Book review on Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

Courtesy - Pintrest

Loving someone and not expecting to get it back, sums up this book pretty much and Murakami being the writer, it's surely not a typical love triangle. 

K., 25, the protagonist and also the voice of this book, is a primary school teacher. He's in love with Sumire whom he's friends with since they met in college. Love for reading books is the common interest they share. Infact Sumire even drops out of the college to focus on writing. He's somehow attracted to her. Sumire knows this but never feels the same way back. She says she's actually never been in "Love".

Sumire is a 22 year old girl who's always dressed up shabby and probably smokes all day having zero interests in impressing boys and always focussed on reading and writing, in short, she's quite messed up. Until one day when she meets Miu. She meets Miu and gets her life all together in a way. She starts dressing up well, has a job, quits smoking, learns different languages and what not.

Despite of the fact that Miu is 17 years elder than Sumire, she falls in love for the first time. 

Miu is a Korean who's come to Japan to handle her father's business and is what you call a perfect well maintained lady. She makes it pretty clear to Sumire that she's never going to love anyone or even get physically involved with anyone because of the dark and terrible past, because of something that happened to her 14 years ago, after which she just feels the half of her is just gone somewhere taking away her youth and sexual desires from her.  

K. is in love with Sumire, and she's crazy about Miu, the story runs pretty usual until the time when Sumire just disappears, out of the blue, like smoke. What happened to Miu 14 years ago, which left her this way? Where did Sumire go? Did she return back? All of these questions just lift up the bar of suspense to another level.

The relevance of the title seems a bit coincidental too just like you differ a metaphor and a literal meaning. In the book it's written that once when Miu was having a conversation with Sumire, she says "Sputnik" instead of "Beatnik" and since then Sumire's private name for Miu becomes "Sputnik sweetheart". But metaphorically, it makes more sense which you might figure out once you're done reading.

Murakami even highlights homosexuality in Japan which is undeniably dissimilar to the present. This book includes a different setting out of Japan, and even Miu's character being Korean.

Also, Murakami always makes sure to add a pinch of magical realism to his books. Rather than keeping it sugar sweet he makes sure to keep it natural too, making sure the readers live the book and not just read it.

My favorite phrase from the book is when K.'s reading Sumire's documents wherein she says:

"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? Sounds hard? Not at all. Logically, it's easy. C'est simple. 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. 

In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites."

It's just so queerly simplified. When you don't really want to think about what's right and what's not, you just dream. In a way you just assume what suits you, because you'll never really know the whole of the truth, and at the end, when you know reality always hurts, dreams are always yours', you mould them.