Sputnik Sweetheart
by Haruki Murakami
Knopf
Haruki Murakami is one of those rare storytellers
able to convey big themes through well-wrought characters, all the while executing
stunning stylistic jujitsu. It's an M.O. he's been perfecting over his over 20
years as a novelist, and his most recent novel, "Sputnik Sweeheart," shows him in top
form; it's no wonder why so many in Japan consider him that country's most intriguing
and exciting novelist. The book's prose is crisp and clean, making quick observations
but never lingering, yet it touches deftly on Big Questions like
sexuality and alienation, all the while moving effortlessly in and out
of tenses, perspectives, and even genres. It is not Murakami's most complex novel,
or even his most engrossing, but for its thematic agility and beautiful, crafted
prose, it is among his best.
"Sputnik Sweetheart," Murakami's seventh translated novel, is reminiscent
of a number of his earlier works in its use of the narrative techniques of
detective novels to introduce meditations on themes of identity and the place
of the individual in Japanese society. In this case, the novel revolves around
Sumire, a young wannabe writer and part-time secretary in Tokyo who falls in
love with her new employer, the ravishing yet icy Miu. The story is narrated,
in turn, by a male friend of Sumire's, an unnamed young teacher living in Tokyo. Miu
runs her family's importing firm, and one day, on a whim, asks Sumire to come
along with her on a business trip to Europe. While the two are taking a short
vacation on a Greek island, though, Sumire vanishes, and Miu contacts the narrator
to help find her.
The narrator, who harbors a long-held, unrequited crush on Sumire, rushes to
Greece to help. Suddenly, what seemed to be a novel about the limits and
possibilities of love becomes a portrait of the narrator struggling to identify
himself in a world where his only hope for companionship has disappeared.
The theme of isolation and the impossibility of love is a typical one in Murakami's
previous work — his characters exist within a
loveless, unfeeling world, bounded by monolithic social structures preventing
them from making nourishing human contact (a theme seen even in his recent nonfiction
effort, "Underground"). The
narrator in "Sputnik Sweetheart" is a recurring character type in Murakami's
work, possessing a strong internal voice but no social identity.
His characters are symbols of the dissolution of social
and personal bonds in modern Japan, and his ability to mirror social unease with
such subtlety is what has made Japanese audiences connect with him so readily.
For a writer so committed to postmodern manipulations of voice and genre, Murakami
manages to keep his prose crisp and clean, his characters full, his plots
intriguing. Unlike some recent works out to deconstruct
the narrative form, Murakami doesn't leave you feeling ill at ease.
He is still not a well-known figure on the American literary scene, but
his popularity is growing. If there's any fairness in the world, "Sputnik
Sweetheart" should give him a big boost.
— Clay Risen (clay@flakmag.com)
