1Q84

You know you're reading a good book when you pause to look up at the night sky and you wonder where the second moon is.  You know you have just finished a good book when you feel a sense of mourning that you must now leave this fictional world and the characters which you have come to know in a way that feels all too real.  You know you have just finished a good book when you can't possibly begin reading anything else and so immediately download samples of all works by this author to your Nook in an attempt to hang on to this world a little longer.  This is why I am giving a strong recommendation to 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

This is by far the best book I have read in 2012.  I could not wait learn the fates of the two protagonists of this novel, Tengo and Aomame, yet I dreaded coming to the end of the book.  This novel is rich in character, plot, and language and could be classified in any number of genres.

1Q84 is a romance:  this is the story of Tengo and Aomame, two 30-year-old star-crossed lovers whose souls connected one fateful day in grade school and who have been searching for each other ever since.

1Q84 is a fantasy:  in the opening scene of Murakami's masterpiece, the year is 1984 (yes, an homage to George Orwell) and Aomame is traveling to a critically important appointment, but stuck in a traffic jam.  Her enigmatic cab driver suggests that she take an emergency stairway down from the freeway, but gives her this mysterious warning:  "Things may look different to you than they did before.  I've had that experience myself.  But don't let appearances fool you.  There's always only one reality."  From Chapter One.  Once Amomame descends the stairs and is on her way, she begins to notice small differences between the world as she knows it and the world as it appears now, such as changes in the police uniforms and a second, smaller moon hanging alongside our familiar moon.  She calls this ...place?...time?...alternate reality?...1Q84.

1Q84 is a mystery:  who are the little people, and are their intentions malevolent?  What are maza and dohta?  (Hint:  close your eyes and say these two words aloud several times).  What secret does Aomame share with the wealthy, elderly dowager who employs her?  Why has the novella "Air Chrysalis," co-written by Tengo and a nearly illiterate teenage girl, Fuka-Eri, so angered members of a religious cult that has heretofore isolated itself from the world?

1Q84 is a thriller:  throughout the novel, the tension and pace build as Tengo and Aomame draw nearer to each other, while pursued by a strangely ugly yet able private investigator hired by the mysterious Sakigake group, which has determined that both of them threaten its existence.

Let me also say a word about the translation.  1Q84 was originally written in Japanese and has been translated beautifully into English by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel.  Many times I have read translations that are disjointed and choppy in the transition from the original language into English.  This is not the case for Mr. Rubin and Mr. Gabriel's translation, which flows freely and gracefully.

1Q84 is a masterpiece.  It is one of those books that will stay with me and haunt me, though not in a negative way.  It made me think.  It expanded my horizon.  It is literature at its best.