger at stake than an individual quest. It's of a nation crippled by the memories of its past(Japan), and for the identity of the mankind as well. A terribly ambitious project for Murakami, and he pulls it off with an aplomb. You'll come away from the reading of this book impressed, and more importantly, deeply moved.
Rating:
Summary: It was all a dream.
Review: Being the first Murakami book I have read, this story caught me in mid breath. It is not so much a novel, as a comprehensive, passionate account of everything that I have missed from the world. Everything that has slipped by un - noticed
Murakami engages in the beauty of simplistic prose from the start to the finish, and yet forced me to discover something under every stone, every street corner that I dared to ignore.
I was enthralled and disturbed by this Neo - PI detective story, and at the same time fascinated by his seemingly effortless ability to instill in me the gut wrenching empathy for Toru Okada that followed me to the end of the book.
This book sets the stage lights on loneliness, deceit, and a profound, wondrous imagination that blows everything else I
have ever read out of the water.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating but unfulfilling
Review: Having read this book shortly after Murakami's "Dance, Dance, Dance," which I consider to be among the best books I've ever read, I found The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to be a little disappointing. Murakami did a wonderful job again of creating memorable characters (May Kasahara in particular, but Creta Kano and the "Akasakas" were favorites of mine as well). He told incredible tales: the story of Lieutenant Mamiya probably could've been a novel in itself. Creta Kano's "defilement" was chilling, and her metamorphoses were equally stunning. The Akasakas' tale was interesting too. But Murakami just couldn't tie it all together. Many times I found myself saying "what on earth was THAT all about" ... the story of Cinnamon as a boy, where he crawls into bed with himself, for example. Or Okada experiencing different "self"s and different "here"s. However, my main source of dissatisfaction was Toru Okada himself. In the midst of all of these dynamic and active characters, Okada just sits around waiting for phone calls, loiters around Shinjuku, and sits in his retrofitted well. Except for a few, noteworthy events which stand out- his battle with death his first trip into the well, his battle with the musician, and then his knife-bat fight in the mysterious hotel room- there is very little substance to Okada. Those three events were, for me, easily the highlights of the Okada Storyline. The image I had of May Kasahara standing at the top of the well asking Okada how it felt to die little by little sticks with me still. But the majority of the time, Okada just went around doing what other people told him to do. By the end, he wasn't even in charge of the clothes that he wore. He "searched" for his wife by sitting in a well designed for him in a house bought for him by the Akasakas. I felt absolutely no empathy towards Okada. In this surreal, harsh world that Murakami has created, Okada seems too pliable and soft for the protagonist's role. If people like Okada are supposed to defeat the Noboru Watayas of the world, we're all in deep trouble. In the end, Okada is left where he started- waiting for his wife to return. Reading the book, that's essentially how I felt: I had just gone through an amazing, convoluted experience just to end up right back where I was when I started "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle."
Rating:
Summary: An eloborate and intricate mystery
Review: If I have to pick out the best Murakami book, this would be it. At first, when I received my copy, I was rather intimidated by the number of pages. My reservation was with Murakami's ability to sustain my attention for that long. The book opens with the mysterious phone call and that sets the tone for the rest of the book. However, how many weird coincidences or unpredictable plot points can a book have without tiring out the reader? The answer is many. Murakami will show you that his talent for writing something so puzzling and enganging is for real. The book swims in and out of a variety of stories about the supernatural. Each small story forms a node and when all the nodes are connected, you have a three-dimensional structure that is almost impenetrable. Impenetrable because you will not have the answers by the end of the novel, but at the same time, you will be content not to look for them. I certainly didn't feel deceived for not being able to complete the puzzle. Instead you will just gape at the complexity of the novel and the efforts it takes to conjure up such a structure. At the heart of the novel lies the story about the Japanese spying mission into what would be Manchukuo after the Japanese occupation. I think Murakami handles this very well. In light of what the world knows about Japanese atrocities, being a Japanese himself, it is definitely not an easy task to avoid the pitfalls of glorification or condemnation. Instead, the soldiers are presented as humans, neither good or bad, just ordinary humans encapsulated by extraordinary events. The only downside I can see to this novel is that it reaches stagnation at certain points and I strongly feel that the narration could be sped up. Overall, it is nothing short of a masterpiece that might earn him a Nobel Prize in literature one of these days.
