the wind up bird chronicle by haruki murakami

There are individual lines that suddenly sound as though they are read in a different voice and have more background noise.

There are also numerous noticeable production issues. Though one of the uncle roles he channels Zap Brannigan from Futurama, and another is an unlistenable over the top pastiche of Peter Lorre playing a cartoon version of Igor. His vocal work as the main narrator is actually very good for the most part, and there are a few male characters he voices well. I will give credit where it is due however. At some point, somebody decided that voices used in Bob the Builder were the same kinds of voices that should be used to narrate Hurki Murakami. I decided to look up some of his work on Bob the Builder, and yes, he uses very similar voices for some of the characters. Looking up his other work also sheds light on his performances. I don’t expect perfect voices, but they can’t be so distracting. I had to pause the audiobook where she had long bits of dialogue, pick up my copy of the book, and read instead of listening. Such a fun and interesting character is turned into a shrill, obnoxious, and intolerable mess. Worst of all is the interpretation of May Kasahara. But for some reason they have chosen to incorporate the most cartoonish of voices, the majority of which are annoying. I don’t know if it was Degas himself, or the director etc. The main problem is Rupert Degas’ voices he uses for certain characters. People need to be prevented from listening to this, as not only is it awful, but it may dissuade them from reading the book. Case in point, I listen to audiobooks while working out, I have just had to pause my workout to write this review as I couldn’t wait for the last five hours to be up.

This audiobook however is just, no other word for it, disgraceful. A lot of Murakami’s novels remind me of the films of David Lynch and like those Murakami constructs a world with stunning imagery and bizarre events. The language is often poetic and the characters are amazing. It’s a surreal journey that is both nightmarish and dreamlike. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has been my absolute favourite book for decades now. Favourite book of all time becomes worst thing to ever enter my ears.

The wind up bird chronicle by haruki murakami