Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami!

It took me a long time to finish this chonker of a book running into 700 pages. It was not a difficult read, it is written in fairly straightforward lucid prose. However it is very repetitive in parts and definitely not gripping or unputdownable. This is a love story transcending time and reality and I really loved the concept. I liked the idea of the distinctness of the would and physical human body, a premise that finds its roots in several Eastern cultures. I read that Murakami initially intended this to be a short story and expanding it into a 700 page novel really killed the fun in my opinion. Nevertheless I was curious to know what happens next and managed to read it to the end. I also always like to respect the fact that the publisher offered me a gifted copy for a review. I would recommend this to persons who are die-hard Murakami fans and don't want to miss a single word he has written
Thank you NetGalley and Knopf Publishing for the ARC

This was my first Haruki Murakami book and I loved it. Deep, introspective. The touch of magical realism did it for me, but there were also parts that left me in suspense. What a masterful writer

I'm not the biggest Murakami fan, and I enjoyed this one as much as others I've read by him. Which is to say I found it intriguing and wonderfully imaginative and there were moments that were very moving and powerful, but there were also points where it just seemed to be spinning its wheels and trying to find its own way. I enjoyed it overall, but I'm still waiting for a Murakami novel to really blow me away.

Not Murakami's best; open-ended in a frustrating way. Probably Murakami fans will find more to like (although I found the prose distinctively inferior to some of his earlier work), but I definitely wouldn't start here.

I have a special relationship with Murakami's books. They are genius or they are total miss for me. But this story is special. It circled around so beautifully around with magical realism around subjects of loneliness and community - in a way that made sense to me. Murakami deliver in the same way like he did with Kafka on the Shore, but better. The story was transparent and easy to follow. The concept of time was also interestingly explored. I think it is his best book so far.

I have trouble with Murakami. While I have enjoyed several of his other books, this one was tough for me. Vey repetitive. That said - his writing - as always - is beautiful. He creates the weirdest of worlds. And he really keeps you in there until the end.

The City and its Uncertain Walls is more science fiction than fantasy (to me) and also my first Haruki Murakami novel. What an incredible example of world building and beautiful writing / imagery! I'm not sure I'm the best target audience for this novel, but I recommended it to my husband because I think he would appreciate it more.

Thank you NetGalley for the free ebook about which I will give my honest opinion.

I had a bit of a difficult time getting into this one at first but then I hit a point in the second section where the story really sucked me in. So good!

4.5 stars

Thank you NetGalley for the free ebook about which I will give my honest opinion.

So in the spirit of being honest, I have to say that this was the first Murakami novel I have read (!!) - I read his nonfiction work Novelist as a Vocation, but that’s it. There is certainly a lot of hype about Murakami so I had high hopes going in.

I like Murakami’s style of writing, the way his prose flows. He could be the kind of writer who could write about anything and make it interesting and engaging. The story was lyrical, with elements of fantasy and mystery. The main character, who I don’t think we ever get a name for, initially tells us about his first love. They wrote letters back and forth, and saw each other sometimes, often discussing an imaginary city, but then the letters from his love (who was also not named) abruptly stopped.

In this imaginary city, the shadow must be detached from the body to enter. So this leaves the possibility of having shadowless people, and people-less shadows. There is a library with a wood stove for heat, and no books, just dream logs. There is one way in and one way out and that exit/entrance is fiercely guarded by the gatekeeper. The narrator’s first love tells him that that’s where the real version of her is.

So part of the novel is in that world, while part is in our world, leaving me as the reader to question what reality is. There were some great eccentric characters, and two libraries featured prominently so I was thrilled. I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but this drew me in with its mix of the real world as it is, and the magical realism in the plot.

It did take me a while to read. Some parts had less action than others and some parts kept my attention more. I really did not know what to expect with this, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this novel. It gave a lot to think about, and I actually highlighted passages in my kindle, which I almost never do. I think this book would be enjoyed by almost anyone as long as they can take the time to fully immerse themselves into it. It was a wild ride but I enjoyed it.

4.5 stars. Murakami is easily making his way into my list of authors that I need to read every single one of his published works. The City and Its Uncertain Walls was an adventure with amazing characters that I never wanted to end. Murakami has a way that few authors do of taking the mundane and making it magical with absolutely stunning prose. The way this story wove together by the end was nothing short of masterful and made me feel so deeply for these characters that I grew to love. It is a novel heavy on ideas and I feel as though I could immediately start this book over to delve deeper into them.

