Rating: 
Summary: Huh?
Review: I like his writing style, but I am still startled by the progression of Japanese narratives. Issues that come up may never be addressed again, and many things are unexplained. At least in this book. Which is fine, for some stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Deep like Atlantis. No; deeper
Review: One complaint I've heard so often about Haruki Murakami is that over and over, he writes the same book. Even if this is true, so what? He writes beautiful books. And really it's not the same, none of them are the same . . . just as a sonata is made each time around the idea of form and scales, notes and instrumental possibility, or a painting built up of layers of brushstrokes on a canvas (or other surface), so Murakami creates and constructs with his personal and specific set of tools these exquisitely wrought novels and stories that always seem to take too long to make their way into English.This novel, the most straighforward of them all, except for maybe South of the Border, West of the Sun, deals the least with the other sides, the under- or over- or through-, peripheral, parenthetical, whatever -- that occupy so much space in the other books. Maybe what I mean is it deals with it the least directly. His characters obsess over the idea, that there is another world, another side, another something, touching lightly on the eternal dialogue about which of any of them is the real one, and this uncertainty, this question informs every aspect of our three main characters' existences; they ask it of each other, though indirectly (this book is all sleight-of-hand), and never staying around to find the answer. They do not want to know: any answer, it seems, would be the worst possible answer. It's about perfection and ideals attained and lost, the continuation of the now empty flesh, such that the soul and spirit become myths and bedtime stories told to the very bodies they once colored and infused. There seems to be an inverse proportionality of the relative smallness of the book to the hole left in your heart when he's done with you this time. It may be my favorite, though I don't know when I'll have the strength to read it again.
Rating:
Summary: My least favorite Murakami
Review: I have read every one of his works and without a doubt he's one of my favorite authors. But, unless you've read everything else by him, read one of his other, better books (in order of greatest to least): Norweigian Wood, Dance Dance Dance, Hardboiled Wonderland, Wind up Bird Chronicle, Elephant Vanishes, Wild Sheep Chase, South of the Border West of the Sun.* Integrating personal love story and "postmodern" fantasy that characterize Murakami's two distinct writing styles, In Sputnik, neither works. The magic just isn't surprising or fantastical here, and having read some of his other works they may seem repetitive. In terms of the personal and love story, the characters are flat and the relationships are uninteresting. Even the narrator is flat. His mundanity is just sleepy, whereas Murakami normally makes the mundane narrator spectacular. And the writing is Murakami at his worst. One paragraph per section sometimes, it's really silly. That the book is essentially 200 pages double-spaced is not reassuring. Maybe it's the new translator If you've read all of his other stuff and need a "Murakami Fix" buy the book. Otherwise, read one of his better books. --
* The "greatness" order of his best three novels (1 Norwegian Wood, 2 Dance Dance Dance, 3 Hardboiled Wonderland) is debatable. Hardboiled Wonderland has the most entertaining plot, but it's a pulp/pop cyberpunk novel. Dance Dance Dance is Murakami at his most brilliant, his most entertaining all around work if you appreciate intellectual stimulation and pyrotechnics in addition to an an engaging plot. Finally, Norwegian Wood is so incredibly personal that it is his most emotionally engaging work; it will make you cry.
It goes the same for all three of these, though: you wont be able to put them down.
Rating:
Summary: Addictive, enigmatic & well-written
Review: I did not expect for this book to be so well-written or the least bit interesting but it caught my eye in the library and it took me just one and a half weeks to finish because it is so addictive. It may start off slow and you won't understand the storyline or point, but continue to read until the very last word and it will all come to you and you'll say, "Now I get it!" Read this book. It's different and interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Very taking story
Review: I read Norwegian Wood from the same author a little earlier. It is interesting that several characters are similar accross the two books. It is really a nice book. Once again the author focusses on a few characters and their psychological profiles. THey are all made very real and very human. However, unlike Norwegian wood, this story also contain some fantastic elements. The story starts with a realistic narrative tone but ends in a fanstastic manner. Because this is unexpected, one keeps thinking about it. I can only recommend reading the book.
Rating:
Summary: Loneliness, love & lust--shown in a different way
Review: The love-triange (if you can call it that) that forms the basic story of this novel is probably known by all readers, so I won't bother mentioning it. It's enough to say that "Sputnik Sweetheart" is about unrequited love. It's also about sexual desire, & Murakami does a beautiful job of describing what it feels like to want someone so badly that it almost hurts. What made Murakami's writing even more enjoyable for me, was the way feelings had to be discovered behind words, between the lines. Maybe it has to do with the minimalist japanese tradition. But I find it so rewarding reading something where every word has its meaning, & not just its obvious meaning but a hidden meaning underneath, & a connection to the rest of the story...I'll certainly be returning to Murakami's work. It has been so refreshing to read a novel so sparse & minimal, & yet so full of emotion. In the end, words can be extremely powerful if they're just used with care & without wasting them or overdoing it with description. Murakami is clearly a talented author & also seems to be a thoughtful & unique person.
