Let me start by saying that I have never read 1984, so any relation between that material and this one is immediately moot. Go ahead, get your pitchforks out. Embrace the shock and indignant disgust. After all, what kind of author hasn’t read such an iconic book? A lazy one, obviously. However, I have read a lot of synopsis material, which is good enough to pass a test in English class, so it’s good enough for me, because I suck at reading. What I do know I know from Google, and Google has informed me that 1984 is 88,942 words in length. Based on that alone, I must assume that the comparison ends there, because 1Q84 is three books, more than 1,100 pages, and oh my god I am so glad I wasn’t assigned this in English class. I now understand how the kids that hated reading felt, because reading should not be a chore.
If you read my About page, you know that large books are an immediate turn off for me, so 1Q84 was arguably doomed from the start. A coworker recommended it, and I bought it with good intentions, because I like to partake in the things that other people enjoy so that I can talk to them about it. I also had a crush on her, which has certainly inspired far worse decisions among the men of the world, so I hardly feel ashamed of my ambition.
What I can say for certain is that this book unequivocally breaks my interpretation of the eighth Vonnegut commandment. I slogged through 194 pages, and I still have no idea where the plot is going or if there even is one. It involves something about rewriting a poorly written fantasy story penned by someone else, for submission into a literary contest, and that might be based on real events (real in the real world of the book, not real in the real real world). Simultaneously, it explores retributive brutality against perpetrators of domestic violence. I am totally on board with both of these things, and yet the presentation of neither of them captured my interest. As the story flopped back and forth between two characters, which I assume are connected in some way, I never felt the slightest investment in either of them. This is rather remarkable, because one is an aspiring author and the other is an assassin. Given the basic premise and the characters involved, you would think that my delusional self-aggrandizement would lay roots somewhere within the story, but alas, it was more like riding a powerless trolley on a slope-less plain.
The most exciting thing I recall was when the assassin went to visit her patron (or client, maybe?), and the older woman had an office in a greenhouse full of butterflies. The imagery of this scene was fantastic, and very engaging.
Overall, I believe my lack of immersion resulted from an apparent lack of consequences. That is, I never felt that anything was at stake for any of the characters. The effort of the author to restructure the story and win the literary contest is seemingly presented as an inevitable conclusion, with a minor nod towards the ethical ramifications of it, and the work of the assassin is essentially ignored by law enforcement, at least in the realm of character introductions. Perhaps someone shows up later, but I can’t be bothered to get there.
In retrospect, I’m comfortable declaring transgressions against commandments 1, 2, 6, and 8, with egregious disregard for the 4th. On that last point, the conversations are especially bad, as they often feel cyclical. Characters reliably repeat each other or respond in unnatural ways that only serve to prompt the next half-page paragraph of exposition from the speaker.
Based on Janet Maslin’s review from the New York Times, which includes the delicately concise phrasing of “nearly 1,000 uneventful pages”, I am apparently not alone in my experience. Thus, I do not feel guilty in abandoning my current progress.
As I said, I have never read 1984, but maybe I will, and then maybe 1Q84 will magically become interesting as a result. Then again, maybe not. I read the synopsis.
