I felt like I had read parts of Sputnik Sweetheart before, and it turns out that I had: certain ingredients of the novel were plucked from the pages of Murakami’s short story “Man-Eating Cats” that appeared in The New Yorker in 1991 – which ironically I had only very recently read as part of his short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Sputnik is a Russian word meaning “satellite” that translates literally as “fellow traveler” and in the novel it serves as a larger metaphor with a dual significance. The original Sputnik, of course, was actually the Soviet satellite that launched the Cold War space race in 1957, the year of my own birth. Sumire brings up Jack Kerouac, which Miu comically and mistakenly places in the “sputnik” rather than the “beatnik” genre. The title of the novel is derived from an ironic conflating of terms in an early conversation between fledgling young writer Sumire and a beautiful older woman named Miu, for whom Sumire develops a powerful lesbian attraction. And, in typical Murakami style, it closes with issues unresolved and questions that linger. There is the author’s unique brand of magical realism that is trademark Murakami, although it is far less manifest in this 1999 work than it would be in Kafka on the Shore (2002) or 1Q84 (2010) still there remains a wisp of a hint of some kind of parallel universe that occasionally intersects with our own. There is awkward sex and unrequited love. There is a passion for music, either jazz or classical. There are cats, or at least stories about cats. There are well-drawn complicated female characters, in this case two of them. There is a passive, complacent male protagonist. I would now offer Sputnik Sweetheart as an alternative that is shorter, less convoluted and a much easier read yet still captures the quintessential Murakami. Obviously I am a fan.ĭespite its complexity, I usually recommend Kafka on the Shore to those who have never read Murakami, because it is in my opinion his finest novel.

Two more beckon to me from a nearby shelf in my study. Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami is the twelfth of his eighteen published works that I have read to date.

My sputnik sweetheart book