Sputnik Sweetheart: Haruki Murakami

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Miu and Sumire set off on a business trip to Europe, leaving K. behind to console himself in a series of meaningless affairs. But when a distraught Miu calls K. out of the blue from a small Greek island to say that Sumire has disappeared without a trace, he drops everything and travels halfway around the world to help find her. As the night wore on I read of K, the typical Murakami protagonist, and his friend Sumira who he met at university. They shared a bond as they were both outsiders who read voraciously. Sumira was named after a character in a Mozart song, a beautiful song with what Samira felt were ugly lyrics. This irked her. Why would her mother name her after a character in an ugly story? Sumira meets Miu, a successful business woman, at a wedding and falls in love with her. Miu recognises something she likes in Sumira and asks her to come work with her. Yo también tenía muchas ganas de verte a ti —dijo Sumire—. Después de dejar de verte lo comprendí todo muy bien, a la perfección. Lo vi tan claro como si todos los planetas, de mutuo acuerdo, se hubiesen alineado uno junto al otro. Que te necesito de verdad. Que tú eres una parte de mí, que yo soy una parte de ti.» Sputnik Sweetheart is a profound meditation on human longing. Sumire is an aspiring writer who survives on a family stipend and the creative input of her only friend, the novel's male narrator and protagonist, known in the text only as 'K'.

I changed my mind (previously I rated it 4/5 🌟). I cannot rate this book any lower. Because at many levels, I can relate so much with this book.

There are 2 main people in Sumire’s life. Firstly, there’s an equivalently aged male friend (K) she talks to (at) incessantly about stuff, at any hour of the day. He often tries to give her sage advice, see he’s a teacher – a responsible bloke and he feels she needs guidance sometimes. I loved their relationship. Secondly, there’s Sumire’s relationship with a sophisticated businesswoman called Miu who is 17 years older than Sumire. This relationship is fascinating and keeps the reader guessing where it will end up. Transformation – both voluntary and involuntary – is one of the central themes of this novel. The loneliness is not only borne of not being around others, but of being apart from one’s self. Each ruminates on loneliness in their own way: “Who can really distinguish between the sea and what’s reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?” meditates K. at one point. This detached passion runs throughout his narration: you get the feeling that in recounting Sumire’s love for Miu he is really giving voice to the love he has fantasised Sumire showing him. Yet typically for Murakami characters they prefer this sort of sexually enigmatic fantasy of love to actual love. Each of the protagonists lives out their own longing in their own unreciprocated – and therefore unsullied – way. Sputnik literally translates as ‘travelling companion,’ and that is what they are each looking for: a human connection, someone to talk to, fall asleep next to, and yearn for. Someone to free them from loneliness. And in a way that is what they each find, though not in the way any of them had hoped. Sputnik Sweetheart is a novel of what could have been, what might have been, where worlds overlap, & love can never quite be divorced from lust. In the world of K, Sumire, and Miu, sex is often mistaken for love. Sputnik Sweetheart is strangely haunting but oh so hard to describe; is it a tale of unreciprocated love, unrealized ambition, and desire, of always wanting more? Even with it being filled with unreciprocated love rather than love, it is also one of the most romantic books ever written. Yes, at it’s heart, Sputnik Sweetheart is a romance novel. Wait, Sputnik Sweetheart is a detective novel. Perhaps it's neither; perhaps I'm entirely wrong. Hmmm ... do any of us really know what a Murakami novel is about? Srdjan advised me not to overthink Murakami. Perhaps he's right ... or maybe he's not. Murakami's writing is different in the sense that this one is a little mainstream compared to his other novels. Nevertheless this book is so charming. The characters are so realistic and character development is so damn amazing.

In particular Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is not the best place to discover Murakami. It’s the most difficult of all his books, and that is both it’s biggest blessing and worst curse. Many readers start with Norwegian Wood as it is the least strange (yet so very warm and lovely) and by far his biggest selling book. Overall Sputnik Sweetheart feels somewhat incomplete. While the team has made a commendable effort in capturing the book’s mood, it comes at the expense of the depth and the heart that makes Murakami’s work so beloved. De esas novelas en las que no tengo mucho por decir más que esta puede resultar una historia del montón si no fuera por ese toque mágico/fantástico; lo surreal como concepto entre sus páginas. If words and writing can be as realistic as it can to a point that it is so enjoyable, you just cannot do anything else but keep on reading a Murakami book. Reading Sputnik Sweetheart is like returning home. As the saying goes, you can't step in the same river twice...you can go home, but the home isn't the same home that you left. So it is with books. You can read the same words again and again, but since you are different, the book is different too.I don’t always read Murakami, but when I do I prefer reading slowly and letting the writing carry me off like I’m having some kind of lucid dream I never want to wake from. Stay thirsty my friends. In a similar way to the novel, the play leaves it up to the audience to interpret events. Did Sumire break through into another dimension or reality? Has she returned and resumed her life? Was it all a dream, a fantasy by K? A final enigmatic phone call leaves the audience contemplating the nature of reality. I know the voice. It's not from one of the Sumires I lost, but from one of the Sumires I have not yet found. There are many nice heartfelt quotes but the one below is my favorite as this explains the title. Based on history, Sputnik 1 & 2 were the first man-made satellites launched by USSR in 1957. In Sputnik 2, there was a dog Laika that becaume the first living being to leave the earth's atmosphere, but the satellites were never recovered. This is my 2nd novel by Haruki Murakami and just like Kafka in the Shore, this still amazed me. I even enjoyed this more than Kafka.