Sputnik Sweetheart: Haruki Murakami

Product Information

Sputnik Sweetheart is a novel of almosts, where liminal spaces overlap and longing can never quite be divorced from true love. It is beautifully evocative yet difficult to define, a tale of unrequited love, unrealised ambition, and yearning, always yearning, for more. Perhaps because it is about anticipation of, and longing for, love rather than love itself, it is one of the most romantic books I have ever read.

What started out as a love story morphs into a sort of otherworldly detective novel. K. finds a document on a floppy disc hidden in Sumire’s luggage and it holds a clue. But can it be that the key to Sumire’s fate lies in the strange events which afflicted Miu on a Ferris wheel almost 14 years before, turning her prematurely and completely white? I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives are fleeting." Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is, by any chance, a bad book. My low rating can be easily explained by the fact that I've already read too much Murakami. As Anne said, Nikki, there is nowhere better to start a Murakami adventure than with Sputnik Sweetheart.It’s certainly a bold undertaking to adapt Haruki Murakami’s mercurial 1999 novel about unrequited love, the human condition and much else besides. The book is set in multiple global locations and features dream sequences, magical realism and, in typical Murakami fashion, no shortage of narrative meanderings. It’s a good story. The structure of the book is a lot like that of Norwegian Wood. A young man loves a young woman but she is out of reach for some reason. There’s a lesbian sub-story in both books. The man also finds himself attracted to the older woman in each story. As a matter of fact, the characters hit home. As unpleasant and real as it sounds, two of these characters remind me so much of reality. (Moments after reading the book got me a bit high and hence the faulty rating. I needed to calm down and think about the book and decide what it made me feel in real.) A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.” I'll admit it; I don't really know what Sputnik Sweetheart is about. What I can tell you, is that its themes are love, the loss of love, passion, the loss of passion, desire, & the loss of desire. Are the events K relates real or a dream? The only thing I do know is Sputnik Sweetheart is a beautiful novel

Reading this book, I couldn't help but think of all the lost things in my life. Great people and influences in my life that have moved away or moved on. They're not like books, stationary objects with fixed text. People really do disappear, though often in mundane ways. And it's hard to find them because mundane distances can be as bad and as troublesome as magical ones. 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.So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow—not thinking, in other words?... The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.” Everything is ethereal, nothing quite as it should be. Whatever you think you perceive vanishes when looked at too closely. Like most great romances, Sputnik Sweetheart has the feel of a dream. There is something of Wuthering Heights here, in the way that not even physical separation can overcome the connections the characters share, and not even emotional closeness can fill the void each others absence leaves in themselves. As with Cathy and Heathcliff, what takes place defies explanation, and doesn’t really need one either. We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.” The narrator, a 25-year old teacher, K is in love with a 22-year old lesbian writer, Sumire. However, Sumire is in love with her boss, a 39-year old married businesswoman, Miu. Miu and Sumire, working as the former's personal secretaty, went on vacation in Greece as a side trip from a business trip in Italy. Sumire told Miu her feelings. Because of her past, Miu could not reciprocate Sumire's love. The latter disappeared "like a smoke."