Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for this eARC!

I was super excited when I saw that a new novel was going to be released and this novel didn't disappoint. Murakami wrote this novel based on a short story he wrote over years ago (which I didn't know until I read the author's note at the end of the book). Like most of Murakami's writing, both non-fiction and fiction, this was a book you want to immerse yourself in. The story unfolds slowly but is well worth the time, in my opinion. This book was written during pandemic, and it discusses a lot about love, life, loneliness, and books. I highly recommend this!

I entered a dream on page one and stayed in it for the entire book. To me, this is Murakami at his best - whimsical yet dark, tense yet hopeful, and a love story I'll never forget. Bibliophiles especially will love this one.

Gorgeous, thoughtful, dreamy... Murakami's prose never fails to make me feel quiet and contemplative and his most recent book is no exception. I love that he takes his time and drags things out, which might make some readers feel impatient, but made me feel like each moment was meaningful and important. Great read!

Wow! The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a gorgeous read. The effective use of the second person narration makes for an intimate, emotional connection to the main character. The premise is intriguing (if a little convoluted), and the short chapters propel the reader with good momentum. With Haruki Murakami as the author, it is fair to expect an impressive book, and this book delivers.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami is based on a short story of the same written more than 40 years ago in 1980. The author also based his 1985 novel, Hard Boiled Wonderland and the end of the World on that same short story and you see echoes of both these stories in this novel. The is a lit fic story with magical realism. It was written during the pandemic, and it echoes the loneliness and isolation felt during that time. It's about love and discovery and books. Murakami's stories slowly unfold and are beautifully written, but require the investment of time, but they are well worth it. Thank you to #netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for my advance reader copy.

Haruki Murakami’s new novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, contains an afterword. In it, the author explains that the book has its origin in a novella he wrote in 1980, just after the publication of his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing. Though it was published in a Japanese literary magazine, Murakami was unsatisfied with the novella and has never allowed it to be republished. He continues:

"Still, from the first I felt that this work contained something vital for me. At the time, though, unfortunately I lacked the skills as a writer to adequately convey what that something was. I’d just debuted as a novelist then and didn’t have a good idea of what I was capable, and incapable, of writing. I regretted publishing the story, but figured what was done was done. Someday, when the time was right, I thought, I’d take my time to rework it, but till then would keep it on the backburner."

He goes on to describe coming back to the story multiple times over the decades, expanding and revising, and characterizes other books of his as responses to this unknown project. Finally, in 2020 when the pandemic shut everything down, he returned to the story again to produce a final version, forty years after its initial conception.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls (out in English tomorrow) begins with its unnamed narrator recounting a relationship he had when he was 17. As he and his girlfriend, also left nameless, sit on a riverbank at dusk, she tells him that the body he has his arm around isn’t the real her. The real her is somewhere far away, sequestered in a town behind a high wall. Soon this town behind the wall becomes their chief topic of conversation, he writing down every detail she provides. Alternating with this relationship history, the narrator tells us that ultimately he found this town and entered it. To pass the Gatekeeper who guards the only passage through the high wall, the narrator had to give up his shadow and have his eyes mutilated to prepare him for his new job as Dream Reader at the town’s library. He does these things willingly, so intent is he on finding the girl’s true self, who works as his aide at the library. She doesn’t know him, however, having no knowledge of his past with that other girl he knew. The town is also home to a herd of unicorns.

As I understand it, that was the extent of the original novella. Here it constitutes only about the first quarter of the story. My familiarity with Murakami is far from complete and certainly this first section was reworked when he came back to the project, but it does feel like the work of a less mature artist than the Murakami I know. It’s intriguing, certainly, and disorienting when the narrator claims to have physically gone to a place created in the imagination, but there’s a hard to articulate so what to the proceedings. We have these various fantastic elements—the dream reading, and separable shadows, and the unicorns—but they remain mere oddities observed by our blank-slate narrator. They jump off the page as obvious signifiers of something but on closer inspection don’t contain much signification.

