Blending the Strange with the Standard

What I really like about Murakami is that what he writes, when it involves the bizarre, or supernatural, is a lot like David Lynch's take on it.

Without the horror elements (at least based on 1Q84 and A Wild Sheep Chase), though, yet still retaining that absolutely strange feel. I think that it's mostly Murakami's writing style really helps him to do this. In general it has an airy quality to it; details are not dwelled upon (I've yet to come across a paragraph that focuses in on a person's coat or any such thing), and each motion of his perspective characters is given flesh through his descriptions of their thoughts and states.

And it's this style that makes his stories so readable - despite their mundane strangeness. That is, the way in which he inserts some of the odd into the everyday - the appearance of the Sheep Man later in the book, for example.

And it's always a testament to a writer's powers when you can empathize with their characters.

When the Sheep Man says that the lead can never be with his girlfriend again because he's been too selfish in bringing her with him, my first thought was "I hope that's not true!" After all, we still have the mystery of her ears to get to the bottom of.

Though Murakami does leave the matter of the Little People in 1Q84 rather open.