Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle *** 1/2

Although in form and shape the thing before her could have been nothing but a submarine, it looked instead like some kind of symbolic sign — or an incomprehensible metaphor.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a strange book, and I mean that as a compliment. Murakami's style blends mundane details with uncanny incidents. The story starts with a commonplace search for a missing cat, but already on the first page our narrator receives a phone call from a mysterious woman trying to entice him into phone sex. The ratio of ordinary events to extraordinary events tilts in favor of the latter as the book continues.

The English edition consists of three sections, which were published as separate books in Japan. In the first two sections, I felt a connection between the narrative and recognizable metaphorical themes (section one: "How much do we really know about our family and friends?"; section two: "How much do we really know about our own nature and motivations?"). In the third and longest section, events start to feel untethered and somewhat random. I think Murakami means to explore the role of fate, but as I said the first time I reviewed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I "started to lose track of the theme, which made it all seem strange without a purpose."

Well, finally, the events I've been through have been tremendously complicated. All kinds of characters have come on the scene, and strange things have happened one after another, to the point where, if I try to think about them in order, I lose track.

It's too bad, because there are scenes and stories of great interest spread throughout the book.

Jeffrey Frank, Ike and Dick ***

I was hoping and expecting that this Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage between Dwight David Eisenhower and Richard Nixon would show how the two men misunderstood each other due to their vastly different temperaments. However, the book mostly describes how Nixon interpreted Eisenhower's passive/aggressive conflict avoidance without a counterbalancing account of Eisenhower's interpretation of Nixon. And since Ike and Dick is about their feelings, the descriptions of the political events themselves is perfunctory.

The story is strongest during the episodes that most clearly and directly relate to Eisenhower's non-committal public statements: the "fund episode" that led to Nixon's Checkers speech; the choice of VP for the second term (with Eisenhower trying to convince Nixon to take a cabinet post instead); and the 1960 election ("If you give me a week, I might think of one [policy that Nixon spearheaded as VP]"). There is also the time when Eisenhower wanted Nixon to fire his chief of staff Sherman Adams, which showed the same behavior applied to someone other than Nixon.

When describing his sources, Jeffrey Frank notes that historians now consider Eisenhower "a man skilled in the art of forceful indirection... [and] a leader who had patience and purpose, particularly in foreign affairs." You would not get that impression from Ike and Dick. It omits any discussion of his accomplishments, and the general comes across as an amiable timid jerk.