Rating:
Summary: Completely engrossing
Review: Like others, I found this book unexpectedly thrilling. It begins innocently enough, an innocuous tale of a guy who sits at home, fixating on his lost cat. But then, you're off! I nearly couldn't believe my eyes for large portions of the book. Murakami makes the most disparate, bizarre storylines and elements seem related and rational. The over-the-top weirdness of the book, so nonchalantly presented, is absolutely riveting. After finishing the book, I immediately gave it to my friends, to see if they would find the book as engrossing as I did. They were as amazed as I had been. One of the best books I've read in a long time.
Rating:
Summary: The Bird winding its spring
Review: This was the sixth Haruki Murakami that I have read in the last 2 and a half months, and I must say that it ranks up there with my favorite books not only by Murakami, but of all time. It would be impossible to summarize the book in a 1000 words, and being that over 100 reviews have already been written kind of makes it redundant for me to do so. The book travels over a torturous path the reader not knowing what is going to happen next. The reader sees this world through the eyes of Toru Okada, an unemployed man, by choice, whose wife ups and leaves him one day, and after that the book gets strange, bringing in psychic women, Malta and Creta Kano, old war veterans, Lt. Mamiya and Mr. Honda, a sadistic Soviet, Boris the manskinner, and many more interesting characters, including my favoriite the morbid teenage girl May Kasahara. pick up this book with an open mind it will take you places you have never dreamed of before. One last thing, you will not be able to look at a peach the same way ever again.
Rating: 
Summary: Disparate and beautiful
Review: This book is a startling and intellectual exploration of human experience. The incredible subject matter is paralleled, if not surpassed by the disconnected delivery. Mr. Murakami's technical skills are considerable. His greatest work, I believe, is yet to come. Time never flows in a straight line; it is cut apart and pasted back together so that every chapter tells a story virtually unrelated to the last, like a stained-glass window. One of the most interesting points, though, is Mr. Murakami's acknowledgement of the Japanese campaign in Manchuria, and his disapproval of the entire situation. This is a book that will make you want to look up that campaign, and half a dozen other topics. The full meaning of it is hidden until the last page, after which you will want to read it again.
Rating:
Summary: A friend of mine
Review: This book was really a nice surprise as I didn't have any experience about that author.The central character was for many days a good friend of mine,also if the book was definitively disturbing in many respects.I found very interesting the part about second world war,and the intersection between various temporal dimensions,various emotional degrees,in a postmodern world of solitude,love and despair.Well translated,entertaining,I look forward now to read A wild Sheep Chase from the same Murakami.
Rating:
Summary: Characters that will live in your mind for a long time.
Review: I finished reading the Wind-Ip Bird Chronicle about two months ago. I didn't write a review at that time mainly because I hadn't decided if this one was an excellent or just very good novel. Since then, occasionaly I have surprised myself remembering some of the characters (specially May Kasahara and Creta Kanoo)and thinking about the plot. From that very subjective point of view I would say this novel is an excellent one. Murakami has written an extrordinary complex story full of quite strange, although credible, charcters. Many stories (and maybe too many) are linked, either clearly or subtly. Symbols are used frecuently and paranormal experiences are assumed as facts. Combinig all these produces a reading that is difficult to stop despite the many pages of the book. I'll definitively read other novels by Murakami.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Wonderful
Review: A friend suggested this book, and I immediately bought it. It is one of my favorite books. I've read other Murakami since, but have found nothing that rivals this one. Often quite indescribable, the story is a quiet struggle dotted with magic and surrealism. Gently it carries you on a wonderful journey. Very fulfilling. Wonderful writing. Very compelling. Murakami is a treasure and his readers are faithful because he is an amazing storyteller who is generous and caring of both reader and character. He has an amazing eye for detail that does not dautle but lingers superbly and precisely they way you want it to. Simply put, Wind Up Bird is a great book.
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