Literary Pick (****)

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle 

-Haruki Murakami

Murakami is an amazing writer. Each chapter of this book was very indulging. Oddly enough Murakami possesses a feminine quality in his work, a sensitivity in the character of Toru Okada that I really appreciated coming from a male writer. A modern quality in the relationship between him and Kumiko (his wife), of which I can't quite put my finger on that one rarely finds from other male writers when describing romantic relationships.
I couldn't help compare this book with Marquez's 100 years of Solitude due of the magical realism aspects of both works. The difference between the two is that Marquez's stories all ended seamlessly with viable explanations (as much as you can explain things in the world of magical realism) of some sort to these odd stories and characters. However, Murakami failed to do that. I am open to this particular genre of writing, but things still need to make sense to an acceptable degree. There were just too many unanswered questions in the "Wind-up Bird chronicle". Some events towards the end of the story even seemed a bit convenient and left unexplained.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this book and am happy I did. I'm looking forward to reading more works by Murakami.