Sometimes I feel so - I don't know - lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you're used to has been ripped away. Like there's no more gravity, and I'm left to drift in outer space with no idea where I'm going."Like a little lost Sputnik?"I guess so. . . *****One of the reasons why I picked this book up because of the title itself, Sputnik Sweetheart. It is a wonderful title for what it accounts for. It is as if it holds a special kind of love and romance. At first I was a bit perplexed when I finally read its blurb in Goodreads. All these preconceived thoughts running through my head, I just knew it was not going to be my sort of a book at all because it had a homosexual ring into it, not that I have anything against homosexuals, though. However, my mind clam shut and read it anyway.***** "About half a year later, just as I had predicted, suddenly, preposterously, a-tornado-like love seized Sumire with a woman 17 years older than her, her very own Sputnik Sweetheart." The whole thing is narrated by K. who happens to be in love with Sumire, but unfortunately, she doesn't feel the same way. She's in love with Miu who happens to be a woman 17 years her senior. Miu just had to smile that slow smile of hers, and Sumire's innocent heart flipped.Sumire is an aspiring writer and like some other writers, she seems weird. She pretty much drowns herself in words and life's ambiguities. Sumire was a hopeless romantic, a bit set in her ways, innocent of the ways of the world, to put a nice spin on it. She smoked too much, and you could count on her to lose her ticket every time she took the train.Whenever she came across lines she liked she'd mark them in pencil and commit them to memory as if they were Holy Writ.She'd stand around, hands shoved deep in her coat pockets, her hair uncombed mess, staring vacantly at the sky. I like Sumire and her flair for dramatics. Her sense of humor comes out naturally she doesn't even have to try hard. Sometimes she would answer K. in a whiplash response and I found myself giggling and nodding along to her witty sarcastic remarks. I was completey drawn to her character more than K. At 22, she knows what she wants and she knows how to get it. She's definitely going to have a go for it. But like most journeys, there are detours, hurdles that one might encounter along the breezy path.She wants a life free of complications. Who does not? But life can be cruel.***** "I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself any more. It's hard to put it into words, but I guess it's as if I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling." Sumire, I think, is afraid to get out of her comfort zone that's why when all this life changing events drastically paved its way to her heart and soul, she freaks out. She doesn't know what to do anymore. Now, she dashes off somewhere, leaving everything behind. No one knows what really happened after.*****What I liked about K. and Sumire's relationship was their 'unconditional and intimate connection'. What would be your initial reaction if someone called you at three in the morning just to talk about some. . .things? I would be mad, and irritated, and be mad. And later on I would find it sweet that of all people, this person wanted to hear my voice, or maybe, this person just wanted to talk and he wanted to share it with me. Blah.It's a great storytelling, though. The author writes beautiful prose from start to finish, and one would find it difficult to put it down as the story begins to unfold like unraveling a tangled thread, the characters retraced their steps from the empty stage, and rehearsed lines itching to revel and reveal. Even if the ending was open ended, and some parts beg to ponder and arouse confusion, it didn't faze me. Well, just a ticklish bit. I like Sumire in my own garbled way. I could relate to her predicaments and if she were real, I would probably hug her. I devoured every page from the story that I couldn't help myself but to write some heartfelt lines in my notepad (I could have run out of paper, though) so I could leaf through the pages every chance I got, consigning it to my memory.If you ever got around to reading it, please, read it slowly, my darling, without any sense of prejudice and resentment. It will urge you to do a little bit of introspection about how much you really know about yourself. I'm pretty sure you'll finish this book in a single day. It's more apt to read it in a cold, rainy evening with your jazz and blues record collection turned up in your speakers, and just relish the feeling. Do you know what 'Sputnik' means in Russian? Travelling Companion.We were wonderful travelling companions, but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal on their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is lacked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe, even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude until we burned up and became nothing. – Miu P.S.: While the black-and-white cover art displays nudity and sensuality, I am not ashamed to read it in public.I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams. – SumireSoundtrack of the day: Alicia Ross by Kathleen Edwards
A moment in my life that has come back to haunt me during times of communication difficulty is when I told my grandmother that I hated to repeatedly shout out what I'd said for my mostly deaf grandfather because it made what I'd said sound stupid. Her response was that it was stupid all along, or something like that.I've decided that reading translated works and translating them again with one's mind, experiences, what have you is like doing a cover song. Jeff Buckley actually used another Leonard Cohen song in his working of Cohen's Hallelujah. (I can't remember which one off the top of my head. This is going to bug me.) (Tv shows need to be more original. They can't use any other song?! My favorite Homicide: Life on the Street did it first, at least.) I mix up Murakami books in my mind. I'm not entirely sure that my favorite remembered things about Sputnik Sweetheart were actually in this particular book.The wish to have someone you could call up at three in the morning and talk about anything