Sputnik Sweetheart: Haruki Murakami

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In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains – flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits…In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a women. This was where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.” Being all alone is like the feeling you get when you stand at the mouth of a large river on a rainy evening and watch the water flow into the sea… I can’t really say why it’s such a lonely feeling to watch all the river water mix together with the seawater. But it really is.” This first half of the book gave me equal satisfaction as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The upshot of all this was that when I was young I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with, I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person's attitude so that they wouldn't get any closer. I didn't easily swallow what other people told me. My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life.

As I read Sumira’s writing Christmas beetles ( Anoplognathus pallidicollis) were tapping on the window. They had found a light source and were endlessley and confusedly running into the glass barrier between themselves and the light. Sumira had been unable to write for so long. And now a breakthrough. But not for the poor beetles.

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Sumire was living in a one-room apartment in Kichijoji where she made do with the minimum amount of furniture and the maximum number of books. Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences.

There are 2 main people in Sumire’s life. Firstly, there’s an equivalently aged male friend (K) she talks to (at) incessantly about stuff, at any hour of the day. He often tries to give her sage advice, see he’s a teacher – a responsible bloke and he feels she needs guidance sometimes. I loved their relationship. Secondly, there’s Sumire’s relationship with a sophisticated businesswoman called Miu who is 17 years older than Sumire. This relationship is fascinating and keeps the reader guessing where it will end up. Transformation – both voluntary and involuntary – is one of the central themes of this novel. The loneliness is not only borne of not being around others, but of being apart from one’s self. Each ruminates on loneliness in their own way: “Who can really distinguish between the sea and what’s reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?” meditates K. at one point. This detached passion runs throughout his narration: you get the feeling that in recounting Sumire’s love for Miu he is really giving voice to the love he has fantasised Sumire showing him. Yet typically for Murakami characters they prefer this sort of sexually enigmatic fantasy of love to actual love. Each of the protagonists lives out their own longing in their own unreciprocated – and therefore unsullied – way. Sputnik literally translates as ‘travelling companion,’ and that is what they are each looking for: a human connection, someone to talk to, fall asleep next to, and yearn for. Someone to free them from loneliness. And in a way that is what they each find, though not in the way any of them had hoped.Sputnik Sweetheart is a novel of what could have been, what might have been, where worlds overlap, & love can never quite be divorced from lust. In the world of K, Sumire, and Miu, sex is often mistaken for love. Sputnik Sweetheart is strangely haunting but oh so hard to describe; is it a tale of unreciprocated love, unrealized ambition, and desire, of always wanting more? Even with it being filled with unreciprocated love rather than love, it is also one of the most romantic books ever written. Yes, at it’s heart, Sputnik Sweetheart is a romance novel. Wait, Sputnik Sweetheart is a detective novel. Perhaps it's neither; perhaps I'm entirely wrong. Hmmm ... do any of us really know what a Murakami novel is about? Srdjan advised me not to overthink Murakami. Perhaps he's right ... or maybe he's not. If ever love has transformed a person it does Sumire. She becomes Miu’s assistant, exchanging a life of compulsive all night writing and chain smoking for a regular nine-to-five job. She buys nice clothes and changes her hairstyle, begins to appreciate wine and learn Italian, and soon moves into a bigger apartment. She spends hours on the phone with K., discussing the big questions in life: love, sexual desire, existentialism, the process of writing, whether she should confess her feelings to Miu.

It’s certainly a bold undertaking to adapt Haruki Murakami’s mercurial 1999 novel about unrequited love, the human condition and much else besides. The book is set in multiple global locations and features dream sequences, magical realism and, in typical Murakami fashion, no shortage of narrative meanderings. It's the writing. Yes, his writing. It seems really simple but I have not come across many authors who would express as exactly as what we feel. It's like reading the mirror of your thoughts, feelings and emotions (the narrator's chapters are the highlights of this book).And it's practically impossible to write a proper review for one of his books. Because it's all related to how real the writing gets while you're reading his books. Why does Haruki Murakami hit the spot so well for me, and for thousands of other readers worldwide? There's a common element in all his works; it's a bridge of fantasy and reality that has just the right delicate balance. There's something about that balance that's so mesmerizing. You can connect with it on a level that you can’t in pure fantasy, and there’s enough of a disconnect from solid reality to leave you in wonder. Of all the other writers that have been categorized as magical realism that I’ve read, Murakami is the one who masters this style the finest. For me this is the best unrequited tragic love story I've read so far. As this is said to be the most openly emotional novel of Mr. Murakami, the prose is really haunting and the scenes are dreamy and surreal. Again, because Mr. Murakami uses a lot of metaphors and symbolisms, there can be layers of interpretations. I am not really fond of love stories (this just happens to be part of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die), but I choose to see this novel as a story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited loves. So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow—not thinking, in other words?... The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.” Murakami Haruki (Japanese: 村上 春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as 'easily accessible, yet profoundly complex'. He can be located on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/harukimuraka...