Customer Reviews

Sputnik Sweetheart

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Most of Murakami's work revolves around a common theme -- the sense of isolation people feel and how easy it is for this loneliness to break your spirit and leave you little more than an empty shell. Sputnik Sweetheart focusses on the sense of loss people feel when they discover that love is fleeting and realize that the closeness they share with someone today will soon fade and may never be recaptured.

The plot is fairly straight-forward. K is in love with his best friend Sumire, an aspiring writer who considers K to be a close friend, but nothing more. Sumire, in turn, is madly in love with Miu, a married wine importer who lost the capacity for love when she went through a traumatic experience as a student. Sumire sets aside her writing to work as Miu's personal assistant, and the two head off to Europe on a business trip. Sumire mysteriously disappears, and Miu summons K to help search for her.

Each of the novel's characters is scarred by loss, and like the Sputnik, each character feels isolated, connected to the world and the people around them by the most thin and tenuous of threads. Miu suffers a traumatic experience as a young student which leaves her half a person and turned her hair white. As K sees her for the last time, she is a hollow shell, and her white hair reminds K of bone that has had every bit of life bleached from it.

Sumire's sense of loneliness is even greater. Having never previously experienced or even understood love, she falls completely for Miu only to realize that Miu will never love her back. Like two satellites briefly passing each other in space, never to meet again, Sumire realizes that the has grown as close to Miu as she ever will and that she will eventually lose what little she has. She imagines another world where Miu's lost half still lives and abandons our world to seek Miu there.

K too feels isolated. As Sumire becomes increasingly enamored with Miu, K sees his best friend and closest confident slip away. When Sumire disappears for good, K does his best to move on with life, but the sense of loss stays with him, and as the novel concludes, K finds himself tempted to join Sumire somewhere in that other world.

If you're a Murakami fan, you need no encouragement to read this book. If you're new to Murakami and are wondering which work to start with, Sputnik Sweetheart will provide you with an excellent introduction to Murakami's writing and leave you wanting more. This is a beautifully written novel, and Murakami's simple, eloquent prose conveys they characters' loneliness like few other writers can. Bravo Murakami! We eagerly await your next book.

Sputnik Sweetheart-- as you can read elsewhere in the review, it's about Sumire, a 20something would-be writer, who feels friendship for our narrator, K, a slightly older teacher, though he adores her and desires her. Instead, Sumire falls in love with Miu, a mysterious older woman. Though they're never what you'd actually call a couple, Sumire ventures to join Miu at work, and they travel to Europe, where Sumire disappears "like smoke," as Murakami writes. Our narrator is summoned from Japan to help solve the mystery.

If there's a central theme, it might be the examination of loneliness, and how people try to meet, and nearly meet, but never quite do so. Though Murakami doesn't hide this below the surface, his style is such that the reader never feels as if attending a lecture, but rather it resembles listening to the all-too-seldom musings aloud of a very wise, close friend.

A never-consummated relationship, a close relationship between one who is madly in love and another who has no such desire to take "that step," is the source of great sadness and lonesomeness. I've not encountered a writer yet who writes of this as well as Haruki.

If you've read Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart should hold few surprises for you. It has the simple story structure of Norwegian Wood, and indeed many of the plot elements are very similar. But there is a shadowy, creeping supernatural flavor to the novel also, an otherworldliness that reminds me of _A Wild Sheep Chase_ or _Wind-up Bird Chronicle_.

IF YOU'RE NEW TO HARUKI MURAKAMI: I wouldn't start with Sputnik Sweetheart. He's written many wonderful novels, and I would recommend _Norwegian Wood_ or _A Wild Sheep Chase_ instead: _Norwegian Wood_ because it's simply a better all-around novel, and _A Wild Sheep Chase_ because it's a better introduction to Haruki's work.

Sputnik Sweetheart is a little delicacy, a short and bittersweet treat. I eagerly await Haruki's next work.

ken32

To some extent, all Murakami's books are tightly structured along a philosophical theme (i.e. life and death in Norwegian Wood, conscious and subconscious in Hard-boiled Wonderland, and despair and action in Dance Dance Dance), but in Sputnik Sweetheart he goes into a territory less universal - sign and symbol, idea and spirit, and presence and absence. I used to see Murakami as a philosophical novelist, but now I feel like I'm reading a novel written by a philosopher.

