People break, life goes on, and while I can’t say I understand it myself, it’d be no good if all our books assured us of the stereotypical fairytale ending. And while people don’t just disappear off the face of the earth for no reason, at least there is no stereotypical ‘happy ending’ in Sputnik Sweetheart. I remember reading Crime & Punishment, and was almost disgusted at how Dostoevsky made sure that the reader knew that everything would resolve itself. I’ve had lengthy discussions about it, and without giving much away, neither me nor my friends can agree on what really happened (assuming, of course, anything happened at all).

We’re all left wondering what really happened, and you can read anything you want into the ending. The ending, like all Murakami books, has some (and I mean some) concreteness but lacks any true ending that you might want. But this video reviewer lamented the lack of clear ending or even direction, characteristic of Murakami’s postmodern style, and also lamented that her American upbringing was what kept her from understanding the way people can break and never recover.Īnd break K does. Strange things happen, of course, as in any Murakami book. Sputnik Sweetheart Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel (Translator) 3.83 144,502 ratings9,735 reviews alternate cover for ISBN 9780099448471 A mystery story about love, the cosmos and other fictional universes Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. Isn’t that the point? That the ending is left ambiguous? If you’re wondering, K is ruined by Sumire’s disappearance (very predictably so), but that’s not the point.

But I will comment that I write this only because I saw a video review for this book, where the reviewer lamented that the book ends the way it does. Then, one day, Sumire goes missing from the little island, never to be seen again. They fall in love and then fly to Greece together on business/vacation. Sumire is an aspiring author who eventually finds work for this mysterious businesswoman (or something like that) who is 17 years her senior. A nameless twenty-to-thirty year old man (known as ‘K’) is in love with a girl named Sumire. Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart is an easy to follow novel, at least at the beginning.

My sputnik sweetheart book