The Wind-up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami (1998)

Summary: A man’s wife leaves him suddenly and he stays at their home waiting for her to come back, waiting for a sign, waiting for an absolution of any kind. More weird things happen to him, he meets strange characters. They come to him in dreams, near the train station and while looking for his cat.

Review: You’ll suffer with these characters, feel redemption, exhaustion and puzzlement. The way Murakami describes the girls in his stories are fascinating and true. The psychology of the post-modern woman is filled with crises relating to identity, loss and love.

Rating: 8 birdcalls that sound like the world winding up

Favorite part: “Everybody’s born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside.” –p.322

Wine-pairing: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Mila Kundera (1984). The author describes the reasons for wanting many lovers in such a poetic and relatable way, the reader wants to forgive their ex’s for all their mistakes because he/she never saw the reasoning for it before.