Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?
“A question.
So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud! ) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening the grass grow-not thinking in other words? Sounds hard? Not at all. Logically it’s easy. C’est simple. The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of the time.
In dreams you don’t need to make any distictions between things. Not 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.
Reality, reality.”
(Murakami, H. Sputnik Sweetheart)
About the book:
The heroine of the novel is an aspiring author named Sumire, who falls in love with an older woman, Miu, who appears to like Sumire for certain qualities, though she has no time for Sumire’s aspirations and ideals. The third character is the unnamed narrator, an elementary school teacher, referred to twice by Sumire only as ‘K’, who is in love with Sumire, though Sumire does not requite his feelings.
While Sumire is an emotional and spontaneous individual who often appears to be a misfit in society, “K”, the narrator, is a person who has through sheer force of will moulded himself into another person, one who integrates seamlessly into the wider society and culture around him, and the transition leaves him emotionally stunted and unable to express his feelings. When Sumire is also, through her interaction with Miu, forcibly shaped into a person other than she is, the transformation is neither permanent nor successful, and Sumire disappears without ever being found or seen again while holidaying with Miu in Greece, with tragic, haunting consequences for Miu in particular.