How many times have writers (and filmmakers, for that matter) adapted the Orpheus myth into a modern tale of loss and redemption? More than I can think of at the moment (too lazy to research). But Haruki Murakami tackles this subject matter with quality and originality.

    In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Toru Okada has just up and quit his job as a gopher for a small but respectable Japanese law firm. His wife, Kumiko, is not too concerned with his unemployment and definitely wants him to spend time looking for Noboru Wataya, their recently missing cat, who is named after Kumiko's estranged and arrogant brother. Toru spends a little time nonchalantly searching the neighborhood, but the town they have lived in for years just doesn't feel the same. Did their street always cease at a dead end? Why does the house at the end of the street always have people move in, only to suffer terrible tragedies and quickly abandon it again? And why has its well never had any water? Toru starts getting calls or called upon by strange women or relatives who all have some passion in the metaphysical search to, "find the missing piece of their souls." They also tell him that he'll be looking for more than just his cat. Toru's ordinary life is abruptly "unwound" as he returns home one day to find that Kumiko didn't come home from work, let alone get to work. He has feverish and erotic dreams of a "dark hotel" where he nightly searches in vain for Kumiko and always feels an impending sense of immense dread. Like the dry well, something is slowly eating away at his reality, and the real Noboru Wataya's return forces Toru to fight for, not only his and Kumiko's soul, but everyone else's as well.

    Murakami takes the Orpheus symbolism and spreads it all over the novel. Every character is missing a piece of their soul, and that missing aspect threatens their very existence. They all feel a gap in their lives, either stemming from past regrets, present paralysis, or future fears. Yet each is gifted with a talent or power for creating or healing that can be used to help others but never themselves. Toru must battle and heal himself as much as this "dream world" to save Kumiko, our Eurydice. Every character, like the gears and springs in the "wind-up bird" of reality, play an integral role for each other, even if they never meet. Murakami wastes no characters, and he paints a vivid picture of each one's passions and conflicts. And he effortlessly intertwines all their lives in a gentle whirlwind, not unlike Tom Robbins (or Pynchon, for that matter). "Sisters" Malta and Creta Kano (named after the two islands) are positive proof of this.

    Aside from the parallel to the Greek myth, Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle appears to be influenced by, or similar in style to, many strong writers. Toru's exposure to his uncle's and his lieutenant's brutal stories of the Japanese occupation of Mongolia is reminiscent of Umberto Eco's "memoirs" of WWII. Murakami's elements of fantasy rely on geometries of time evident in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (does this remind you of Amitav Ghosh's great Calcutta Chromosome?). Yet he is an easy read; Murakami describes everything in simple and clear terms, but his movement of tense and point of view are, at times, acrobatic. To top it off, Toru's friendship with May Kasahara, the teenage toupeé weaver, is a realistic and funny take on Nabokov's Lolita.

    The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle really stayed with me, since I had recently been laid off. I related to Toru's initial feeling of floating in metaphysical limbo, only to feel an invisible pressure mounting, and the desire to feel grounded and whole. Unemployment has given me spare time to write; now if I can just get a job before my cat (or my wife) goes missing! –Matthew Payne, 1999