Sputnik Sweetheart: A Novel
by Haruki Murakami
List Price:
Our Price: $7.88
You Save: $6.12 (44%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $4.73 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Haruki MurakamiTranslator: Philip Gabriel
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-04-09
ISBN: 0375726055
Number of pages: 210
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Sputnik Sweetheart: A Novel
Book Review: Far Away on the Other Side
Summary: 4 Stars
"Sputnik Sweetheart" is one of two novels by Haruki Murakami which I have read, the other being "Norwegian Wood". Superficially, the two novels have certain things in common. Both are first-person narratives, narrated by a male character who tells of his unhappy relationship with an unusual or eccentric young woman. Here the narrator is a young school teacher named only as "K". K is in love with an aspiring author named Sumire (Japanese for "violet"), but his love is unrequited as Sumire, hitherto heterosexual, has fallen in love with an attractive older married woman named Miu. Sumire's lesbian love for Miu is also not entirely requited; Miu becomes a close friend of the younger woman and offers her a job in her company, and the two go on holiday together. Miu, however, appears to have no sexual feelings either for Sumire or for her largely absent husband, and the two never have a sexual relationship, much to Sumire's frustration.
In the first part of the novel it seems like a psychological study of emotional relationships (which is essentially what "Norwegian Wood" is). About halfway through, however, the tone starts to change. While on holiday with Miu in Greece, Sumire mysteriously disappears without trace. From this point on the tone of the book changes as strange quasi-supernatural events start to occur. The novel can be described as magical-realist in character in that these strange events take place against a background of mundane, everyday ones. It is implied that Sumire has disappeared into a mysterious "other side", a phrase which in this context refers to a sort of parallel universe rather than a traditional religious afterlife. This "other side" is also associated with a shocking and inexplicable experience which Miu had some years earlier, when she was accidentally locked in a Ferris wheel after closing time and, looking down into her apartment, had a vision of her own doppelganger.
The title "Sputnik Sweetheart" is Sumire's nickname for Miu and derives from an incident in which Miu accidentally described Jack Kerouac, Sumire's favourite writer, as a "sputnik novelist" while meaning to say "beatnik". In the context of the story the image of the Sputnik satellites orbiting the earth at a distance becomes symbol of the loneliness and alienation which affects all the major characters. K is a quiet, emotionally reserved individual who, frustrated in his desire for Sumire, takes refuge in a loveless affair with the mother of one of his pupils. Sumire is equally frustrated in her feelings for Miu, who herself suffers from an inability to experience sexual or emotional desire. Her uncanny experience on the Ferris wheel has, she feels, split her personality in half, with the warmer, more emotional side trapped on the "other side". It is implied that when Sumire disappears she does so because she is searching for the "other" Miu, the Miu who can experience love.
Murakami uses the metaphor of the "other side" in order to symbolise the split in the human personality between the public and the private self. There is a gap between the way in which K the quiet, reserved teacher English, Sumire the outgoing bohemian intellectual and Miu the successful, confident businesswoman appear to the outside world and the way in which they appear to themselves. A similar gap is apparent even in minor characters such as K's pupil "Carrot" who is a well-behaved schoolboy in the classroom but who is impelled by some internal emotional conflicts to go on shoplifting sprees.
I preferred this book to "Norwegian Wood", a rather pedestrian love story which I found rather gloomy and morbid in its romanticisation of suicide and mental illness. I found "Sputnik Sweetheart", by contrast, much more imaginative and original. Murakami manages to integrate the realistic and the fantastic elements in his story into a coherent whole and, in doing so, makes some relevant points about the psychology of human relationships. This is "magic realism" with a point; the magical elements are not pure whimsy or fantasy but serve to convey the novelist's ideas.
Summary of Sputnik Sweetheart: A Novel
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.A college student, identified only as ?K,? falls in love with his classmate, Sumire. But devotion to an untidy writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments?until she meets Miu, an older and much more 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 her world and beset by ominous, haunting visions. A love story combined with a detective story, Sputnik Sweetheart ultimately lingers in the mind as a profound meditation on human longing.
Sputnik Sweetheart finds Haruki Murakami in his minimalist mode. Shorter than the sweeping Wind-up Bird Chronicle, less playfully bizarre than A Wild Sheep Chase, the author's seventh novel distills his signature themes into a powerful story about the loneliness of the human condition. "There was nothing solid we could depend on," the reader is told. "We were nearly boundless zeros, just pitiful little beings swept from one kind of oblivion to another."
The narrator is a teacher whose only close friend is Sumire, an aspiring young novelist with chronic writer's block. Sumire is suddenly smitten with a sophisticated businesswoman and accompanies her love object to Europe where, on a tiny Greek island, she disappears "like smoke." The schoolteacher hastens to the island in search of his friend. And there he discovers two documents on her computer, one of which reveals a chilling secret about Sumire's lover.
Sputnik Sweetheart is a melancholy love story, and its deceptively simple prose is saturated with sadness. Characters struggle to connect with one another but never quite succeed. Like the satellite of the title they are essentially alone. And by toning down the pyrotechnics of his earlier work, Murakami has created a world that is simultaneously mundane and disturbing--where doppelgängers and vanishing cats produce a pervasive atmosphere of alienation, and identity itself seems like a terribly fragile thing. --Simon Leake
Literary Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Literary Books
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
Angelsby Marian Keyes
William Morrow; Published: 2002-05-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.13
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.74
Price in other shops:
The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptationby Paulo Coelho
Harper; Published: 2006-07-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
Boonville: A Novelby Robert Mailer Anderson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Carameloby Sandra Cisneros
HarperAudio; Published: 2002-10-01; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $4.60
Price in other shops:
Headhunterby Timothy Findley
PERENNIAL PUBLICATIONS; Paperback; Book
The Crimson Petal And The Whiteby Michel Faber
Harcourt, Inc./Harvest; Published: 2003; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.50
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Vintage International)by Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 2007-10-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.51
Price in other shops:
After Dark (Vintage International)by Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (Norton Critical Editions)by Olaudah Equiano, Werner Sollors
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2001; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.93
Kafka on the Shoreby Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 2006-01-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.62
Price in other shops:
Lucy: A Novelby Jamaica Kincaid
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2002-09-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.82
Price in other shops:
Dance Dance Danceby Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 1995-01-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.51
Price in other shops:
South of the Border, West of the Sun: A Novelby Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 2000-03-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.22
Price in other shops:
Norwegian Woodby Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 2000-09-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.57
Price in other shops:
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International)by Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 1993-03-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.58
Price in other shops:
A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novelby Haruki Murakami
Vintage; Published: 2002-04-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.96
Price in other shops: