After reading Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women short story collection, I knew he was one of the elite living authors of our time. This immediately made me want to pick up more of his work and I eventually settled on Sputnik Sweetheart.
When I saw that some of his books were on the mysticism and supernatural side, my plan was to leave those for last, because it was Murakami’s ability to give meaning to ordinary life situations that attracted me the most. This led me to Sputnik Sweetheart, which appeared to be a story about love.
In Sputnik Sweetheart, we see through the eyes of the narrator, known only as K. Most of the book is about K’s observations of his best friend Sumire, that he’s also madly in love with. Sadly, Sumire does not hold mutual love for K and instead views him as a friend that she can share her innermost thoughts with. K chooses to not share his feelings with Sumire, but he hints at the concept while masking it in humour a number of times.
Sumire is an inspiring novelist in her mid-20s who is struggling to pen her first notable work. She soon falls in love with a woman named Miu who is seventeen years her senior. This is the first time Sumire has been sexually drawn to anyone, and it’s an obsession that leads to her leaning many new things, including life skills. Sumire ends up working as Miu’s assistant and things get spicy when she tags along on a work trip.
K is forced to witness these events as he lives his own life as a newly qualified elementary school teacher.
On the surface level it sounds like such a basic story, but Murakami has the ability to peel so many different layers of his characters to the point that there’s so much depth behind every word. The writing in Sputnik Sweetheart is easy to follow, but at the same time it’s riddled with metaphors that you may only catch if you’re looking for them.
You could read Sputnik Sweetheart through and interpret it as a story about love, loss and rejection. But you could also read it through and think of it as a spiritual story that shows the separation people between two different dimensions.
Murakami’s power is in allowing the reader to interpret his stories in their own way. It’s ambiguous in ways that serve the readers’ own level of understanding. This is something hard to do without seeming pretentious, but Murakami pulls it off effortlessly.
Sputnik Sweetheart left me wanting more of Haruki Murakami, and I now understand what all the praise is about. I just may have found a new favourite author.
