Rob’s Reviews > 1Q84: Books One and Two > Status Update

Well done Rob! Are books 1 and 2 the whole story? If they are it’s much shorter than the French translation which is 3 books of more than 500 pages… I knew English was a more condensed language than French but that’s insane!

The English version is 3 books also. The first volume, the one I'm reading now, contains books 1 and 2, book 3 is in a separate volume. I hope that makes sense. 975 pages in total. And these pages are dence!
I'm taking a break between books to read something else for a bit of a breather. Not that 1Q84 is bad, but it's quite a slog to read.

I’m reading a Japanese book right now and it makes me realize how good Murakami is at writing stories easily understandable to international readers. For instance I’m completely confused by the names of the protagonists if there’s more than 5 because I don’t even know if a name is masculine or feminine, on top of never having read that name ever. Murakami doesn’t even name the main protagonist! Yet he doesn’t sacrifice any of the cultural particularities of Japan. He’s very good but either I love the book or it bores me to death.