Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami

"Why do people have to be this lonely?

What's the point of it all?

Millions of people in this world, all

of them yearning, looking to others

to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves.

Why?

Was the earth put here just to nourish human 

loneliness?"

The story revolves around three characters. The narration is done by K, it is largely passive narration. The narrator is a different protagonist from those of Murakami's other novels. "K" is more confident and much more conflicted than any other Murakami protagonist. Then comes Sumire who has fallen madly in love with Miu, a married woman who imports wine. Three of them are tortured by their own lives. Only these three characters inhabit the landscape in this book. The book is more a discussion of who people are and what is it that both separates and binds humanity from and to itself.

"And it came to me then. That we were wonderful travelling companions but in

the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits.

From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing 

more than prisons where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere.

When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be

together.

Maybe even our hearts to each other.

But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute

solitude.

Until we burned up and became nothing."

Thematically Sputnik Sweetheart revels in questions of identity, the real vs hidden world, conscious vs subconscious and the nature of sexuality. He explores familiar themes such as the effects of unrequited love, growing up emotionally stunted in an overwhelmingly conformist society, and the conflict between following one's dreams and clamping down on them in order to assimilate into society. The book is lean and packed with mystery and a revelation that is baffling to those who don't get it and uncanny to those who do.

"I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing I do."

"I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself any more. It's hard to

put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep,

and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back

together again. That sort of feeling."

Reading this book was like dreaming with eyes open and surreal images barely held together by thread of reason, were seen. There is an after taste that lingers and intensifies even as the world within these pages turns stranger and more dis-concerning. What you associate with the book is not the story, but simply, that feeling.

Murakami strips life of all flamboyance and exposes how mundane it really is. Sputnik Sweetheart lacks a clear, concise ending. It is bleak and confusing which sounds quite similar to the other works. It is still a good read.