1Q84: Book 2 by Haruki Murakami.

3/5 rating. 348 pages.

Book #67 of 2021. Read December 11, 2021.

This is book 2 of 3 of the story and follows Tengo and Aomame’s ever-entwining lives.

These two adults who shared a special moment as children have never been able to forget each other. As Aomame finally completes her mission of killing the Leader of the Sakigake cult, she finds out a lot more than she was ready for. This man has powers that allow him to read minds and to understand things that others cannot. He tells Aomame that the only way to rescue Tengo is by killing the Leader.

Meanwhile, Tengo begins to understand more about Fuka-Eri and the connections between her story and what is happening around him. He is realizing that things that happened in their story are playing out in real life: 2 moons in the sky, and air chrysalises being real.

Aomame after so many years nearly misses being able to talk with Tengo after seeing him and going to find him. But Tengo sees an air chrysalis in his father’s hospital room with a ten-year-old Aomame in it.

Things are beginning to happen more quickly and as Tengo says, cause and effect are beginning to become jumbled together. Are things happening because they wrote about them? I have a lot of theories and questions I’m interested to see conclusions to.

Quotes:

“‘Are you afraid to die?’ ‘Not particularly – living as myself scares me more.’”

“If you have money, you can buy time. You can even buy freedom if you want. Time and freedom: those are the most important things that people can buy with money.”

“And whenever you see a gun, you should treat it as loaded until you know for sure otherwise. Guns are made to kill people. You can never be too careful with them.”

“Taking the loaded gun, Aomame found it considerably heavier than before. Now it had the unmistakable feel of death.”

“You can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose how you die.”

“If only I had made myself do it! If only I had said something to her, my life might be very different.”

“‘Good-bye,’ she murmured, bidding farewell not so much to the apartment as to the self that had lived there.”

“He was simply deep inside the story, and it took him a while to come back out.”

“I don’t want to be alone when something happens.”

“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”

“Most people are not looking for probable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.”

“nothing costs more and yields less than revenge”

“‘There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart,’ Leader repeated softly.”

“In spite of that, everyone wanted to give him large chunks of money. It was a strange world.”

“‘What does ‘real’ mean,’ Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.”

“You are like them. You are afraid of having to shed the armor with which you have kindly defended yourself.”

“But still, he reflected, I ought to wash my pajamas more often. Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.“

“Win or lose, I won’t abandon you.”

“A person’s life may be a lonely thing by nature, but it is not isolated.”

“Still, the two of us understood each other and accepted each other in a very natural way in every last particular – almost miraculously so. Such things don’t happen all that often in this life. For some people, they might never happen.“

“She never answered questions that needed no answers.”

“I want to push myself to my limits, and if things don’t work out, then I can give up. But I will do everything I can until the bitter end. That is how I live.“

“They filled each other’s emptiness.”

“For the first time in his life, he was free: he could live his own life as he wanted to without having to worry about anyone else.”

“I’m a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw.”

“I learned firsthand that it’s not easy making your way through this world.”

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