The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel (Vintage International)

And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words.

Hoshino was drawn back to his childhood. He used to go to the river every day to catch fish. Nothing to worry about back then, he reminisced. Just live each day as it came. As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird … People are born in order to

That’s what we all do: endlessly take the long way around. I wanted to tell her this, but kept silent. Blurting out aphorisms like that was another one of my problems.

On the plane leaving Tokyo I’m sitting alone in back twisting the knobs on an Etch-A-Sketch and Roger is next to me singing “Over the Rainbow” straight into my ear, things changing, falling apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn’t give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by peopl