1Q84

I have read this book, 1Q84. It was strange, complex, and simultaneously detailed and unrevealing. I enjoyed it, though it was sometimes a difficult read. I had not realized that the book centered around gradually revealing the feelings that two main characters had for one another and ensuring that they reacquainted themselves with one another in time.  I think that I might have read the book differently had I known so.  I inherently dislike stories that involve love in this manner.  (Mercifully, the love in 1Q84 was ultimately requited.) 

I normally avoid any form  -- written, visual, aural -- of narrative about unrequited love. I find such chronicles exceptionally painful to behold.  There was, though, one passage in 1Q84 that made me see such matters in a different light.  Perhaps I might be able to tolerate such stories now, realizing that if love must remain unreciprocated, this is the way to find meaning in it nevertheless.

Wasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core -- a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish. — Haruki Murakami (1Q84)