There is literally no other word that can be used for this book other than just flat out weird. To be completely honest with you, I have no idea how this book got on the best seller’s list at all, let alone stayed there long enough to get on my radar. This book was used for our book club’s second meeting, and I am not alone in saying that it was just completely strange.
1Q84 is an immense and sprawling novel of almost 1000 pages (more on that to come), interweaving the stories of Aomame and Tengo, our two main characters that knew each other as children and find themselves wrapped up in a bizarre situation that involves a book being rewritten, an alternate universe, and multiple murders. I can tell that this is supposed to be a romantic story of two people that fell in love as children and never forgot each other, but what charm that portion of the book could have had is lost in the unbelievable amount of verbiage.
1Q84 could have been about 500 pages shorter, and still got the message across, in my opinion. I have read a lot of reviews that say this is just the author’s writing style, but frankly, I found it tedious. At one point, after reading the description of an ugly supporting character for what felt like the 15th time, I turned off my kindle in disgust, thinking that I would never get through this book.
Having said that, there are some redeemable qualities. I can appreciate how weird it is, how intricate the author had to get to tie everything in together, I just wish he would have gotten on with it instead of dragging it out. I’m not going to say I hated this book, but I’m not going to read it again, if only because the time involved in getting through it was hardly worth the payoff. I think it’s somewhere in between a 2 and a 3 for me.
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