The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

A Novel

De: Haruki Murakami

Narrado por: Rupert Degas

A "dreamlike and compelling” tour de force (Chicago Tribune)—an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

©1997 Haruki Murakami (P)2013 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Dreamlike and compelling.... Murakami is a genius." (Chicago Tribune)

“Mesmerizing.... Murakami’s most ambitious attempt yet to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice.” (The Washington Post Book World)

“A significant advance in Murakami’s art ... a bold and generous book.” (The New York Times Book Review)

Wonderful book, flawed narration.

If you could sum up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in three words, what would they be?

Murakami's wonderfully delicate, mysterious and absorbing novel is terribly marred by the narration here; Degas renders the main character unpleasantly arch and snarky initially and seems to be struggling without success to find the right voice for him throughout; children and teens have voices like obnoxious TV cartoon characters, and both female and children's voices are indicated by a very rapid, jerky, breathy, oddly pitched delivery that's just all wrong and actually jarring. The tone throughout is much too theatrical and feverish for the quiet deeps, wry humor and reflective unfolding of this tale.I loved reading this book - Murakami's stories never seem abstract and 'experimental' in the off-putting way at all and I can never put them down. Other narrators have done Murakami really, really well (1Q84, with multiple readers, is terrific, as is Kafka By the Shore with Sean Barrett and Oliver Le Sueur ). Degas just never gets the mood of the work right, to my mind.

What did you like best about this story?

I'm a Murakawa fan; would just add to the many reviews of his work something that's often not mentioned - not only are they deeply beautiful, his novels are really fun to read. I think he's often made out to be less accessible than he is; newcomers should just relax and flow along with the narrative and not be too worried about assembling things - just kick back and enjoy the ride. Even with a poor narrator it's a dandy.

Would you be willing to try another one of Rupert Degas’s performances?

No indeed. I'm really not such a hard critic of audiobook performances and appreciate many readers deeply, but a good reader needs to understand and respect his characters and not deliver caricatures.

Any additional comments?

I didn't closely follow the outline suggested here (seriously?), but would say that this is a tremendous tale, difficult to put down for those who like Murakami's work, and widely reviewed elsewhere; I only wanted to warn readers that they might be unfairly put off this author by the disappointing performance here.

The narrator detracts from this gorey tale!

The narration was so distracting to me that I wondered how the story would be different with a better narrator. Degas fails to take into account that these people are Japanese and the story takes place in Japan. I'm not saying the characters should have Japanese accents, but the 15 year old girl shouldn't sound like an irritating Valley Girl! Some of the female voices mocks the characters they represent. It's painful listening to Mai and the ditzy voice discounts any value to her words.
None of the voices match the characters personalities. Our protagonist sounds more like an effeminate single guy than a suburban married man, and the character of Ushi (spelling?) sounding like Peter Lori detracts heavily from the story. It makes it too camp.

The story is at times stunningly graphic. The ability of the writer to conjure up scenes of torture and man's inhumanity to man may be a bit too much for those who are more sensitive. There is the ability for the horror to become rather too vivid when your mind visually fills in the scenes of men being skinned alive. I am not a person who is in any way delicate and some of it made me blanch.
This is a story of surreal fantasy and there are times the reader feels lost as to what is going on or feel they've missed something. A few of the subplots feel slightly unresolved as well.

The sex scenes are also relatively graphic but not so bad as torture scene by far.

Basically a very ordinary man who is floundering a bit in life and is feeling directionless after resigning from his job and has his life turned upside down the moment that his cat disappears. Murakami likes adding cats to his stories. From there, he gets odd phone calls from even stranger people. Which culminate in the life altering event of his wife disappearing. He is then thrown into contact with many odd and usually attractive women leaving the reader to wonder why he never contemplated locking the door and disconnecting his phone. From here on out we hear the stories of soldiers mentally scarred by the atrocities of war and some women with special gifts who often have been violated in sexual or psychological ways or both. If this all sounds confusing it is.
The book is the story of a living nightmare which our protagonist goes through where he becomes equally odd and often has a far too calm way of handling it. It's a bit tough to figure out how he really feels at times as most of us would not have reacted with equal equanimity at being trapped in a well.

Honestly, I couldn't put it down, but I'm not sure how much I enjoyed it. I would suggest that you read this one instead of listening to it to avoid the narration that will most likely leaving you distracted from the story thinking about the narration quirks and failures and how it effects the interpretation of the text.

Sarah in Brooklyn.

I Toughed The Narrator Out

This book is so good and I was totally wrapped up in it the whole time. It kept me engaged from start to finish. The vivid imagery was so effective and everything that happened kept me asking questions. It was so good that I could tough it out with Rupert Degas.

Good lord. Why do narrators have to do voices? I looked it up and he does like kid’s shows voice overs too. It shows. Some characters were okay, but some others were just gearing beyond belief to the point I had to ask “what fevered part of this person’s brain decided that this voice was a good call?” I get that an audiobook is a different product than a book, so you have to accept that the way it’s read and the way you’ve decided to take in the information effects your interpretation of the story. So, I want to give some room for okay and accept that the story might sound differently than how it might in my head. But, I could not find any a real understanding for some of the garishly cartoonish voices used for some of the characters, especially the women.

Awesome

This book is awesome, but only if you read it in the right mindset. You will like it if you constantly ask your self what does this character represent, what does this scene represent? It's all about symbolism. If you don't want to read a book like that, then you likely will not enjoying this book.

great story, nearly ruined by voice actor

Some of this voice actor's character voices are insufferable. It was difficult to listen to anytime Mae Kasahara or Ushikawa had lines.

Annoying voices

A few of the characters voices were unbearable. Great story, I switched to reading the book after I couldn't handle the ridiculous voices anymore.

David Lynch in a novel

Weird & spooky & confusing & long. I loved it. Can’t believe no one has turned this into a tv show yet.

Not worth the time

This book, some say Murakami's best, has the same dreamlike quality as others of his I've listened to, but this time I simply tired of the verbose, somewhat inexplicable story.

Murakami Writing & Degas Narration = Love!

I love every Murakami book I've read or listened to so far. Every. Single. One. With that said, I had just listened to A Wild Sheep Chase, also by Murakami and also narrated by Degas. Finishing it left a void in my ears and set me off on A Wild Murakami / Degas Chase... the local library didn't have any. I tried to be cheap and just go with a reading by someone else, but I couldn't get into it knowing there were others narrated by Degas. So, that's why I'm here -loving every second of this book. Once I make my way through all the Murakami / Degas, I'll probably keep following Degas and just read the rest of Murakami manually, you know, with my eyes.

Excellent reading!

Not quite my favorite of Murakami's, but still great, and the performance was excellent. I recommend.