I feel like a terrible person because Murakami is such a popular author and has many books that resonate with its readers. They are full of meaning and metaphors, hyperboles, etc. Perfect for your college literature class. I started Murakami's 1Q84 and didn't make it past the first 100 pages, thinking I was just not in the correct headspace. It's on my shelf to try again. Maybe I'm just too uncultured to like this book, but it's Fantasy, and full of unreliable narrators, nonlinear timelines, and questioning of one's reality, and I normally like these books. However, we don't have any clear resolution, no clear outcomes, just more questions, but maybe that's me or the really long-winded story. Either one, it could be either, but the moral is this dragged on and on and didn't take me to my book-reading happy place.

this newest work of murakami, 40 years in the making, was not particularly revolutionary, but it was satisfying. there was a symmetry about it, but a mildness as well. it would almost work as a basis for a gentler wes anderson film.

told in three sections, the first follows the main character as he discusses his teenage love and his time spent in the nameless and mysterious town. for me, the beginning was a bit of a struggle to get though, and while the afterword explains it is essentially a rewritten version of a work first written decades ago, it still had a sense of spareness, or scarcity, which made it hard for me to get my footing.

the second part, and the longest part, was much more lively. this section features the main character as he works at a small, rural library and learns about all its unique aspects and regular characters. as a die-hard murakami fan, the writing of this section felt much more familiar and much more stimulating, like that of pervious works.

in the final part, worlds and characters merge and evolve. places are left, returned to, and left again. reading this book is not unlike watching 2001: a space odyssey. i will not elaborate further, because it will not help.

overall, i’m happy where this book ended up, compared to how it started. and so, i am once again caught up with all of murakami’s novels; and i’ll be here for the next, as always.

I've always enjoyed Murakami's work and this was no exception. It still retains its edge while being a very dynamic look into storytelling and craft.

This had very good lines in, in keeping with my expectations of Murakami's writing style. The themes were interesting and so were the characters. Thank you for the opportunity to read this!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy in exchange for honest feedback.

In typical Murakami fashion, he draws you and leaves you mesmerized. So happy to have gotten this as an ARC. Feels similar to past works.

A nameless narrator's quest for his teenage love begins by understanding the division of self when he first meets the girl he'll think about for the rest of his life. Sitting with his newly found girlfriend, also nameless — as is nearly everyone in this book, she explains that the version of her he's meeting isn't her true self, just her shadow self, and that her real form is down within the walls of the city where he cannot go. Within a year or so, she has vanished and he is distraught, but time passes. Now 45, the narrator stumbles into the very place he's longed to visit — the city, but his journey is just beginning and the must grapple with losing himself to gain access.

My first Murakami might very well be my last. I can see the draw and why readers would return to his particular storytelling, but I don't know if it's for me. I'm not sure what I expected, but "more" seems an appropriately succinct summation.

Murakami has an interesting approach to his themes: loneliness, outsiders, and a search for contentment with individuality — painting his canvas with broad but uncertain strokes that he will most assuredly recover or revisit. His narrator's voice is close with his first person and even addressing his love directly as "you" in the beginning, but the emotional distance of the novel is so removed as to have been excised or freed of its tether. Murakami's magical realism clearly stems from his own boundless, panster approach to wherever the story takes him. In that way, it was fairly boring for me — if you don't know where your ultimate destination is, just call me when you get there and spare me the details. That just rarely interests me in fiction, but I understand why it works for some.

That being said, I really liked the idea of his strange tale, if not the execution. His love of jazz is evident, not only in the many times he mentions jazz artists and music, but in the circuitous way he constructs his narrative, which is an interesting juxtaposition from his spare writing style when examining the words alone. He bats around curious themes, dancing on the surface of his own thoughts, and the examination of self, belonging, and purpose are nicely placed inside his clear love of libraries and the value of books.

However, knowing the circumstances surrounding this story's origin, Murakami's approach here seems an especially masturbatory expression of his ideas. (Is the reader even a consideration?) What began as a short story in 1980, which he's never wanted republished, first morphed into a previously published novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), where he continued his attempt at unraveling the core of his ideas from the shorter magazine published iteration.

Now, with The City and Its Uncertain Walls (2023) (published in English in 2024), spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic's isolating influence, Murakami is having another go, which lends the "Okay, but also" quality to this newest version. Even the dialogues felt like oversimplified reasonings of an oft-repeated mantra. Perhaps that is the reason that this story, as I read it, felt very low stakes — having covered the fresh ground long ago, now retreading his own footsteps.

Lovely writing from Haruki Murakami that takes you to ethereal worlds. It leans a lot more towards world building and fantasy than I care for and lost the thread of the story in the middle. Would recommend to those who enjoy the more mystical realm and beautiful prose. Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was my first Murakami novel, so I can't really say how it compares to his other work, but I did like this. There were some bits in the middle that I found to be a bit slow, and I found that information that we already knew seemed to be repeated at times, but overall this was a good story.