This was my first time reading Murakami’s work, and so I didn’t know what to expect, initially drawn to this book due to the promise of unicorns and autonomous shadows. So, I was expecting a fantasy. And while this book is clearly written by a master wordsmith, and is impressive on a few different levels- it’s more psychological magical realism than fantasy.

So while it’s always a pleasure to read a well written novel, I’m afraid I just couldn’t connect with these characters in any way. In fact, it felt a bit like reading Faulkner for me- like I *should* love it, but finding it difficult to get through. Also, by the end of the book I wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened plot wise and was left with the feeling I’d missed out on a big reveal somewhere…and quite possibly, the entire point.

All in all, it’s certainly an original story by a brilliant mind, but if you’re expecting fantasy or even just a low maintenance read, I’d look elsewhere.

3.5 stars but rounding up out of respect for Murakami’s craft.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf for this ARC!

"The City and Its Uncertain Walls" by Haruki Murakami is a mesmerizing and surreal exploration of memory, identity, and the boundaries between reality and dreams. Set in a mysterious city where the protagonist finds himself navigating through a labyrinth of enigmatic characters and otherworldly events, Murakami's novel delves deep into the human psyche and the complexities of existence.

Murakami's trademark blend of magical realism and philosophical musings is on full display, creating an atmospheric and thought-provoking narrative. The city itself is almost a character, with its shifting landscapes and uncertain boundaries reflecting the protagonist's inner journey. The author's lyrical prose and vivid imagery draw readers into this dreamlike world, where every encounter holds symbolic significance.

The characters are richly developed, each adding a layer of intrigue and emotional depth to the story. Themes of isolation, the search for self, and the blurred lines between past and present are intricately woven throughout the narrative, making it a deeply introspective read.

Overall, "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" is a captivating and enigmatic novel that will appeal to fans of Murakami's unique style. It is a profound and immersive experience that challenges readers to reflect on the nature of reality and the hidden corners of the mind. Haruki Murakami once again delivers a masterful work that lingers long after the final page.

Thank you #Knoph and #NetGalley for providing this #ARC Advance Reading Copy. Expected publication date is November 19, 2024.

5 Stars • This is Murakami‘s first novel in six years. In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," Haruki Murakami weaves a complex tale of a walled city inhabited by a young man and a girl. The city is guarded by a giant and populated by golden-haired beasts. The girl works in a library collecting old dreams, and the man must enter the city to become a dream reader to find his true self. The story explores themes of separation of body and consciousness, reality and fantasy, and the power of literature.

#TheCityAndItsUncertainWalls #HarukiMurakami #Bookstagram

It’s an interesting story so far with a lot more magical realism than some of the other Haruki Murakami books I have read. More than A Wild Sheep Chase, Dance Dance Dance, After Dark, Hear The Wind Sing, and Pjnball. I look forward to comparing this story to Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which I hear is set in the same world as The City and It’s Uncertain Walls.

This was a slow and pondering novel, just what I expected and wanted. I started and could not stop reading, and it felt like a vacation from the world.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC, I will reserve my review until publish, knowing myself I will end up giving spoilers.

Review of The City and Its Uncertain Walls

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami and translated by Philip Gabriel is an amazing tale of magical realism by one of the world’s greatest authors. While others have complained that it is a redo of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of Wonderland, I feel that his very clear explanation in his afterword helped me to understand that new thoughts on previous stories lead sometimes to new and better stories. I struggled to stay with the roving plot and the magical movement between live people, ghosts and precious memories. The City, the Library, Mr. Koyasu, the coffee shop lady and the boy in the Yellow Submarine coat return and blend to make this complicated and engrossing read a masterpiece. I’ll be thinking about it for years, but I’ll be reading it again before its US publication date in November of 2024.
Thanks so much to NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC and the opportunity to read and review The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami and translated to English by Philip Grabriel.
#NetGalley, #Knopf, #HarukiMurakami, #PhilipGabriel, #MagicalRealism, #Ghosts, #Japan, #Libraries, #Fantasy
5 Stars, Pub. Date: 11-19-24

As a longtime Murakami fan, I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, where I knew we'd be returning to a landscape created for a previous book. Ultimately, I was intrigued by how the book departed from previous books and yet how it echoed so many themes and images. This character is a bit older than previous protagonists, and for much of the book, he's living in a fog of depression that feels heavier than the usual funny aimlessness of Murakami protagonists. The story weaves in and out of the unreal town from Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, taking us to places I didn't expect, with some nods to other Murakami novels. We have familiar elements like libraries, books, cats, simple meals, jazz, portals, ears, dreams, even winks to crows and wells...but it all adds up to something a bit different than before. I interpret this as the author delving further into ideas and feelings and questions about spirituality and death. I hope this isn't the last word, of course, and I do feel there's more for him to say. I'm sure I'll return to this book later and pick up on elements I missed. Even apart from my general interest in Murakami's work, I found this book fascinating.
Thanks to Netgalley for this review copy.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6663733180

I don't think that this is the best work by Murakami, but oddly enough it would probably work really well as an entry point for a a reader new to Murakami. It is an extended treatment of an earlier, abandoned, novella, and seems it bit padded out in places, but circling around familiar themes and interests is a privilege we grant to writers like Murakami. This read a bit like a calm, reflective recapitulation of Murakami's ideas.

Murakami always writes such unique and thought provoking novels so I was super excited for this. I knew someone who read it earlier in Korean and so had kind of an idea about it going in but it totally delivered the magical dreamlike feeling I was expecting for Murakami. It is for sure a slower burn but I thought even the slower parts were really beautifully written and intriguing. Will be adding to our library 100%!

