Sputnik Sweetheart (Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami)

Member Name: ruth_cole

Product:	Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
Date:	13/11/04 (642 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: beautiful prose, universal themes gently explored

Disadvantages: none

After reading Norwegian Wood and wading through the lovely waters of South of the Border, West of the Sun, I launched into my third foray into the delicate, detailed, evocative world of Haruki Murakami. I chose Sputnik Sweetheart randomly, drawn by the title, and whilst I've since heard it criticised by Murakami fans as failing to quite live up to their expectations, for me it rose above them, and became the first Murakami I really fell in love with.

Sputnik Sweetheart is the story of Sumire, compulsive writer decked in a man's oversize herringbone jacket and stomping across and through the life of her closest friend, K. K also happens to be in love with Sumire, but it's not until she falls spectacularly for Miu, a woman 17 years her senior, that Sumire even understands the idea of sexual longing. For a while Sumire debates her burgeoning love with K while he dissipates his own through affectionless affairs until a strange 2am phone call from a Greek island turns everything upside down.

Straight away it is evident that Sputnik Sweetheart will carry what I've come to see as the hallmarks of Murakami's seemingly effortless writing. The language is economical, the plot simple and spare, the emotions stark and very human. The characters are muddled and riddled with all the likeable, loveable, irritating, exasperating quirks and foibles of being alive, and the themes are natural and universal. Love, desire, modern living; all these are gentle wound and twisted together and presented in a way so straightforward and matter-of-fact, and yet so lyrical, that the breathy voice of the first person narrator (another hallmark) almost seems to be in your ear. All hail, then, to translator Philip Gabriel for what I can only assume is a very accurate and deft translation. Murakami himself is a translator of English novels into Japanese, so one can only assume that he is as satisfied with the results as we must be.

Sumire is a difficult character, yet a sympathetic one. Surprised by the intensity of her feelings as much as by the fact that they happen to be for another woman, confused by the apparent randomness of sexual desire and romantic longing, and overwhelmed first by the compulsive need to write and then by the desertion of the compulsion when she is too wrapped up in her emotional renaissance to be able to commit a word to paper, she is full of questions and contradictions. Since she is approached through the narration of K, it's bound to be a sympathetic portrayal, but also a frustrated one. K is at first a rather cold and informative narrator, but later his character surfaces and he's almost maddeningly insightful and engaging. I found myself wanting to yank him out of the page and shake his hand. Miu is the most remote, accessed as she is through K's and Sumire's second and third hand perspectives, a mysterious, closed woman (shades of South of the Border's Shimamoto). But she balances out the trio nicely, lending a distant edge that offsets the deep emotional connection between the two best friends.

In terms of story, there is not really a lot to say. Some things happen, sometimes there is a wealth of activity, but much of the time this is just a slow exploration of the duality of existence. Is it possible to separate the halves of ourselves? Can you separate me the person from the other me who holds the key to love and attraction? Can you separate dreams from reality? Where is the door between this world and that one? And yet we're not talking about philosophical navel-gazing. This is all presented in a vibrant manner, tied in to life and jobs and reality. Sumire works part-time jobs so she can fund her novel-writing. K is a teacher, and a confused one at that (perhaps it's because he's presented so realistically as a primary school teacher that I was so happy to like him!). Miu runs a business. There are a wealth of pop culture references, Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love, the Internet, the music they listen to and books they read, and yet Murakami is careful to keep an element of timelessness by excising the date (a diary entry is marked August 19**) and not rooting it to a particular place by describing the Greek island in detail and yet never revealing the name.

What makes Murakami so breathtakingly readable to my mind, however, is his economy. His books are short, this is barely more than 200 pages, and they are like devastating little slices of life, clarity and almost magical musing. I'd explain the title, but it's explained early on in the book, and then developed throughout, and it would give away too much. Better to know not much more than I've already told you, really.

And so I've found myself another one to cherish. And this time I've moved past awed admiration to real love, and I'm glad of it.

first published in this country in 2001
isbn 0-099-44847-5
rrp £6.99

Alex
xxx

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