The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami

Chapter 4,
High Towers and Deep Wells (Or, Far from Nomonhan)

Mr. Honda is so endearing. Murakami has a real knack for creating bizarrely charming characters. In Murakami's stories, I sometimes think the more crazy the character, the more important and true everything they say is.

I have about 20 pages left to read, I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer last night to finish.

The change in the story at around this point was shocking to me. The brutality and violence slapped me in the face. The description of the "skinning" almost had me in tears.

I read an article in the NY Times that reported that there are several missing chapters in the English translation. Also, there were a few chapters that are not in the order the author intended. I wish I could read Japanese!

I think we may need a few new threads for the later chapters of the book to post to. I have put some of the pieces together, and there does seem to be one main theme. Murakami has cleverly meshed Japanese history into the main story. I would love to hear the thoughts of others concerning this, and how much does WWII play a part in the novel, and how does it affect the characters.

Sorry, I was out at my SCUBA certification dive this weekend and came back exhausted! But I'll get some more chapters up today.

Wow, very exciting! Congratulations!

Heh! Heh! Must be appropos for you? Scuba diving . . . and all this water that flows through the novel.