Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
Why I Chose This Book
Basically, I wanted another fiction book to break up my string of non-fiction and to try to insert more fiction into my life in general. Murakami is also extremely popular among my coworkers, so per a friend’s recommendation, I gave this one a try.
About the Book
The protagonist lives in Tokyo and is intent on becoming a great writer, however her youth and inexperience make that difficult for her. She meets an older woman and suddenly life changes, and that is all I am going to say.
Thoughts
The story is good but Murakami’s prose is incredible; even as a translated work the visuals he creates through words are more real than anything I’ve ever read. This is a quick read as far as Murakami goes, and I can’t wait to dive into some of his other novels, such as Norwegian Wood or the Windup Bird Chronicle.
Notable Quotes
“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling 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 open 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.”