I finished 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami a while ago. The story is quickly engaging before lapsing into a boring slog as was watch the characters alternately living in a safe house or doing stake-outs for months on end. The author’s relationship with sex, seen through the lens of his choices in this novel, is disturbing. The sexual abuse of children is depicted too casually and rape is portrayed as a beneficial transformative act. The over-1000 page duration of this novel was imposing and ultimately unjustifiable. A skilled editor would have trimmed this to 600 pages or less and nothing would have been lost.

Update – 11/25/2025

As terrible as this book is as a whole, scenes from the book now live in my head. The trouble in cat town. Tengo reading to his father. The mysterious NHK fee collector. The night sky with two moons. These arise and bring me back to 1Q84 as inescapably as though I had slipped into it myself.