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.

Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers of all time, and I loved every moment of this magical, otherworldly tale. I find his books impossible to summarize - including The City and its Uncertain Walls - but it contains all sorts of the Murakami vibes I eagerly await.

There's a Dream Reader at an unusual library, a girl that vanishes without a trace, there are shadows that can be separated from and merged into oneself, there's a ghost, and there are even unicorns. This is the type of book I want to immediately discuss with someone because not everything is obvious during your first read (or second or third).

I was torn between wanting to read this slowly to absorb every detail and blazing through because whatever I thought might happen would always be vastly different than anything I could imagine. Being constantly surprised is one of my favorite components of his books, and his latest did not disappoint.

ghost librarians, lands without shadows, unicorns and melancholic teenagers, a totally inscrutable yet emotional ending -- murakami is back, baby!

Beautifully written, as always, but with too much description and too little character development for my taste. I feel like I was let into the mind of the main character but still don't really understand him.

A full length Murakami after a long time. I had been looking forward to reading this.

This hits all the spots you expect a Murakami work to hit but somehow still feels that it fell a bit short. Not any better or any worse than his average works.

This latest novel by Haruki Murakami, “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” happens to be his first full-length novel in six years.

As an individual who has read most of his works, I was surprised by this work and left wanting.

This novel, like many of his past works, features a lonely male protagonist who is left unfulfilled after a brief relationship with a woman. Why? It feels hard to gauge why this one person influenced his life. Murakami spends much more time describing surroundings and inanimate objects than providing character development in this book—particularly when it comes to women.

This 3-part story (based on a 1980 short story) takes place in both the real world and a fictional one. It toggles between consciousness and unconsciousness and the various aspects of life, including the boundaries we put on ourselves.

This book, by far, is my least favorite work. It feels like it is in draft form, not fully fleshed out or assembled. I think sometimes a short story should stay a short story. Murakami fans will most likely miss his hardboiled detective takes. I enjoyed some passages, but I don’t feel like this particular story was worth the wait.

4.5-5 stars. Tender, nostalgic, and soft. It may well be the pinnacle of cozy magical realism by Murakami.

I really enjoyed this new work. It feels like Murakami cut away everything else not needed and left only the essentials at its core. Perfectly paced with masterful use of multiple perspectives.

I dare to say that this new book falls within the category of Colorless Tsukuru, South of the Border, and Yesterday - which, for reference, are my favorite Murakami works. It wouldn’t be a Murakami book without his well-known tropes making an appearance (per the Murakami bingo), but I felt that each trope was well used and not at all repetitive or overdone.

So blessed to have received an ARC of this. I will certainly be buying a hard copy when it is released.

THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS is a strange book, braiding together three distinct eras in Murakami’s oeuvre. Much like HEAR THE WIND SING or NORWEGIAN WOOD, one part deals with a young boy’s love and longing for his first girlfriend. Much like HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND, another part (set in the same universe) is more of a psychological allegory, operating at a higher level of abstraction. And yet another part resembles THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE in its attention to the everyday life of a mature man whose life is conventional but includes supernatural qualities. The result is, in some regards, uneven but, in others, delicately layered with certain metaphors and locations knotting these different threads together.

It’s hard to imagine that any Murakami fan will select this novel as their favorite, and yet it isn’t, by any means, one of his lesser works. Indeed, Murakami seems to speak more earnestly and urgently in this book than recent ones about the necessity of social trust, psychological complexity, and genuine striving to build connections.