Sputnik Sweetheart

Sputnik Sweetheart is a Japanese novel that follows the narrator "K" as his love interest falls in love with someone else and disappears under mysterious, perhaps magical, circumstances. Kodansha first published the novel in Japanese in 1999 and then an English version in 2001.

Narrator K is a 25-year-old schoolteacher who's unrequited love for Sumire, an aspiring writer, is at the center of the story. As the story begins, Sumire has met a Korean woman named Miu at a wedding. Even though she's 17 years older than her, Sumire finds herself sexually attracted to her in a way that she hasn't been attracted to anyone before. The two strike up a friendship.

Miu is a rich woman who owns her own wine import business and is accustomed to a finer way of life. As her friendship with Sumire develops, Sumire begins dressing in nicer, more feminine clothes, quits smoking and develops writer's block. Miu hires Sumire to do some work for her, and the two begin traveling around Europe. Sumire stays in contact with K mostly through letters and phone calls. Sumire's last letter explains that she won't be home as soon as expected because they're vacationing on a Greek island.



After a while of no contact with Sumire, K becomes concerned. He calls and gets no answer. Later, his call is returned by Miu who tells him that something has happened to Sumire. K travels to Greece the next day to try to help his friend.

Miu tells K that Sumire tried to engage her sexually, and Miu turned her down. After that, Sumire disappeared, and Miu thinks she may have committed suicide. K assures her that Sumire isn't the type to do such a thing.

While Miu leaves for Athens to contact the Japanese embassy and Sumire's parents, K finds Sumire's computer and a floppy disk containing two documents. The first document is a dream that Sumire had about being unable to reach a different version of her dead mother. The other document tells the story of how a Ferris wheel malfunctioned with Miu on it, and she was stuck there overnight. She used binoculars to see into her apartment and saw herself having sex with a man. The sight made her feel as though she was split into two people, and her sexual desire left her. Her hair turned white. Reading this, K considers that there's an alternate universe that Sumire has gone to find the sexual version of Miu.



When Miu returns from Athens, K heads back to Japan. He feels empty and sad without Sumire.

K is in a relationship with a student's mother. The student's name is Carrot, and his mother is married. One day, K gets a call from the mother that Carrot has been caught shoplifting, and she needs K's help. K meets with the security guard who is holding Carrot and eventually convinces him to let Carrot go. K and Carrot go to a coffee shop where K relates the story of Sumire. When he drops Carrot off, he breaks up with his mother.

On the street another day, Miu drives her Jaguar past K but doesn't acknowledge him. She's stopped dying her hair, and it's white. He feels that the connection he had felt previously for her in Greece is gone and that she's an empty shell. That's the last he hears or sees of her.



As the story closes, K gets a call from Sumire. She says she's nearby at the phone booth she usually calls him from and implies that she's ready to reciprocate his love for her. She asks him to pick her up.

The title of the novel comes from a conversation in which Miu and Sumire are discussing Jack Kerouac, and Miu confuses the word "beatnik" for the word "Sputnik." Sputnik also means "traveling companion," which is what Sumire will later be in relation to Miu.

While the ending seems to indicate that Sumire and K begin a romantic relationship, the ambiguous nature of the writing has led readers to speculate otherwise. For example, before K goes to pick up Sumire from the phone booth, he looks for blood on his hands. One theory is that K has committed suicide so that he may gain entrance into Sumire's alternate world.



Another theory is that K has slit a dog's throat to enter the other world. The argument comes from a discussion Sumire is having with K early in the novel where K compares the practice of killing dogs to raise ancient souls from the dead to writing books. "A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side."

Unrequited love is a prominent theme in the novel. K loves Sumire, who has no attraction to him, and Sumire is attracted to Miu, who is incapable of attraction.

Murakami, a best-selling Japanese author, often uses magical realism in his novels. In The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Dance Dance Dance, for example, Murakami also suggests that his books contain alternate worlds.