Sputnik Sweetheart

....SynopsisSumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized coat and heavy boots and lives on a small family stipend with the insightful experience of K, her best friend and the protagonist of this book. K is a primary school teacher in love with Sumire but unable to express his love because Sumire is in love with Miu, a glamorous wealthy woman 17 years older than her who runs her own wine company.The story revolves around these three and their unrequited love stories. Sumire and K have a very strong bond of friendship and they spend hours discussing life's big questions. One day Miu asks Sumire to work for her and they start spending time with each other, mostly working and visiting various restaurants to taste wine. Then one day, Sumire and Miu go on an abroad trip to Europe, to check wine samples and maintain healthy relationships with the sellers to smoothly run the business.Sumire and Miu were having an amazing time in a small Greek island, swimming naked on the beach under the shining sun, eating and tasting exotic food as well as wine. It was more of a vacation than a business trip for them. Sumire at the same time wrote letters to K telling him about her daily routines, things they did and the places they went.Everything was going great, until K received a surprising call from desperate Miu, asking him to urgently fly to the island they were because something has happened to Sumire. Sumire has mysteriously vanished....without a trace.......ReviewThis is the second book I have read by Murakami after reading 'Birthday Girl'. I loved the short story and looked forward to reading other writings by Murakami.Sputnik Sweetheart is a story of unrequited love, desire and loneliness. It explores that notion of existential crisis, personal awareness and "Who am I?". As we keep on changing ourselves to survive from the harsh realities of life, the characters come across various circumstances when they have to change themselves and their identity in the story.A fascinating story that kept me hooked till the end. Murakami portrays the intimacy of the characters' conversations and their passionate love for each other in an incredibly beautiful way. The one thing I have experienced from Murakami's writings is that his novels talk about serious issues such as the reality of life, existence and relationships. The questions of our identity often emerge, letting the readers challenge their perspectives. His writing has a great amount of depth in it and there are more questions than answers, the questions are left loose to be interpreted by the reader, making way for open-ended interpretations.After reading 'Birthday Girl', this writing pattern feels a little repetitive to me and I felt that in terms of the way he writes his books there was nothing new. But, this writing style of Murakami is not boring, it keeps you attached to the story and you can't help but keep reading just to know what happens next. All the metaphors and details used to describe various situations and emotions add a different experience altogether. The writing style has a significant depth to it and the readers are left wondering about the things which are yet to be discovered from the story. ....Here are some of the metaphors from this book which I liked:1. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand.2. A nostalgic, intimate smile, like a treasured old possession, pulled out of the back of a drawer.3. In the instant Miu touched her hair, Sumire fell in love as if she were crossing a field when bang! a bolt of lightning zapped her right in the head. Something like an artistic revelation.4. Her mind was as clear as the winter night sky, the Big Dipper and North Star in place, twinkling brightly.5. His mere presence lent the place a flamboyant atmosphere. Like cut flowers in a large vase or a jet-black stretch limousine.6. Like the sound of a velvet curtain being drawn aside on a peaceful morning to let in the sunlight to wake someone very special to you.7. Her heart galloped as loudly as a crazed horse on a wooden bridge.8. Like a block of ice left out in the sun, she might very well disappear.9. Her voice was like a line from an old black-and-white Jean-Luc Godard movie, filtering in just beyond the frame of my consciousness.10. Miu popped an olive into her mouth, grasped the pit with her fingers and, like a poet getting the punctuation just right, gracefully discarded it in an ashtray......And, here are some of the quotations I loved:1. Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it’d lose even its imperfection.2. No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.3. What’s nurtured slowly grows well and what you need are time and experience.4. What’s important is being attentive. Staying calm, being alert to things around you and not prejudging things, listening to what’s going on, keeping your ears, heart, and mind open.5. Everybody’s got something weird about them.6. It is the same with anything—you have to learn through your own experience, paying your way. You can’t learn it from a book. If it’s something a single book can explain, it’s not worth having explained.7. The biggest problem right now is that you don’t know what sort of fiction you’re dealing with. You don’t know the plot; the style’s still not set. The only thing you do know is the main character’s name. Nevertheless, this new fiction is reinventing who you are. Give it time, it’ll take you under its wing, and you may very well catch a glimpse of a new world. But you’re not there yet, which leaves you in a precarious position.8. You’re optimistic one moment, only to be wracked the next by the surety that it will all fall to pieces.9. Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings.10. What’s important here is not the big things other people have thought up, but the small things you, yourself, have.....A great lesson to learn from this book:There are moments in our lives when we feel so lonely and weak. The kind of helplessness where everything we used to be, gets taken away from us and we don't know where we're headed. Much like drifting in outer space without any sort of gravity. And then we remember that we are lost souls on our separate orbits, in unimpeded darkness, floating alone. Just like travelling companions, we meet and pass each other, only to never meet again.We might look like beautiful shooting stars from far away, but in reality, we're all locked up in our self-made prisons, going nowhere. This is the only way we're going to stay in our lives. No matter how deep and profound our loss is, no matter how important things have been taken from us - snatched from our hands, we keep living our lives. We keep on going down our chosen path, endlessly repeating our routines and leaving behind the past a feeling of immense emptiness...I loved reading Sputnik Sweetheart and would dive more into Haruki Murakami's other writings. I would recommend everyone to read it and give this a book 🌟🌟🌟🌟.