The storyline is only a cover for Murakami to unfold his reflections on these themes - Sumire was swept by her love for an otherworldly woman; meanwhile, the earthier "I"(is he yet again nameless?) quietly awaits her love. It's his discussion on the contradictory forces behind these characters that makes Sputnik Sweetheart an intriguing read: Sumire was named after a Mozart's song with the most beautiful music and the most callous lyrics; Miu is a foreigner who can no longer speak her mother tongue; "I" is a passionate, kind, intelligent teacher, who nonetheless sleeps with the mother of one of his pupils. All of them feel the force of destiny, and each answers in one's own way: Sumire disappears after her quest for heavenly beauty; Miu is no longer a living person, but a memorial to the person she was, just like the statue of her father. "I" remains in this world, resists, and hangs on to a thread of hope that nobody else would call hope. All three are aware that they need some fresh blood - the spirit - to revitalize their being - the white bones.

Murakami's approach is even more abstract and conceptual here than before, and it enables him to hit some sublime emotional notes, for example, the horrid scene when Miu watchs her own rape, and the final scene when "I" waits for Sumire to call back. The pain was so pure and transcendental - Murakami definitely spills some blood over the white bones here!

The prose is absolutely stunning: it flows like a piece of music, with tones and colors and subtle emotions, even a bit serene sloppiness. Hat off to the translators.

murakami's everyman K takes us into his lands of loss, longing and unrequited love. there's something very special about this compact novel- murakami's narrative voice is somewhat more vunerable than in his previous works, and his tightly repressed dialogue offsets a few scenes of fierce eroticism.

once again our narrator is passive; his inaction serves as a ground and sounding board for his best friend sumire, a would-be writer who he is not-so-secretly in love with. when she disappears on a business trip to an unnamed greek island things become strange, in a way wholly familiar to murakami's readers.

this feels a lot like some of the short stories, particularly "sleep" and "tv people" where you wonder what is "real". the narrator spends a lot of time asking questions, mulling over events, but nothing is ever resolved. the enjoyment is in the blurring.

don't let the simplicity of the story put you off; there's a poetic beauty to the chilly isolation these characters find themselves in. a few days after finishing this, something in it snuck up on me and i was overwhelmed by the most profound feeling of sadness.

I'll admit first off that Murakami is one of my all time favorites and I've read every one of his novels available in English. I still think his masterpiece is The Wind Up Bird Chronicle for its sheer mass and scope, but I was impressed by this novel for just the opposite. In this rather short and seemingly simple novel, some of the deepest and most profound thoughts and events take place. Like our narrator in Norwegian wood, we have a young man devoted to a girl, in this case the lovable Sumire. Unfortunately, she feels no desire for him and instead falls in love with a married women. This is where things turn into Vintage Murakami with surrealistic events taking place (old Murakami fans will think of the elevator to another time zone type of thing). Here, Sumire disappears and our narrator sets out in search of her. What he ultimately discovers is what the reader will uncover.

The prose is very sparse compared to his other novels, but I think Murakami does well in this kind of minimalist style which has a seething undercurrent lurking just beneath the surface. The emotions are heartfelt and deep -- our narrator suffers for his love and devotion. Not only another excellent Murakami novel, but an accessible one that should earn him some new fans. Hopefully this novel will direct new readers to his earlier masterworks.

Murakami doesn't break any new ground here ... for me, the overall tone of the book was similar to South of the Border, West of the Sun ... the book starts off with a straight-forward, yet complicated desire (think Norwegian Wood), moves into mysterious disappearances and dual-selfs (think Wind-Up Bird), and ends with a more edgy stretch involving a security cop and a kid in a scene that reminded me a lot of Dance, Dance, Dance.

The story itself is interesting but I didn't find it particularly compelling, certainly not like some of his earlier, longer works. For me at least, the most notable part of this book was the skill with which Murakami dipped into his bucket of Loneliness and painted the tales of several unique individuals who could not be satisfied. K, a loner who is distant from his family, loses the one person he truly loves (who cannot love him back the same way he loves her anyway). Sumire, whose tornado-like love cannot be returned by Miu because of Miu's strange experience in Switzerland. Miu, who suffered a truly bizarre experience on a Ferris Wheel and is only a shell of her previous self (Murakami's one of the few writers who can make a ferris wheel, of all things, terrifying). K's married "girlfriend" and her son are also lonely.

Murakami somehow manages to keep this tale sad without being depressing. A good work, it'll be appreciated by fans of Murakami. However, if you haven't read anything by him and are looking for someplace to start, I'd recommend one of his earlier works first. Murakami seems to have turned a little more mellow with his last few books. Nevertheless, a good read.

I am most decidely a fan of Haruki Murakami even though he has produced some not-so-interesting material over the years. 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle', a surreal materpiece, remains his best. However I found his most famous 'Norwegian Wood' to be too sentimental for its own good. Thankfully with 'Sputnik Sweetheart' the author has found the right blend of the surreal and the romantic. I loved it.

