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

Matthew Strecher (Author)

Book Description

Series: Continuum Contemporaries | Publication Date: January 2002

This is an excellent guide to Haruki Murakami’s extraordinary novel. It features a biography of the author (including an interview), a full-length analysis of the novel, and a great deal more. If you’re studying this novel, reading it for your book club, or if you simply want to know more about it, you’ll find this guide informative and helpful. This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years – from ‘The Remains of the Day’ to ‘White Teeth’. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Study Aids Get Chic
Concerned about keeping up at the book club? Stuck for something to say when dinner party talk turns to Zadie Smith? Or no time to read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin before the movie comes out? Never fear, cool new study aids are here in the form of Continuum Contemporaries....The Novel Approach, a series of handy readers’ guides to contemporary fiction. Launching in September, with further waves in January and May 2002, they’re much slicker than the frumpy cheat-aids of yore, including everything from website links to review buzz, and deliberately featuring new novels such as Bridget Jones’s Diary, The Shipping News, Trainspotting, and even the Harry Potter books." —Time Out (London)

"A brilliant idea—short, perceptive books which tell you what you need to know about some of the most vibrant and challenging writing around today—a bit like having a reading group in your pocket." —Ian Rankin

"The series comes as near to squaring various circles - popular / academic, 'good read' / 'classic Lit', novel / film of the book as any I know. And at best it goes a fair way towards reshuffling those categories and redrawing the boundaries. With the first volume, I was relieved. After two or three, I was hooked. The books are invaluable for gathering out-of-the-way or ephemeral comment from TV and radio interviews and the web as well as from literary reviews. Refreshingly upfront and up-to-date… Given the space, there are remarkably balanced film/novel comparisons of the most well-known examples… An important feature is the fully referenced bibliographies, including reviews and copious website addresses - the latter ranging from fanzines and authors' and publishers' own sites to academic discussion lists and online journals. In method as in subject matter, these guides move freely on the interface between print culture and multimedia. Highly finished and pleasantly handleable as books in their own right, they gesture accommodatingly to both words and worlds beyond. Taking the series as a whole, it also confirms two things: that narrative nowadays is generically highly hybrid and increasingly cross-media; and that an understanding of the processes of writing and reading 'contemporary classic' (or at least 'currently famous') fiction cannot be separated - yet must be distinguished - from the processes of making and marketing books and films."—The Times Higher Education Supplement, May 31, 2002

From the Publisher

This is an excellent guide to Haruki Murakami’s extraordinary novel. It features a biography of the author (including an interview), a full-length analysis of the novel, and a great deal more. If you’re studying this novel, reading it for your book club, or if you simply want to know more about it, you’ll find this guide informative and helpful.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826452396
• ISBN-13: 978-0826452399
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #269,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars perfect for fans, February 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries) (Paperback)

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.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the Bird, January 31, 2003

By 

Daitokuji31 (Black Glass) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries) (Paperback)

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_

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful little book, November 30, 2009

By 

P. Stern - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries) (Paperback)

I read this book as a kind of reward after finishing "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" in Japanese. I wanted to check my understanding on a few points and get the views of a professional reader of Murakami. (I found Murakami's book enthralling and highly rewarding.) For these limited purposes, the book worked pretty well. Strecher provides a useful summary of "Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," and some of his own ideas are thought provoking. He also explores themes that run across many of Murakami's works, which I found helpful because I have not yet read much of Murakami's fiction.

But there is something small-time about Strecher's book: it treads a fine line between fanzine and critical study. There are a number of typos and other minor errors (e.g., the misspelling of "supersede" on page 20), and there is a breathless quality to much of it that doesn't really fit with serious analysis. It is fun, but probably mostly for the converted.

Two further comments on "Wind-Up Bird Chronicles." First, I don't buy Strecher's argument that Wataya Noboru represents Okada Toru's "other" self. (Page 51.) Likely one could make this kind of argument about most any pair of characters in Murakami, but this one doesn't seem supported by the evidence. I would say the opposite is closer to the truth. Second, I found it interesting that Murakami is quoted as saying, "If I were the protagonist, I would *have* to get my wife back. I would want to fight." (Page 73.) When it comes to Kumiko, I really wonder why. I found her a basically unappealing character from an early point in the book, and she obviously becomes even less attractive as things progress. So why does Toru fight so hard to get her back? Is it because the quest to free her from her brother and bring her home is the only action that gives his life meaning? Or is it because he has nothing else to do with his time? On this point, the depiction of Toru's inner life did not ring true to me. But maybe that is asking too much of such a wonderfully rich and evocative book ....