1Q84 - 1

Finally finished reading the first book of 1Q84, not sure if I have the ambition to finish the second before it's due on Saturday. The story started out slowly, but Aomame and Tengo's stories are starting to come together.

image via.

I'm quite fond of this cover design, and the quotations below:

The role of a story was, in broadest terms, to transpose a single problem, into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.

Time itself was uniform in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. [...] by adjusting time this way to suit their own purposes, people probably adjusted the meaning of their existences. In other words, by adding such operations to time, they were able - but just barely - to preserve their own sanity.

That's what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories