In Haruki Murakami's cinder-block of a novel, "1Q84," mild-mannered writer Tengo accepts a tough ghostwriting job. An enigmatic teen named Fuka-Eri has entered a literary contest with "Air Chrysalis," a mesmerizing but sparsely written fantasy about a world with two moons and a tribe of omniscient sprites.

Tengo's editor implores him to flesh it out: "When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible."

The Murakami way: More is more.

The megapopular Japanese author has created a strange and sometimes beautiful love story that should be about 300 pages. The problem is "1Q84" is nearly 1,000 pages, a fat, frustrating book laden with repetition and cold, clinical sex that the characters replay over and over in their minds.

Marketed as a homage to the George Orwell classic "Nineteen Eighty-Four," "1Q84" was a massive hit in Japan, where it was published as a trilogy starting in 2009. There hasn't been this much excitement over a foreign-language book since Stieg Larsson hit U.S. shores.

Like Orwell's novel, "1Q84" concerns themes of mind control and forbidden love, but the similarities soon end. I won't deny that the pages kept turning, sweeping me into the weirdness even though I sometimes laughed at the silliness of the sexual descriptions — an erection that is "too perfect," an orgasm that is "heroic" and a sweater that "clearly revealed the outline" of 17-year-old Fuka-Eri's breasts.

Like Fuka-Eri's novella, "1Q84" has an interesting idea at its core. Tengo is haunted by a boyhood memory of a young classmate, Aomame, holding his hand. Their souls are forever linked. Although they pine for one another, and each lives a lonely life in 1984 Tokyo, neither seeks the other. This book focuses on feelings of isolation and alienation — literally to the point of separation from one's own self.

Tengo lives almost as a hermit, rationing all human contact. He is a beautiful writer who lacks a story to tell. As placid as Tengo's life is, Aomame's is a typhoon of anger. A personal trainer by day and assassin by night, she avenges abused women by murdering the men who harmed them.

The fierceness of their love pulls them into an alternate reality that is, somehow, being written by Tengo. Aomame crosses over by stepping out of a cab on a gridlocked expressway and descending an emergency stairway to the street below.

It looks like the old world, but this world has a slightly different past than the one she knew. She hears on the radio that the Russians and Americans share a moon base, for example. When did that happen? she wonders.

Aomame names this world 1Q84, "a world that bears a question." (And wordplay: "Nine" is pronounced "kyuu" in Japanese.)

When Aomame looks into the sky, she sees two moons. Just as Fuka-Eri described them.

Turns out "Air Chrysalis" isn't exactly a work of fiction. The sprites, called Little People, exist. What they want is anyone's guess, but they are gathering forces. Aomame's next contract killing — of a cult figure named Leader — finds her crosswise with the Little People and on a path to Tengo.

Leader is the only man who can speak with the Little People. "What the real world is: that is a very difficult problem," he tells Aomame. "This is no imitation world, no imaginary world, no metaphysical world. I guarantee you that. But this is not the 1984 you know."

Weird. But Japan loved it, and Murakami is often listed among the greatest living authors.

Murakami likes to drop names like Marcel Proust and Leo Tolstoy in his writing. Those writers created masterworks that were whole worlds, with characters that lived whole lifetimes.

Relatively little happens in "1Q84," and after hundreds of repetitious pages, I failed to see it as a comparatively enduring work of literature.

At one point, Aomame curls up with Proust's seven-volume "In Search of Lost Time" and can only get to part three before life takes over. Hear ya, sister.

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'1Q84'

A novel by Haruki Murakami

Translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel

Published by Knopf, 925 pages, $30.50

On sale Tuesday