The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, 607 pages.

Toru Okada, unemployed by choice, finds his world going from confusing in a "what am I going to do with my life," and "where did the cat go" sort of way to bewildering and other worldly. He loses his wife, but Toru does not think that Kumiko simply left him, as her family repeatedly tells him. Toru Okada is drawn to a neighboring house, vacant for the past several years, first looking for the cat, then to chat with May Kasahara, a high-school student with dark secrets, and finally by his belief that the answers to his questions can be found at the bottom of the dry well on the property. He is helped along his way by the semi-psychic Creta Kano and her sister Malta Kano.

Loneliness, alienation, sexuality and the incomprehensibility of all that goes on around us are all explored in a carefully muted manner. Throughout this large strange story, Toru Okada is quietly determined to find the answers to the puzzles presented to him. No matter how odd these puzzles appear to be, he approaches them in a matter-of-fact sort of way.
Check our catalog.