Updated, April 2012. Long theory explained in the spoiler section in the middle... 
 The odd thing about this book is that whether I like it or hate it hinges on a particular point of interpretation, one that I'm not really sure is meant to be dissected the way I'm doing. As such, I literally can't tell if this is a good book operating by rather obscure and crafty methods, or a bad, actually rather reprehensible book, operating by more straight-forward means. The fact that it's Murakami, someone I'm pretty sympathetic to, and who is not usually dumb or simple or reprehensible, makes me want to believe the former, but I feel like it'd be way too easy to miss the things that make this so. Hmmmm. Talk to me, Murakami readers. 
 (Several months later: I do hope that the lameness of the later book was rooted in some kind of post-modern feminist angle, but it seems admittedly doubtful, and contradicts what I know about Murakami's meandering, often under-directed working methods, which are always present, even in the better work, in the inability to write an ending). 
 Basically, the first half of 1Q84 seems like pretty good Murakami all around. More plot-driven and obviously interconnected than usual, but unusually gripping for a while. And of our leads, Aomame initially seems interesting and unique for Murakami (especially vs. Tengo, a typically lost, empty 30ish Murakami avatar). And thematically, Murakami seems to be dealing with some pretty worthwhile social issues, both for Japan and elsewhere. Also, there's this neat post-modern dimension that really bears some consideration. (Actually, it's these post-modern nuances and intrigues that make the more straight-forward-seeming plotting promise something weirder and more surprising to come). 
 THEN, though, that gripping plot? It climaxes in the very middle of the book and unspools. Of the mysteries and intrigues set up in the first half, few will really be revisited. The book enters a holding formation, and when it comes out, the plot has jumped tracks. Or off the tracks, pretty much. But that's not all so serious, necessarily. Much more damaging, all the thematics I liked in the first half seem to have jumped tracks too, into something that is actually diametrically opposed to the first half of the story as I had read it. The force of this opposition is so strong that, to me, it either destroys the book, or is secretly allied with the first half in a scathing criticism of the reader accepts it too readily. 
 I want to be more specific here, now (also added later): (view spoiler)[Basically, the first half of the book seems to circle around stories of abused women and systematic misogyny in Japanese society. Lack of job advancement, viciously domineering and destructive marriages, and even the amazing girl writer has to be re-written by a man to make her marketable. It's all right there. Is this important to talk about? Absolutely. And then? The middle muddles up the themes a bit by making our focus-of-misogyny cult leader a conflictingly semi-sympathetic character and then everything dissolves into the most casually misogynist of setups: Aomame, cold purposeful avenger against masculine aggression, is reduced to waiting endlessly for a man, her new sole purpose in life. And worse, bearing his child. By now the plot is doing nothing, too, of course, but I'm far more enraged by this disregard for the themes. It's absolutely baffling to me. Who, least of all Murakami, could be satisfied by this? Or by the ending that fulfils all this inexplicable waiting? Yet, where are all the angry female readers? Why are we accepting this? 
 It was all so baffling to me that I started thinking there was a chance I was supposed to be mad. (think: Michael Haneke's Funny Games, a movie carefully calibrated to antagonize the viewer for thematically elegant reasons). What if the second half was designed to support the first half by prodding outrage? The greatest possible support for this is in that post-modern angle: earlier in the book, there's every suggestion that Aomame's story is in fact the novel that Tengo is writing. Details from his life inexplicably permeate hers (Chekhov and Janacek are the two most obvious cases), and the whole of the 1Q84 world-detail is explicitly drawn from Air Chrysalis. Later, Tengo gets drawn in as well. At first, this was just a source of weird, thrilling post-modern intrigue and questioning of reality. But in the second half it could be vital. Though the overt references to Aomone's reality being written around her drop away after the mid-point (another reason for second-half boredom), assume that Tengo is still writing her story (afterall, the manuscript returns at the end: it's the one thing he carries with him!). Then everything that disgusts me is turned around. Tengo's misogynist tendencies drag Aomame into a twilight existence where she loses all of her sense of purpose and anger and is reduced to waiting for him, lovestruck. This is such a terrible male fantasy, it seems obvious. The real object of his desire has not been dreaming about him for the last 20 years, to be sure. So he writes her into a stifled projection, cutting off all of her independence and interest as he goes. It's brutal, an act of violence. One that in every way equals the violence against women in the first half. Thus bringing the whole book together into a cohesive whole. Even the iffier bits of the first half are cast in new light: Aomame's beautiful, deadly female assassin is revealed as another kind of reductive male projection, one we see lots of in Japanese pop-culture. And her previously sort of inexplicable tendency to compare breast size with her friends is revealed as, in fact, Tengo's objectifying gaze, once again. 
 Why spend half a book on such a trick? Again, maybe postmodern tactics. Annoy the reader into revolt (like mine!) and they're forced to confront their own complicity in accepting everything up til that point. Come on: did any of you start out rooting for Aomame and Tengo, then find yourself disgusted by going along with the total de-toothing of her character? I expect the pregnancy bit must have pushed someone past their breaking point. Please, someone else corroborate this. 
 Until then, I can't really be sure if this book could be a clever post-modern feminist tirade and maybe actually socially important (the counterpart to the way Wind-Up Bird Chronicle deals with Japan's post-war identity crisis and tendency to bury or forget the gory details of its past), or if it's just muddledly reprehensible, ill-thought-out crap. All of this interpretation seems both deeply worked into the book, but also maybe totally labored and implausible. I really don't know anymore at this point which one I believe. Unfortunately, I'm tending towards hating it. (hide spoiler)] 
 Seriously, I'm stumped. Did he really spend some 400 pages in semi-secret attack on his own story and readers? Are the readers expected to catch on and learn from the experience? Are even a fraction likely to do this if it is so? It's either a one-star book (self-defeating, obnoxious, thematically problematic), or maybe more like a 3.5 star book (super clever and harsh, but why write your longest book as a trick?). Can't decide. If you have theories, let's talk.