The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

A Novel

By: Haruki Murakami

Narrated by: 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

Critic reviews

"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)

Narrator almost ruined the book

I really messed myself by trying to do this book on audio. The audio was awful, and yet somehow I made it 75% of the way through. The narrator was a British/Australian voicing his Japanese characters with American accents. Worse, there was one (frequent character) who sounded like a South Park character, and the end of the audio for me was a Gilbert Godfrey voice. The guy just overdid every character.

I picked up the print version for the last 25% of the book and I wish I'd read the whole thing.

As far as the story goes, I liked it OK. Didn't love it. So much of it was dreams or dream like. And a lot of those dreams were wet dreams (Sorry.) There's a cat and a wife, a neighbor and a well. Random war stories, a politician brother, and psychic sisters Malta and Creta. I didn't "get it".

I think if this is your first Murakami it could be great and could really grab you because it is unique, but I've read a lot of Murakami and it just didn't do anything for me. I think I'm done with Murakami for now.

Book is great, voice acting however...

Loved the book itself, so nothing to say there, but WHY do performers feel the need to make female voices sound like cartoon children? Or drag queens? Just use your normal voice dude. Old men, great. Russian accent, fine. But every time a female character spoke I was entirely taken out of the story by grating aural agony. May Kasahara in particular. Someone tell voice actors to cut that sh*t out. Please.

Terrible Women's Voices

Narrator had HORRIBLE voices for women. Story was okay but it was difficult to get past how terribly the majority of women were voiced. I cringed everytime Mei specifically came on.

Performance ruined this audiobook for me

One of my favorite things about Murakami is how much his work depends on personal interpretation. In the end, maybe he's not the best author for audiobook for that reason. This is the only Murakami I've listened to (and will probably be the last). I switched off reading and listening to the book, so that may have added to my feeling of 'jarringness' in this performance. Nevertheless, I am still surprised by how differently myself and Rupert Degas interpreted this book.

Personally, I picture the book's narrator Toru Okada as having an inner voice that is muted, innocent, and quietly unaware. As introspective as he is, he certainly doesn't seem to know a lot about what he wants or why he acts the way he does. When I read this book in hardcopy I enjoyed following frail, innocent Toru on a wide-eyed quest of discovery.

I found that the narrator, on the other hand, portrayed him as an insufferably pretentious whiner. Sure, I think that's actually a pretty good interpretation in retrospect, but that's not how I pictured him at all when I was beginning the book in hardcopy, and I don't think you're expected to be interpreting him that way either in the early portions of the book.

Overall, I found the experience unpleasantly jarring. On the whole, Rupert Degas speaks very pretentiously, like he's a literary erudite who you have the great fortune to hear. Especially for what is supposed to be (in my opinion) a pondering, effervescent story, the performance comes off as very sneering and bratty (once again, not entirely unfair). There are points where the narrator complains, yes, but there are also sections where he feels afraid or weakened, and yet Degas just pierces on in the same pretentious, whiney tone.

What's more, the pronunciations of the Japanese names are terrible; not only does he get them just slightly wrong enough to annoy you, but he goes for the *completely* Japanese pronunciation, which in the context of a book read in an American accent is disruptive. It's like when people say Barcelona with a Castilian lisp in conversation; annoying! Go listen to him say 'Noboru Wataya' and you'll know what I'm talking about.

You want my advice? Save your audiobook credits for something that lends itself better to the audiobook medium. It's a good story and I love Murakami books, but the performance was a big failure to me.

good

don't listen to other reviewers. he is a fine narrator and brings the story to life

Not my favorite narration

It took a little for me to warm up to the author's writing style, but once I did I found listening to it to be a very immersive experience. The depth of detail with which the author writes made it easy to get caught up in the story. I didn't care for the narration particularly the attempts at mimicking women's voices which came off very awkward, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't continue listening.

Not my favorite Murakami Book

The reader performed in different voices for every character and read the book as if it were a play. I found his women's voices really annoying. He made the female characters sound extremely unlikeable. The character of the teenage May Kasahara was excruciating. Maybe this reading influenced my opinion of this book. The voices were quite heavy handed. I am not a fan of war stories and this book had many. I think if I understood their connection to the main character better I could have been more tolerant of them.

Good book, bad narrator

What did you like best about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle? What did you like least?

Enjoyed everything Murakami so far, but this audiobook was hard to get through because of the narrator. The voices made it difficult to listen to and made a character that would have been a pleasure to read sound hollow and silly.

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

No

Worst narration

The reader here is horrifically bad. The worst. Absolutely butchers, absolutely ruins an otherwise terrific book. Its not just the obnoxious voices, it’s the interpretations of those characters. It’s all wrong, and it’s a shame.

stunning

this book pulled me in from the very first paragraph. it is scintillatingly unique. there is a gentle rhythm of humor, suspense, mysticism, temptation, and unshakeable morality. I've never read anything like it. the author is utterly genius.

on Audible, a good book is subject to the narrator. this narrator is unparalleled. he spoke in so many voices, each of them gave full voice and body to the character. I found myself imitating the characters inflections in my head. he was the voice of multiple nationalities, including male and female. each voice seemed authentic and natural. there have been plenty of narrators who do some voices well but some voices are extremely awkward and difficult to listen to. this is not one of those narrators. His voice is nothing short of magic. I love this book and will put it in my top books of all time, yet I'm not sure I would have loved it as much if I hadn't listened to this author's interpretation.