So, ever confused with reality? Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, The City and its Uncertain Walls, plays with reality in many different ways, from the imagined (in books) to the imagined (in life)--and you may never know which is which. Which is pretty typical for Murakami. This newest novel traces its origin to a short story of the same name published in 1980 where he was unsatisfied with the story and never built on it before.

The novel begins as a love story between the seventeen-year-old narrator and a girl he met through a writing contest, a sixteen-year-old girl who seems detached from reality. It winds it way through his life, always looking back on his love for this girl that had mysteriously disappeared. It visits a town they made up together, where he loses his shadow and winds up back in his life. It goes to a small village where as a librarian, he talks to ghosts.

Well written, in his usual "western" style, he wonders across many topics he has visited in the past--what is reality, is what we perceive real, do dreams differ, how do we get to where we are now, why do we feel so alienated, humans are lonely, relationships are temporary, how does depression impact people? While there may never be answers to these questions, it gives the reader important views to think about.

Like all of his books, The City and It's Uncertain Walls is a slow burn. You have to get through the first 45% of the novel to really see where it's going. And although, as mentioned, it may not come to a grand conclusion, it gets you thinking about a variety of topics and the "human condition."

heavy, real. i could reflect and relate deeply. the metaphors this book details are very real. positive +/- negative
different selves, separate versions, expanding realities and experiences. this book holds gravity within its pages and grounds you but also uplifts you out of space and time

I had such very high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, I felt let down by it. Not enough of Murakami's magic, and it felt so repetitive. It took forever to get to an exciting point, and then the book was over. So for a very long book, I felt it could have been a little "more". This is the first time I didn't enjoy myself and couldn't wait for it to be over.

This novel includes something I don't think I've ever before encountered in Murakami's work--an afterword by the author. He said he felt he needed "a word of explanation." If you need an afterword to explain parts of your book, in most cases it means something is lacking in the work itself.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls started out as a novella/short story published in a literary magazine in 1980 while Murakami was still working at a jazz bar in Tokyo. It hasn't been published since then, as he admittedly was not satisfied with the story. More than forty years later, Murakami picked up his pen again to turn the novella into a novel.

This book reads like it was once a shorter work, as the imaginary town where much of this novel is set is very thinly drawn. Questions abound if you think too long about it. Murakami repeats the same phrases to describe the same town over and over again, to the point of over-saturation. The logic of the dream world is so unclear that characters, most often the narrator and Mr. Koyasu, have to explain it to the reader in the form of conjecture. I'm still unclear what the purpose of a Dream Reader is. Whose dreams are they? What happens if they're not read? What is the benefit?

While I have not read the work in its original form, it seems the details of the book would lend itself more to a short story. Murakami said that Hard-Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World was "one response to the original story," and I think that one works better as a fully-realized novel.

Haruki Murakami’s celebrated fame as an accomplished author precedes his work, and this was my first foray into Murakami’s fictional works (I’ve only read Murakami’s memoir Novelist as a Vocation prior to this). This book does not disappoint - I finished this captivating book in the span of 2 days.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls follows a nameless narrator (most of the characters other than the real-world library workers are unnamed), who falls in love with a girl during his teenage years. One day, she confesses that she is not the real her and only a shadow of a person. The real girl lives in a town that can only function via dream-reading, surrounded by an ever-changing wall, with a formidable Gatekeeper, shadow-less people, and unicorns.

The first part of the novel alternates between the narrator’s teenage self with his adult self, or so it would seem. As the story progresses, the narrator raises questions on what is real and what is not and how human consciousness and dreams play a role in his version of reality. The explanation of dream reading reminds me a lot of The Giver, one of my favorite books. The City and Its Uncertain Walls is wonderfully written (and translated), imaginative, and makes me feel like I’m living in the real world and the magical world at the same time. As a side note, I rated this 4 stars because the sexual references were a little clunky to me (and in my opinion, not necessary for the story).

Thanks, NetGalley for providing an ARC for review.

A beautiful and dreamy novel. After reading some other reviews I found out that this author writes books about the Town, so now I need to go read more.
This book feels like non-stop poetry about love and life. It is a book that you have to really dig in and pay attention to, but if you do it is so worth it!

Beautiful, magical, thought provoking. Murakami never seems to disappoint. A expert craftsman in his works, he truly has come back to form with this piece of art.

I’m a Murakami fan so I was super excited to see this new work and it did not disappoint. The narrative had a dreamlike quality that swept me right into the story and carried me through all the strange and wonderful corners.

This is Murakami’s first book in six years and, of course, it’s lovely, rich, dreamy, magically real.

As we begin, the narrator’s girlfriend tells him about a town where the real her lives. She hopes he will come there and work hard to get through the wall to get in. He’ll be a Dream Reader there. She won’t remember she ever knew him.

The story is about that and everything after. Plus a library of dreams, a library of books, a Yellow Submarine hoodie, unicorns, rivers, a sake brewery, a head librarian, a pond, a wall, blueberry muffins and love.

It’s also about reality, or maybe multiple realities. Because “there is not just ONE reality. Reality is something you have to choose by yourself, out of several possible alternatives.”

This isn’t his best work, but I still loved it. 4.5 stars.

Translated by Philip Gabriel.

Amazing and a true return to form. Super excited for others to read this Murakami book, as it's markedly different from most recent epics of his. Truly a great author getting his second wind.