The novel begins in the fall of 1984 when Aomame, in a taxi rushing to an important appointment gets caught in a traffic jam on a highway. The driver tells her about an emergency stairway she can use to get off the road while making some cryptic remarks about the nature of reality, remarks that turn out to be central to the metaphysics of the novel. Aomame descends the staircase and eventually discovers she is in a world that seems like real world, but is not. She is sure about it when she discovers that in this world there are two moons. The 'Q' in the novel's title means questionable. It is no longer 1984; it is a new world, a questionable replica. The rest of the novel takes place in this replica.
This novel is the story of how Aomame and a boy, Tengo, she once held hands with in elementary school, are eventually drawn back together, in the world of 1Q84, via the machinations of a religious cult called Sakigake, which has established a connection with the creepy Little People. Sakigake hires a private detective named Ushikawa, an incredibly ugly man with crooked teeth and a huge misshapen head, to track Aomame down, for reasons that can’t be divulged.
In my opinion, this is a lovestory between a boy and a girl who once held hands in an empty classroom but then separated over 20 years and how fate entangled them together again. Yeah it is a lovestory but the long plot, along with the intricacy that rose up, is what made this novel super thick, mine is 1318 pages. It took me a month to finish the whole book. You might be tempted to stop reading about two-thirds of the way through—but I would encourage you, if you’re the kind of person to read such a strange book in the first place, to finish the novel. It is well worth it.
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