Sumire shares her dilemma with K (without noticing the parallels to his own situation): should she tell Miu how she feels? Can she bear to be in Miu’s proximity without a physical relationship? Does a love affair like that mean she abandons her principles and aspirations as a writer or would it help her to gather the experience she needs in order to be a more well-rounded writer? Instead, she falls desperately in love with the glamorous businesswoman of Korean origin, Miu, who convinces Sumire to be her assistant. Truth be told, he is in love with Sumire, but she never seems to think of him in that way. Now he is a schoolteacher and Sumire an aspiring writer. The narrator K is best friends with the idealistic and stubborn would-be novelist Sumire, who used to go to the same college as him. It was more realistic, but with just a slight tinge of surrealism. And, on the whole, I did! There were fewer of the typical Murakami tics (or bingo sheet of elements) that crop up time and again in his novels and stories. Sputnik Sweetheart was one of the earlier books (published in 1999) that I had not read, so I took advantage of January in Japan to see if I could recapture some of my earlier excitement about Murakami.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |