In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," Haruki Murakami expertly weaves a tapestry of magical realism and introspection, inviting readers to explore the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Through three interconnected stories, Murakami delves into themes of love, identity, and the human condition.

The characters, caught between their everyday lives and an otherworldly realm, embark on philosophical journeys filled with symbolism and unexpected encounters. Murakami's atmospheric storytelling transports readers into a world where walls shift, and realities blur.
Familiar elements such as melancholic young lovers, enigmatic cats, and allusions to music and literature will delight fans of Murakami's previous works. While some may argue that the author revisits well-trodden themes, "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" stands as a testament to Murakami's distinct narrative voice.

This novel offers a captivating and thought-provoking read for Murakami enthusiasts and serves as an ideal entry point for those new to his enchanting blend of magical realism and introspection.

Haruki Murakami's The City and Its Uncertain Walls is an exploration of love, loss, and identity, set against the backdrop of a mysterious walled city where the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred. I probably should not admit this as a former English major, but this was actually my first book by Murakami, and I can see why so many readers and critics alike extol the author's virtues.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

A haunting tale reminiscent of 1Q84 in the very best of ways. Reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro at his best, with something of a more tragic overtone.

This story was far more than I expected and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it over the weekend. Haruki creates two vastly different settings that merge and overlap throughout the story. The characters have depth and flaws that make them easily relatable and I found myself truly caring for their wellbeing. The magical realism is at the same time slight and all-consuming. I love how unique the story is, centered on a person’s shadow and what would happen if it becomes separated from its person. There is an undercurrent of a love story but, to me, that wasn’t the main focus. This is a story about finding your true self no matter what may be happening in the world around you.
Brian Nishii did a wonderful job building the atmosphere and making these characters come to life! I was completely entranced with the story because of his impeccable delivery. This is another book I’d suggest listening to if you’re a fan of audiobooks.

A thought-provoking and thoughtful story. Murakami writes fantastic stories that are both out of this world and incredibly introspective. Many of his trademark characteristic motifs and symbols return. This story explores the human condition in a very profound and personal way. I wonder if some of the finer nuances and details were lost in the translation. Unfortunately, I do not speak or read Japanese so I’ll have to see what other reviews who do speak the original language think.

I feel bad saying this but I hated this book. I could barely get through any of it and I DNF it early on. I really try not to but it was in second person and just really weird. I was excited to try this authors work and I was very disappointed.

I struggled with most of this book. It felt very aimless for most of the story and while I enjoyed hearing about the walled city, the long sections of daily work at the library were hard for me to get through. I did enjoy the end and felt that it was a satisfying conclusion.

This was an intensely nostalgic read for me. I first read 1985’s ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ nearly 20 years ago as a college student. It is one of my all-time favorite books. In his newest book, Murakami revisits that library in a town surrounded by a wall where clocks have no hands. You will also visit a new library in a new town, this one filled with books instead of dreams. But it is still a library in a nameless town with a river running through it. What is reality, anyways?

The first part of this book includes descriptions repeated nearly word for word from HBW. But this is no HBW. Repetition and routine are major themes. It made me consider my routines. What would the 19-year old me who read HBW think of my life now? Has my view of reality changed? Has what fulfills me changed? Am I still searching for the same thing? Have I settled? Am I simply waiting? Waiting is another motif in this book. Repeat, wait, repeat.

I apologize to the publisher for my inability to write a traditional review. But maybe that’s okay - good art is, ultimately, something that should touch your soul. And I’ve spent the last week confronting a staggering number of emotions brought to the surface while reading this book. So much grief for the girl I was, and for all the pain she carried.

It’s possible this book just instigated a midlife crisis. I’d like to think Murakami would be pleased.

3.5 rounded to 4
It has been a while since I last read a Murakami novel and I forgot how unusual his writing style is. I always find his books hard to explain, and The City and Its Uncertain Walls is no exception. This story focuses on two parallel stories, all revolving around one man and the love he lost when he was 17. The City and Its Uncertain Walls is beautifully written but often confusing. It is one that I would definitely recommend to anyone who is a fan of Murakami's previous books. I would say that it is a very slow-paced book that would be best read when in the mood for something reflective. Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for providing me with an early copy in exchange for my honest review.

The story begins with two teenagers in love, with the boy searching for the girl that he believes is his lost love. The author creates a really interesting world where a Gatekeeper decides who can enter and who can be left behind. Then, he begins to analyze his dreams and what they might be telling him. This causes him to leave Tokyo for a smaller town, where he becomes the head Librarian. Again, I love the world created where the author explores dreams and premonitions but the book lacked a plot and did not hold my attention very well. However, I acknowledge how popular this author is and I am still interested in checking out his other books.

