The paper moons need to be believed (a little but passionately) for everything to become real. Just as love, passion, and meaning are embodied and sanctified. Just as Light becomes human. Or as the paper moons rise in the City of Cats, in this indeterminate decade, in the primordial era that is 1Q84, the Japanese and global year of the greatest question mark. The great Wonder. The great Void.

Aomame and Tengo draw closer to each other, to fill the void of the planet with love, to enrich their own wonder and beggary with love.

Foreign purposes and destinations written with spray paint in the subway, murder, revenge, punishment, a ghostwriter, an underage bride, intercourse as transfiguration, transfer to the same place, in the chronotope of the meeting. In the chronotope of an unseen kiss.

Murakami's much-discussed magnum opus constitutes an unprecedented narrative revelry, a festival of words, images, sensations, and when the spectacle ends, what remains is nothing but a very simple - and therefore incredibly captivating - love story, a romantic fairy tale that is summed up in the disarming, passionate, redemptive holding of hands.