Rating:
Summary: Translation makes a difference
Review: This tale of a lonely girl floating quietly around her object of desire, never able to reach out and have her feelings reciprocated, is intriguing and fun to read. Murakami takes the reader from the griminess of Tokyo to the simultaneously lush and stark Greek isles. The story of Miu and Sumire along with the narrator flows nicely together despite an incompleteness about their characters.
The only complaint that kept rerunning itself as I made my way through the book was that I felt I was missing something in the translation. Unlike those texts translated by Rubin or Birnbaum, Sputnik Sweetheart had the distinct aftertaste of trans-language awkwardness. Phrases that have a certain meaning in Japanese seem to be translated literally and the meaning is lost in our culture.
Murakami continues his excursions into mind games with this book and it becomes totally clear by the end of the book that he is doing so. In fact, the last chapter is so ambiguous and strangely worded that one doesn't know whether the final scene was reality or a dream. For most of the book, Murakami builds a wall of safety and reality for the reader, but then turns in the second half and smashes the wall to reveal that the characters' realities are not predicated on laws of a single universe.
A very intriguing book, if not a little confusing. Recommended for die-hard Murakami fans, but perhaps a little too removed from objective reality (or too close to it) for some readers.
Rating: 
Summary: rugurgitation
Review: i hear that the japanese publishing companies can be unforgiving with their pressure -- trying to get authors to consistently produce product on schedule. well, if kodansha's to blame for this one, shame on them. i've been a fan of murakami's for several years now, and i like all of his books to a greater or lesser extent. this is definitely the least of them, in my opinion. this new permutation of his traditional narrator character superimposed over a narrative -- that seems nothing so much as shoplifted from a banana yoshimoto novel -- ends up trite and stale. oh, what is love? it's a guy who likes jazz and whisky with a hard-on for a cute girl who may or may not sleep with him for no readily apparent reason. thanks, mr. murakami, but you can do much, much better than this.
Rating:
Summary: IF IT LOOKS LIKE DOG AND SMELLS LIKE A DOG.........
Review: All Haruki Murakami readers are at a disadvantage I think when they read his novels in translation as the translator stands in between Murakami and his readers. How much of Murakami do we really "get?" This thought was running through my head while I read "Sputnik Sweetheart," a very simple and straight forward novel. A novel with little for me in which to sink my teeth. Which is not to say that SS was not mildly diverting and nicely written or re-written by Phillip Gabriel. But a major Murakami novel or one with high-toned intentions and thoughts...? No not at all. What "Sputnik Sweetheart" is is a very high quality beach or pool novel. And in that sense it succeeds admirably.
Rating:
Summary: Satellites of Love
Review: If there is anything which fuels us into moving down out of the trees and from there, everywhere, it must be passion and desire. It couldn't be boredom, that only leads us to the television, and nothing great can come from that. But p. and d. sends us on our way toward religion, art, music and a new and improved toilet paper. Sometimes, it leads to our destruction. "Sputnik Sweetheart" is set in contemporary Japan, but apart from a few cultural references, it could be read a century from now and still sound current (a fact which threw the Kirkus Reviews writer who thought it was set in 1957 from the Kerouac and Sputnik references at the beginning of the book. The anonynmous reviewer must have missed the Mac Powerbook being used at the end of the novel. Ah, well, the book is only 210 pages long, and Kirkus doesn't pay very much for its opinions). All great love stories have a triangle, to keep the happy or unhappy ending from happening too soon, and in this case it's Sumire, the dedicated unpublished novelist, Miu, the older woman and object of her desire, and the narrator, a teacher and close friend of Sumire, who loves her deeply. Like the Russian satellite, they go round and round and round, sometimes crossing paths and sometimes trying to connect. Murakami describes and explores their relationship in a quiet, restrained fashion, cooly post-modern, but clear in its intent. With a book this short, telling more would be to tell all. The facts are few, but richly embroidered with plenty of meditations that could be read in a number of ways. The life of the book exists not just on the page -- and it's a pleasure to read Murakami's work on that basis alone -- but what goes on in your head as you track the orbits and these lonely satellites.
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