I'll confess, I am a mega-fan of Haruki Murakami and have ready just about everything he has written. This was one work I did not know. It is actually a reworking of an early story he wrote and published decades ago. He was not satisfied with the original version and decided it was something to which he wanted to return. This work is mature Murakami at its best. As with all his novels, this work is difficult to summarize. The story begins with a young high schooler who with minimal social ties who meets and falls in love with another mysterious high schooler who is much like himself. Their connection is deep and she suddenly disappears, leaving him unable to form subsequent meaningful romantic attachments. They had together created an imaginary world, a city with ever wavering walls from which no one exits and very few enter. It is a bleak place, without music or animated life--a place where people have no shadows. The book entails a parallel set of stories, one set in this world and the other set in that other imagined city. The book kept me up until the wee hours of the AM as the story is engaging and flows. The writing, as with all Murakami is engaging with a strong undercurrent of magical realism. Highly recommended, especially for Murakami fans.

Even though the walls of the city were uncertain, I was only a few chapters into this book when I became certain this was a book about death, and I guess, in a way, it was, but I finished the book with more questions than when I started.

The first several chapters were so boring to me, and I didn’t love the formatting of the book (“I was this and you were that, and I did this for you and etc, etc”). It’s not so much that it was written in first-person, but more so that it was so bland and oddly impersonal. I needed names and faces, but this was more like a letter for the first third-ish of the book, and I didn’t love it.

I also tended to find the story within the walls to be so slow and uninteresting.

What I did enjoy was the time that the main character moved to the small mountain town and the life he began to build there. I enjoyed that story as one within itself.

But I’m still wondering about the ending of the book and what I knew to be real and what was possibly revealed at the end, which I’m not sure I fully understand myself (where the same person? If this is death, how can he be both young and old?).

This feels like the kind of book one might analyze for a literature course, which is cool, but also makes me overthink and feel a little overwhelmed with the text. The entire thing was one big metaphor, which may make this a literary masterpiece for some, but for me, it was quite slow and a bit confusing.

This has become my new favorite Murakami. Based on a short story he wrote 35 years ago he spent 2 years reworking it as he had more to tell. Letting this sit in his mind for decades really showed. It's so elegantly crafted and poignantly told, I could not get enough of this story and already look forward to picking it up and reading it all over again.

I did not know this book was tied to Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World before reading it. You can still read this if you haven’t read Hard-Boiled (the stories are parallel rather than interconnected). In fact, it may be better to read one or the other instead of both, because the two stories are very similar. At least, this book is similar to the second part of Hard-Boiled.

It’s hard for me to fairly review this because it’s so much like the other book. As difficult a time as I had wrapping my head around Hard-Boiled, I ended up loving how the book addresses mortality and grief. This book does address some of the same themes, as well as an obsession with lost love and the past. I just didn’t enjoy it as much.

Since it’s Haruki Murakami, there are cats, people falling into abandoned wells, and lots of talk about music. Also, yet another inscrutable woman (I honestly think Murakami finds the unicorns less mysterious).

If you love Murakami, this is him. Just be aware that it’s pretty redundant.

Murakami's latest novel felt like drinking a hot cup of tea after a long day. The City and Its Uncertain Walls will read like a warm blanket for fans of Murakami - comfortable and familiar - and for new readers, will be thought-provoking enough to hopefully read the rest of Murakami's cannon.

Haruki Murakami does it again! This one was a little low key, like most of his other works. It was also at times disjointed. However, the quiet descriptions and the calm vibes were helpful to me after a long work day.

This was my first time reading Murakami. I quite enjoyed the writing style of the novel and found it very relaxing to read. I thought the pacing was consistent and it kept my attention the entire time. However I felt a little disappointed at the end as it didn’t feel as wrapped up and connected as I hoped. Overall it was a very thought provoking novel and I plan to read more of his work.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!

Despite the promise of its title, "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" feels inevitable and unsurprising. If you like Murakami, it’s a low-key but enjoyable addition to the canon, and if you don’t, there’s not going to be much to win you over here.

The plot is pretty irrelevant. If you read a synopsis of the book, you’ll find that the novel itself doesn’t expand very far beyond it. The narrative is simply a scaffold for a mood, and there are some interesting themes here about the distance between public and private selves, as well as the stories we tell ourselves to convince ourselves we belong somewhere. That said, the book suffers from its origin as a decades-old shelved short story, and it never quite comes together.

"The City and Its Uncertain Walls" feels decidedly inessential, less a B-side and more a remix of Murakami’s other work. It’s a pastiche of the surreal imagery the author is known for, and the seams show. Every gesture toward thematic depth is undermined by the feeling that Murakami is just going through the motions, and I suspect that readers who praise the novel’s philosophical heft are merely filling in the gaps with appreciation for the author’s earlier work. This isn’t the work of a novelist at the height of his powers—it’s a writing exercise from a nearly retired artist, and it often feels fatigued. Haruki Murakami can certainly still write, but why does he bother?

I’m not sure the book ever adequately answers that question.

