Eric Maas’s Reviews > The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle > Status Update

2.06 - Inheriting Property • Inquiry on Jellyfish • Something Like a Sense of Detachment

The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.

2.05 - Vies of Distant Towns • Eternal Half-Moon • Ladder in Place

2.03 - Noboru Wataya Speaks • The Story of the Monkeys of the Shitty Island

2.02 - No Good News in this Chapter

Okada perceives Malta Kano’s call as ‘no good news’. But as Mr. Honda predicted, what’s good may seem bad; what’s bad may seem good.

2.01 - As Concrete as Possible • Appetite in Literature

In the first book, Toru Okada’s inner state was rather detached, observing from safe distance. Now, with Kumiko’s unannounced disappearance comes a more involved sort of confusion and anxiety. The emotions are most relatable.

Book One: The Thieving Magpie
June and July 1984
1.13 - Lieutenant Mamiya’s Long Story: Part II

Unexpected thrilling, gruesome and emotional chapter after the previously chapters having been mostly somehow detached, due to Toru Okada’s point of view.

I say the doing nothing, thinking nothing. Unconsciously, however, I waited for that ray of light, that blinding flood of sunlight that poured straight down to the bottom of the well for one tiny fraction of the day .

And of course, my thoughts go back to Mann’s Joseph in his well: what does unbearable even mean, when it still has to be endured…

1.12 - Lieutenant Mamiya’s Long Story: Part I

1.11 - Enter Lieutenant Mamiya • What Came from the Warm Mud • Eau de Cologne

1938? That means Mr. honda and the lieutenant must have met on the continent during Mamiya’s captivity, right?