Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)

Rating:
Summary: Understanding the Bird
Review: I've read all of Murakami's fiction that has been released in english, so i am interested in anything that analyzes his fiction. This little 96 page book does quite a good job. It starts off with a short itroduction about Murakami himself. It is pretty short, and many fans would probably like to know more about Murakami, but it does help the reader to understand better from where Murakami is coming from and how his own personality is put into his characters. The second part of the book takes up many themes such as sexuality and violence. It gives the reader a higher understanding of Murakami's characters, and gives the reader an insight of what aspects that each character represents. The third part of the book is about the reception of the book in japan and in the rest of the world. This is a nice little book for a Murakami fan to read after he or she has finished reading _the wind-up bird chronicle_

Rating:
Summary: perfect for fans
Review: OK, I should admit straight up that I'm biased - The Wind-up Bird is my favourite novel. So I'm hardly able to give this guidebook a neutral, detached review. In fact, I'm amazed that someone has published this - are there enough of us fanatics to make this kind of thing profitable?? I hope so, as I see that Mr Strecher has another book coming out shortly! Anyhow, this is a great place to start. It was good to read about Murakami's views on other Japanese writers, his student days, and his falling into a ditch at the age of three. If you've read the novel, that explains a lot! I thought that Strecher's analysis of the novel was wonderfully accurate, although as he admits himself, he has only scratched the surface of it. Especially fascinating was the section about the reviews the novel received - astonishing how many of these missed the point. In short, if you love this novel then I think you'll like this book. And if you haven't read this novel, please go and read it. Now.

Rating:
Summary: a great companion piece...
Review: This series of books are not intended to be definitive guides (at under 100 pages how could they be) but are put together nicely as further reading for fans of the works they cover.

WUBC is one of my favourite books and this guide contains a great deal of interesting information and analysis on the novel. There are some fascinating quotes from Murakami himself and a number of interesting angles on the reading of the text.

It took just one train journey to read and I enjoyed it a great deal. Highly recommended for fans of Murakami.