Book Review: Sputnik Sweetheart

I spent a lovely weekend sitting in the sun, drinking green tea, and escaping to another of Haruki Murakami's deliciously surreal worlds.

Sputnik Sweetheart reminded me a lot of Norwegian Wood, with themes of unrequited love, loneliness, and an overall melancholy tone. The narrator is in love with his friend Sumire, who in turn is in love with a mysterious woman named Miu. The subtle nuances of their relationships are very real-world...until the book takes a sudden departure from reality. Leaving us to ask, what is real?

The book starts in Japan, and we travel with the characters to a Greek island. Murakami writes so beautifully that I could smell the wine, taste the olives, and feel the sand on my feet. I'd be ready to hop on the next flight to Greece myself, if reality did not intervene.

I gobbled this book up, and immediately picked up another Murakami book, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I'm only on chapter two, and unicorns have already made an appearance.