1Q84 was suggested to me by @dailyrunner in one of my posts last month called What Are Some of Your Favourite Books?. I think I had a vague notion of its existence prior to her recommendation, but no idea as to the story or its premise. I took a quick look at the opening few pages, as my curiosity had been piqued by her description. It quickly went to the top of my reading list.

It's a lengthy book, with the English version actually being three books in one. Only counts as one on my Good Reads Challenge though. It is not an easy book to pin a definite label on, and those are often the ones that I like the most. It flirts with several genres, whilst making no definitive claim to any of them. At its heart I would call it a work of speculative fiction, and I choose the word speculative with purpose, as it doesn't really enter the realm of Science Fiction. It swings way more towards being a Literary work, but one that is unafraid to step outside of it's often stuffy boundaries.

It deals with the concept of parallel worlds, or perhaps more precisely parallel lives, and with the notion of non-linear time. Perhaps it can be classified as dealing with an alternate reality, in a dreamy and surreal sense I suppose.

1Q84 tells the alternating stories of Tengo and Aomame. It is set in Japan, in the year 1984. Aomame is on the way to a job when she finds herself stuck in traffic. Being high up on one of Tokyo's expressways, she is wary of the necessity to be on time for this particular job. The driver suggests she exits there, on the expressway, and take the nearby stairs down to street level, and make her way to the job by train.

As she is on foot, making her way towards the nearest station, she notices something odd that catches her eye. The fact that a police officer passing by is heavily armed. To her knowledge they never were. When did this change occur?

As she starts to notice more anomalies there is one in particular that strikes her. There are now two moons. Since when has there been two moons? How and why has this occurred? And why does no one else notice?

Whilst Aomame is processing these events, someone else in Tokyo is about to embark on a life altering course. Tengo is a mathematics teacher, as well as an unpublished novelist. As juror for a writing contest, he sees a particular book he likes, but is aware of its shortcomings. His editor concocts a plan that involves Tengo rewriting the story – with the agreement of the author – and placing it back into the contest to win the eye of the other judges. The book's author is a teenage girl, one the editor knows will get the presses' attention, and so believes the idea to be a stroke of marketing genius. Tengo is reluctant, given the fraudulent nature of the activity, but goes along with it anyway.

These two seemingly unrelated events begin a mind blowing series of occurrences that lead to both Tengo and Aomame sensing the other's existence, and key role in each other's lives, having known each other once as children when they shared a brief but mystical experience. An experience that seems to have put in play these so called random events. Events that involve a novel, written by a teenage girl, called Air Chrysalis, about The Little People who speak to her through a dead goat. A supposedly fictional fantasy story from the mind of a young girl, the book goes on to become a best seller, and plays a key role in the journey both Tengo and Aomame find themselves on.

Events have taken them out of the normal world experienced in 1984, and into a world that Aomame calls 1Q84, and that Tengo refers to as Cat Town – a place that if you stay too long in then you may never get out. They both wake up to the realisation that their world has changed. That they find themselves in their own Cat Town, and they need to get back to the real world, to the year 1984. But is that even possible now?

The two timelines alternate around each other, as new characters appear, and unknown associations are made. The pain of both protagonist's pasts, their emerging memories of the connection they share, and the new lives they have created for themselves flow through these individual stories as their separate paths bring them closer to each other, closer to a next momentous step in what had been set in motion between them all those years ago as children.

Dealing with unconscious hopes and dreams, and the notion that we can and do invent ourselves anew as we move through life, the story also considers the concept of free will and choice. Are we the product of our past? And if so does that make the past a life sentence that we simply cannot escape?

And what of dreams? Of the power of imagination? Do unnoticed events unfold below our awareness that lead us forward towards our so called destiny?

The author, Haruki Murakami has captured so many of these thoughts into this mesmerising story, spinning a tale of intrigue and mystery, with even a metaphysical streak thoughout it. Beautifully written, it does go into a lot of detail on the events that unfold, but in a way that is balanced and purposeful. The story benefits for it. This is, without a doubt, one of the most fantastically beautiful stories I have read in a log time.

I give 1Q84 5 out of 5 stars.

Images source, and unsplash.com.

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