The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Not sure what to say. I felt parts of this book, but can't say that I understand the whole. Is the real world life and the other place death?

I think that this was a really worthwhile revisiting of the original story in End of the World. I enjoyed this the most out of his post 1Q84 books.

Lucky for me, my public library had this book the day it was released, and I grabbed it immediately—for one reason: Murakami.

This story follows the journey of a 17-year-old boy who falls in love with a 16-year-old girl. She tells him about a mysterious town where time has no meaning. In this place, the boy is a librarian, and the girl works in the same library. But she reveals a strange truth: she's not her “real” self, only a shadow of her true self, who resides in the timeless town. The boy doesn't question her, which leads her to confide these secrets. Then, one day, she vanishes, and his quest to find her begins.

While the blurb offers a glimpse, it doesn't do justice to the magic of this story—you really have to read it to experience it. Similar to Kafka on the Shore, this novel revolves around themes of shadows, lost love, and libraries, all wrapped in Murakami's signature magical realism. However, I found the writing here to be simpler and easier to grasp compared to some of his other works. The characters feel vivid and relatable, and the air of mystery keeps you engaged throughout.

I do have one small gripe: there's a character arc that I struggled to understand in relation to the story. While I appreciate Murakami's style of leaving connections open to interpretation, this one left me puzzled.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. That said, some readers might find it too familiar, especially if they've read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (which I haven't). If you loved Kafka on the Shore, there's a good chance you'll appreciate this one too.

(I'm an editor at The Chicago Review of Books, and was sent an ARC for consideration for coverage.)

Funny a book so concerned with shadows and vestiges ended up feeling like a shadow of another book. I'm a Murakami defender till-I-die, but this one lacked some of the distinct pleasures I find in other Murakami novels:

1. A protagonist searching for something they can't have, either because it's permanently lost or simply a mirage.
2. A strong perspective or voice that feels relatable in terms of their aesthetic sense and what they find beautiful.

This book superficially has 1., but perhaps because it's so futile in this case or simply how it's handled, I didn't find it that compelling. I also wasn't that bought in to the protagonist's voice this time around.

It was interesting to see Murakami handle another sequel or reimagining, but especially after revisiting Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The City, and its Uncertain Walls feels like a bit of a mirage. Not sure it really expanded upon that earlier world in a meaningful way.

"Run as far away as you’d like, the wall had told me. I will always be there."

Our dear Unnamed Protagonist has a bit of an identity issue. He met a girl when he was 17, had a brief, unrequited love, and then she vanished. During their time together, they played a game imagining a walled city together. This stuck with our Unnamed Protagonist long after she vanished, until circumstances bring him to the very city the two of them dreamed up when they were kids. Lo and behold, the 16 year old girl is there, acting as the Unnamed Protagonist’s assistant in dream reading. Things get along swimmingly (if a bit same-y, day after day after day after day after….), until the Unnamed Protagonist helps his own shadow leave the city, never to return. Suddenly we’re back in Japan, in Fukushima, with our Unnamed Protagonist acting as a librarian in a very remote town. Where did the walled city go? What does the dead-but-not old head librarian know about the walled city and how to get back? Who is the kid with the Yellow Submarine sweatshirt? All these questions and (so many) more are yours to explore by the end.

I won't get into my deeper thoughts on what I thought this book meant, because that's more for the reader to find. I will say I liked the themes here of (thematic spoilers here) duality, the perception of reality, and moving on from unrequited love, amongst other things.

Right off the bat I feel like this had some pacing issues in the middle. I enjoyed the young love setup in the beginning, and enjoyed the satisfying payoff as things start accelerating past the midpoint of the book, but the day-after-day sameness of the library in Fukushima felt a little thin. The detail is certainly there though, so if you love Murakami depicting everyday life (I do), you’ll get that itch scratched here. In true Murakami fashion, don’t go into this looking for definitive answers from the author, because the real answers are the ones you find (or, make up convincingly) along the way. I appreciated being able to revisit the town from Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t feel like a rehash exactly, just another story layered over the same town. And finally, while there’s no sex in this book (Murakami bingo card holders with ‘weird sex’ as a square, I’m sorry), we do get some of that patent ogling of underage girls and dated-feeling thoughts about middle aged women here. If you can’t overlook those things and enjoy the story told here, I’d give the book a pass.

Just a pleasant read from one of my favorite authors.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
A boy and a girl meet and become friends, and when she suddenly vanishes, he tries to find her in the mysterious, seemingly-invented city she once described to him.

Review
I've read very little Japanese literature, so I admit off the bat that there are likely many cultural, stylistic, and literary references that passed me by. I'm new to Murakami's work as well, but the description intrigued me.

I found the book slow going for about the first third – to the extent that I kept picking up other books to read instead. This may well align with Part I of the book, which an afterword explains was written earlier than the rest, and which is also written as a direct address to the girl of the story. In any case, I found the story slow, dry, and distant. Happily, it warms up (or I warmed to it) in the later portions (and the direct address disappears).

Overall, the book often feels like a metaphor in search of a meaning to attach itself to. The characters themselves eventually take a stab at interpreting the mysterious city and other key events, but without notable success. The book ends with little in the way of resolution, and without fulfilling its central promise of establishing the relationship between the boy and girl that start it all off. It's not frustrating – because by that point you've grown used to the slow, uncertain [sic] rhythm of the prose – but it's not satisfying, either. I was a little peeved that certain key issues – such as where the girl and boy first physically meet – are glossed over and never explained.

Murakami's afterword describes his dissatisfaction with earlier, shorter versions of this story, and his decades-long desire to perfect it. I haven't read those versions, but I did often feel that the story could and perhaps should have been much shorter. Revision isn't always better, however much it may have scratched an itch for the author.

Perhaps because the symbolism of the story remains so vague, one reason for its length is the characters' constant restatement of what has been said and what it means. I felt there were endless repetitions of passages that felt like:

“Perhaps he is silent because of his father.”

“So, you're saying that the reason for his silence could be his relationship with his father?”

“Yes, it may that because of how he relates to his father, he is silent.”

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

This book is the second rewrite of the 1981 novella that bears the same title. The first rewrite is the "End of the World" section of "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." It still reads as fresh even after all these years.