Sputnik Sweetheart Book Review

Haruki Murakami is one author that I’ve wanted to read for awhile. For those who don’t know, he is one of the most prolific Asian authors of the last few decades. His work has been translated all across the globe and adapted into several movies, including the Oscar-nominated Drive My Car. Recently, I finally read my first Murakami novel, which was 1999’s Sputnik Sweetheart. It’s a great meditation on unrequited love with simple and effective writing and memorable characters.

Translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel, Sputnik Sweetheart is a character study on three different people. Sumire is in love with a woman who’s 17 years her senior. While Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is a struggling writer who dresses like a character in a Jack Kerouac novel. She spends lots of time on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big things in life: what is sexual desire, and how should she tell Miu her feelings for her? Meanwhile, K wonders if he should profess his love for Sumire. Soon, Sumire and Miu go on a trip to Europe. It seems like everything is good until the former suddenly disappears while they’re on a remote Greek island. Will she be found?

One of the first things I noticed while reading Sputnik Sweetheart was its simplicity. Murakami is great at that because he knows when less is more. The way he describes Sumire in the beginning (i.e. how she falls in love with Miu and who she is as a person) gets straight to the point. It’s this bluntness that intrigued me while reading it. The simplicity also reminded me of Ernest Hemingway. That author is best known for his short prose style of writing even though his novels contain lots of filler. There’s some fluff in Sputnik Sweetheart as well. For example, was it necessary to have two chapters devoted to the documents Sumire wrote before she disappeared? But, the more I thought about it, it made sense because of how Sumire writes. 

Moreover, the characters were interesting in their own right. Sumire is definitely the stand out. She dresses like a Jack Keroac character and calls K in the middle of the night from a remote phone booth. Seeing how she evolves over the book was fascinating. Even though Sumire is the most memorable, K and Miu were just as compelling. K is a school teacher who has feelings for Sumire. He spends much of his time reading and having “relationships” with older women, including the mothers of his students. I felt bad for him because of how lonely he was and how much he cared for Sumire. Miu, on the other hand, is Sumire’s employer and love interest. The older woman clearly cares for Sumire, but she could never love her the same way the younger one does. The explanation leans into some magic realism.

All of their conflicts play into the biggest theme of the novel: unrequited love. Murakami hits this notion really hard. Each of these characters feels lonely in their own ways. There are many lines that exemplify this well. One is when K helps Sumire move into her apartment and says that he’ll miss her, he says, “Imagine The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin minus ‘Mack the Knife’” (p. 65).

The other and my personal favorite line is Miu’s realization about her relationship with Sumire:

“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing” (p. 117).

I also have to give credit to Gabriel for maintaining Murakami’s simple and expressive nature. No one can articulate loneliness like Murakami can, and Gabriel captures that spirit. 

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami is a great reflection on loneliness, especially with unrequited love. Each of these characters are engaging, especially in how they deal with longing. Murakami has a great ability to express it in simple and creative ways. I would recommend this to readers looking to read more titles involving unrequited love, loneliness, and anything by Haruki Murakami. I have been wanting to read his work, and I’m glad I launched into that journey with Sputnik Sweetheart.

Before I go, I want to let everyone know that the latest episode of the Adapt Me Podcast will come out next month. Guest and co-host of the Women Insession Podcast Jaylan Saylah and I will talk about how we would adapt this novel. Keep an eye out for the link.