As noted, the typical Murakami quirks are at play in "The City." I found the built-in redundancy of "1Q84" to be frustrating, and Murakami does the same thing here—certain lines or scenes are repeated and recycled throughout the book, and while they suggest the jazz-like thematic iteration that the author is known for, they ultimately feel like filler. Likewise, the leering sexuality present in much of the author’s work is still here, but it’s decidedly toned down and a bit easier to stomach.

I recognize that all of this sounds like I really disliked the book, but I had a really lovely time with it. There’s a subtle warmth to its shapelessness, like listening to a piece of ambient music. In the moment, it’s enjoyable, and people who have developed a taste for the form might find it worth returning to—perhaps there are nuances to be admired with more time.

But with so many incredible books being released every week, I’m not sure "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" deserves or rewards that kind of attention. If you really want to read Murakami, choose a different book

Have you ever had a dream where you thought you woke up, but you were still dreaming, analyzing the previous part of the dream? This book feels like a giant dream journal, pieced together from leftover dreams and previous works. The result is confusing, dreary, depressing, and plotless—like a battleship grey, lifeless version of someone's dream life. It's just not fun or interesting.

All the typical Murakami elements are here: memory, loss, middle-aged men pining for teen love interests. I thought I liked Haruki Murakami as an author, but this book is making me reconsider. He may think he's a peer to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical-realist style, quoting Love in the Time of Cholera in the last section, but The City and Its Uncertain Walls is definitely in the fantasy and surrealist genres.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part is the longest, a rambling and incoherent mess of time skips between the protagonist as a teenager and his first love, and his entry into nameless city which requires a hefty fee of separating from one's shadow and getting stabbed in the eyes (so he can "work" as a Dreamreader of old dreams). Both teens seem to suffer from major depressive disorder. This part could easily be halved. The second part represents the protagonist's transition after helping his shadow escape from the nameless town with sentient walls. He wakes up in his own life, quits his job, and moves to a rural town as the head librarian. The third part covers his interactions with the ghost, cafe owner, librarian, and an autistic boy at the library (aka M**** or Yellow Submarine Boy). It's possible that Yellow Submarine boy doesn't actually exist -- and is yet another shadow of our primary protagonist but that's never fully fleshed out.

The protagonist's life is described as masking: interacting with people because that's what one does, but internally, he is deeply depressed. The writing is stilted and awkward at times. For example, the town is only referred to as Z***, and the cafe owner, who becomes the protagonist's love interest, doesn't even get a name but has a rock-hard body shaper acting as a chastity belt. This feels like a repeat of the teen romance—our protagonist will wait and wait. His lack of engagement and commitment seems to have destroyed his past relationships. He drifts along aimlessly, like a spineless sea creature.

The most interesting character is Mr. Koyasu, the scion of the local sake brewer who set up a private library and manages it for the town of Z*** until his death. He continues supporting the library as a ghost until they hire the protagonist as the head librarian. Mr. Koyasu could have been the primary subject of a much shorter version of this novel.

Overall, the book feels lifeless, colorless, and flavorless. The only foods mentioned are a few kinds of tea, apples and apple cake, coffee, blueberry muffins, and fried egg. Even the descriptions of sounds feel like throwaways, as if added at the editor's suggestion. Essentially, the protagonist is living his life inside a boring box, passing time and struggling to discern reality from dream.

Ultimately, The City and Its Uncertain Walls feels like a self-indulgent exercise that wastes the reader's time. Murakami's reliance on familiar themes and motifs, combined with a meandering and incoherent plot, results in a lifeless and colorless narrative. While some may find value in his introspective style, this novel fails to deliver the engaging and magical experience that many have come to expect from his work. For those seeking a captivating story, this book is likely to disappoint.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls follows a man from Tokyo who moves to a town to follow his dreams. In this case, the man is literally hoping to find a portal or someway to re-enter a dreamlike existence that he vividly recalls from his younger years. Settling in as head librarian for the town, the man's peaceful life is interrupted by a number of strange occurrences. The previous librarian returns to haunt him, but he discovers the spirit to be quite a good listener. Additionally, the protagonist's plans are thrown into disarray by a new love interest, as well as a peculiar young man who spends all of his time reading books in the town library.

Haruki Murakami entertains with the magical, while grounding the story in realistic details, human emotions and reactions, and even mundane details. The effect, as with the best of his previous novels, is a fantasy world that the reader will find completely plausible. The plot of The City and Its Uncertain Walls moves at a comfortable pace, but with a definite edge of suspense. The reader feels the impulse to continue turning pages in attempt to discern if each character and the variety of forces at play are well-intentioned or malevolent.

Murakami includes a number of background details, references, and easter eggs that will certainly entertain fans of his previous works. There are cats, abandoned wells, underground passageways, jazz musicians, and lots and lots of books throughout this work. We anxiously await the next chapter to see which of these "rabbit holes' we'll fall through next.