I think the best way to describe Sputnik Sweetheart is take the premise of Carol, but share events through the tone and lens of a typical Murakami protagonist, you know, an indistinct, purely reactionary dude who eats pasta and sulks in his existential isolation.

While K is just there to relay the narrative, Mui and Sumire are really interesting characters who mysteriously live between different planes of existence. Somewhere between who you once were and currently are and want to be. A feeling located between desired dreams and harsher realities. This is a lonely space, but one that must be examined if you are to truly live.

Murakami captures these complex feelings quite expertly in his works of fiction, nearly all of which feel like very real dreams. What is interesting about this particular book, is that Murakami more or less directly addresses why he writes in this particular style,

"In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. None at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Really, reality" (136).

Something to ponder late at night when you can't fall asleep.

This is the thirteenth Murakami book I've read, so even though it's objectively great, I still want to fairly assess it against his greater body of work. Still, I definitely enjoyed it, even if there were less cats than usual.