'Sputnik Sweetheart' is about an odd love triangle where the love is either platonic or something a bit stronger yet unfulfilled; there is no sex in this book. Murakami, with no doubt significant credit to the translator, excels in expressing each of the unique character's loneliness without being too depressing. Cerebral without taking itself too seriously. And as for the surreal element ... it works very nicely (no spoilers here!).

Bottom line: a elegant piece of modern literature. Read it.

I remember when the Soviets sent the dog, Laika, up in the sputnik to circle the planet. Laika was a sacrifice, and for the little girl, me, that was not a good thing. I still feel that way. I am still haunted by how terribly cruel we are to take our creatures and use them like that. We do it to ourselves every time we turn our backs on a friend's needs or whenever we keep love silent rather than risk rejection. We actually lessen ourselves, metaphorically and often literally never quite realize that we have lost something that cannot be replaced. Murakami knows. He has been there, done or witnessed that, and goodness can he write about it!

The sacrifice of dogs is part of a conversation the narrator has with his friend and secret love, Sumire who suffers from serious writer's block. The narrator uses the metaphor of the walled cities in China, how the gates were made of the bones of dead soldiers, and how dogs were sacrificed so that the bones could be baptized with the power to revive to protect the walled city. "A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side."

I felt like I was alone in a sputnik circling my own shadows and dreams and memories and cowardly acts as I immersed myself in this novel of a young man's realization of what matters most in our lives and of what leaves us feeling less. Always metaphorical, Murakami can be appealingly literal and writes the most erotic imaginary sexual encounters and describes male frustration as well as anyone writing. The various ways of love in the story all resonate and one can only hope that as the story continues beyond the book that all find joy in what they have kept of themselves.

I first found Murakami's books, not realizing that he was such a popular writer, and I have read them out of order or randomly so far. And so far, I've not been disappointed. I equate this to beginning a passionate affair and finding each new encounter more because of what has come before. In this book, Murakami is in genius mode. He can make writing less more. Sputnik Sweetheart is a great place to become acquainted with the monkey mind that is Murakami.

I have read every one of his works and without a doubt he's one of my favorite authors. But, unless you've read everything else by him, read one of his other, better books (in order of greatest to least):

Norweigian Wood, Dance Dance Dance, Hardboiled Wonderland, Wind up Bird Chronicle, Elephant Vanishes, Wild Sheep Chase, South of the Border West of the Sun.*

Integrating personal love story and "postmodern" fantasy that characterize Murakami's two distinct writing styles, In Sputnik, neither works. The magic just isn't surprising or fantastical here, and having read some of his other works they may seem repetitive.

In terms of the personal and love story, the characters are flat and the relationships are uninteresting. Even the narrator is flat. His mundanity is just sleepy, whereas Murakami normally makes the mundane narrator spectacular.

And the writing is Murakami at his worst. One paragraph per section sometimes, it's really silly. That the book is essentially 200 pages double-spaced is not reassuring. Maybe it's the new translator

If you've read all of his other stuff and need a "Murakami Fix" buy the book. Otherwise, read one of his better books.

--
* The "greatness" order of his best three novels (1 Norwegian Wood, 2 Dance Dance Dance, 3 Hardboiled Wonderland) is debatable. Hardboiled Wonderland has the most entertaining plot, but it's a pulp/pop cyberpunk novel. Dance Dance Dance is Murakami at his most brilliant, his most entertaining all around work if you appreciate intellectual stimulation and pyrotechnics in addition to an an engaging plot. Finally, Norwegian Wood is so incredibly personal that it is his most emotionally engaging work; it will make you cry.
It goes the same for all three of these, though: you wont be able to put them down.

"Sputnik Sweetheart" is a novel that enters the lives of a teacher, a girl called Sumire and a woman called Miu. The teacher loves Sumire as a woman, Sumire loves Miu and Miu is just Miu. The incomplete love triangle forms the main relational backdrop to the story.

The novel delves into the longings, loneliness and loves of the characters, each one longing for something and not always achieving it. In Murakmi's usual surreal way, he brings the teacher, (who happens to be the narrator of the story), through the barriers to an end that is quite fitting.

I rather enjoyed this book for its relative ease of comprehending what Murakami was getting at. Other books I found perplexing and they left me with a feeling that I had missed a central piece of the story. "Sputnik Sweetheart" is one I would suggest to new readers of Murakami, I think. It was a good book to illustrate how Murakami should be approached at a basic level. I found this aspect of it helpful to understand some of his other works.

There is some cross referencing to other Murakami works, such as a reference to the short story "Man-Eating Cats", which appears in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. There are other references that appear in "Sputnik Sweetheart" as well.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read and one that left me feeling rather satisfied. It was not perplexing to the degree of Murakami's other works, though in some ways, it was less profound, as well. At the end of the day, it was a good way to kill a few hours with a very good book.