you wanted. Even if they were asleep.Noooo, that's not what I meant! Leave me alone, Rob!Maybe I wouldn't like this book if I reread it. It's sorta caught in my mind of my ex. Speaking of Cohen, my ex hated him because he sang about being alone and yet always had lots of women. It smacked of "No one loves ME" resentment, which kinda sucked hearing from the guy you were with. (He wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than total world love.) Anyway, the narrator reminded me of him. I might hate that now... That's one problem that I do have with Murakami. His strength of seeing the sinister possibility or shadows of something that was always there is also too everyman at times when it comes to things like relationships. Like there are SUPPOSED to be these set rules that everybody follows with men and women. Or I could be remembering it wrong. We're not supposed to be anyone else. That's the beautiful thing about not always understanding what the hell anyone means. I dislike the general male-y everymanly things.Still would want to talk at 3 a.m with the imaginary person who might actually get it and not care if they didn't.... (Shit. That fucking song is in my head now.)I loved the description that the girl looked like she'd grow a beard if she could. I love descriptions like that 'cause that speaks to my brain functions in a way I can actually picture it. I think it was Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World that described the chick as looking good like playing a best friend of the lead in a movie. (The Flight of the Conchords did it even better. "You could be a part time model!")My favorite part is the girl who splits into two people. That feeling lived in my eyes right off the pages.You know what I really hate more than just about anything? Anyone who will respond to heart ache with a tale about how someone else has it worse (my ex EXcelled at this) like that means you should shut up. These people are always the ones who whine about the small shit, spare no self-pity. Whatever. I pretty much think those people should fuck off. If there's an everymanliness about the sex stuff (I didn't care if it was amazing to find a big girl hot, for example. Wonderland? I think?), Murakami is wonderful about the heart aches that matter because those are the beats you can hear pounding in your ears, no matter what else (shit talk) is drowning out the rest.I wish I could read braille. I wonder what it would be like to translate words into finger touches.
What do You think about Sputnik Sweetheart (2002)?
I had a lot of free time today so I decided to go to a bookstore. When I went in, I was greeted by a range of Murakami books (joined by Palahniuk, etc. I don't know, must be their bestsellers). I had to wipe my drool. My eyes were set on Sputnik--it has been on my reading list for a long time now but unfortunately, I don't have the money to buy it yet. Just as I was about to move to another section, a brilliant idea suddenly came: Why not read it here and now? The book isn't that thick and maybe it would take 4-5 hours to finish. However, I wasn't fully open to this idea. I think Murakami isn't something you read in a public place. An emotionally charged book + the emotional me = buckets of tears.But of course we all know what happened next.Before, when I read a good story, I usually say "I wish I was the one who wrote this," or "I wish I was as good as him/her." After reading this though, I can only manage a "to have Murakami's imagination..."
—Hannah
" الفانتازيا ، الموسيقى ، الكتب ، العلاقات الحميمة " من المستحيل أن تقرأ رواية لموراكامى بدون أن تجد هذه العناصر مُجتَمعة معاً ، حتى و إن اختلفت القصص و الشخصيات و الحوارات .. تجد طابع الرواية العام مُوَحَد ، بأسلوب جذّاب ! قرائتى السادسة لموراكامى .. ومن كُتّابى المّفَضلين و ما زلت أنبهر به كل مرة ♥
—HODA
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki MurakamiMy rating: 4 of 5 starsBlurb: Haruki Murakami, the internationally bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, plunges us into an urbane Japan of jazz bars, coffee shops, Jack Kerouac, and The Beatles to tell this story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited loves.K falls in love with Sumire but a devotion to an untidy writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments - until she meets Miu, an older sophisticated businesswoman. When Sumire disappears from an island off the coast of Greece K is solicited to join the search party and finds himself drawn back into a world beset by ominous, haunting visions. Thoughts: Initially this seemed like the easiest of all Murakami's work to read, a simple love/friendship develops between two people and a third person becomes involved. This brief synopsis sounds like a terrible sitcom premise but in the hands of Murakami it is something beautiful. If you've experienced the powerful and complex narratives of Wind-up Bird or Kafka on the Shore you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. “Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?” The regular Murakami themes of loneliness, isolation, effects of homogonisation of Japanese society are prevalent throughout but less reliant on mysticism and other worldliness. There's something quite wonderful about his style of writing that I just don't tire of, his metaphors are especially potent and the reference to Sputnik orbitting the Earth is one of the most enjoyable that I remember ever reading. “In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.” Murakami's ability to create powerful visuals with his words is another aspect that keeps him head and shoulders above most other novellists writing today but the sense of loss he creates towards the end of this fabulous, slim novel is second to none and will linger in the mind for some time to come. “Her voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my consciousness.” As a man who considers himself relatively closed off to emotion I'm unsure as to whether a novel should bring tears to your eyes and a pain in your heart but laying here alone in my empty house today that is what happened. “We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.” Originally posted at blahblahblahgay
—Tfitoby