Eventually, through circumstances that even he doesn’t understand, he finds himself returned to his apartment in Tokyo. It’s at this point we learn that decades passed between his teenage relationship with the girl and his finding his way to the town surrounded by high walls. He’s in his forties, unmarried, with a job in book distribution. Though he’s dated a few women, he remains haunted by the girl of his youth. He’s unhappy that he’s returned to the real world and is consumed by “the visceral sense that this reality isn’t a reality for [him].” If he can’t be the Dream Reader in the library in that town, he must be a librarian in this world, preferably in some small, isolated community. Well, circumstances align and he soon moves to the small town of Z**, walled in by high mountains in the Fukushima province.

Thus begins Part II of the novel, which, while still strange and explicitly supernatural, is much more grounded and satisfying than Part I. Murakami’s gifts lie in the depiction of life lived, of how ideas and experiences grow through the routine and repetition of our daily lives. That skill is on full display throughout the rest of the book. The narrator settles into his job and slowly gets to know the previous library director, Mr. Koyasu, who offers him guidance. He starts going to a coffeeshop and over a series of scenes develops enough rapport with the owner to ask her on a date. The seasons change. The library cat has kittens. While the narrator’s life is quite repetitive, the book is not boring and watching him live out his routine is not tedious. The way his rote actions begin to accrue meaning over time is quite powerful.

One might wonder if the two sections fit together into a complete work. Ultimately I think they do. They are very different and reflect very different perspectives to take in the scope of Murakami’s artistic development. The youth dreams of escaping and making their fantasies real. The man knows that fulfillment must be found in this world, and knows it can be done.

This read like a very stereotypical Murakami book. There were moments of this book that I really enjoyed and others that I felt dragged on a bit. However, I know that its going to be a book that I think back on and continue to put pieces back together.

I love the settings of a Murakami book, but still haven’t gotten used to the pacing. There are parts that feel painfully slow, and those where the narrator seems to explain a point quickly so as not to waste time on showing the reader what is happening. I was totally invested in yellow submarine kid and his understanding of the shadows and switching.

If you love Marakami, you will enjoy this book (especially if you liked the Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - in a true Murakami-est twist, that book was inspired by the early novella that is now become The City and Its Uncertain Walls - the two novels can be read as companion books.)
If you have never before read his books and don't enjoy (very) slow-burn character-driven novels - beware.
There is some deeper meaning behind this long and convoluted yet very simple story, but it is hard to care a lot about it when we take such meandering ways to get to it.
Not to knock the style - this is a true Murakami book written in his unique way with plenty of easter eggs for the committed readers - but to me, the language, in general, was repetitive, as were the situations and dialogues.
I finished it, and I can't say the ending was not satisfying - it was, in a way, a merger of two parts of the person after a long life of doubts and separation. The poetry behind "believing the other part of you is there to catch you" is beautiful, but at that point, I was just happy it was all over.

Thank you, NetGalley and Knopf, for providing an advanced reader's copy in exchange for my honest review. The book is out on November 19.

Can we create our own reality? Murakami delves into alternative possibilities in his latest fascinating and inventive novel. The story is told by a male narrator who remains unnamed. He meets a beautiful young girl from a different city at a ceremony where each is receiving a writing award. Although they see each other only on rare occasions after that, they write long letters and fall in love. One day she tells him about a city enclosed by a high wall where her 'real' self lives. As they talk, they go on 'to create and share a special, secret world of [their] own.' Then one day the girl just vanishes and is heard from no more.

This story is so wondrous! Woven into it are dreams, shadows, ghosts, unicorns, the meaning of time and so much more. The author's flowing writing style kept me turning pages; the ending left me with much to thunk about.

In an Afterword, Murakami tell us he first published this story as a novella back in 1980 as a young writer but always felt it deserved more, and now 40 years later, he has rewritten or, as he says, 'perhaps completed,' The City and Its Uncertain Walls. I highly recommend to those who enjoy this kind of rich fantasy story that takes the reader deep into the unknown.

Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this new novel via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

Thank you to Knopf and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Murakami is a brilliant writer and this is beautifully written, but I couldn’t get into the plot. I read about 10% and it did not hook me. Part of me wanted to keep going because I was intrigued about what could possible be going on, but it’s such a long book and it’s hard to keep trying to enjoy a book you aren’t quite enjoying, so I DNFed for now. I may pick it back up someday when I’m more in the mood.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami is a first person-POV literary magical realism. Utilizing second person-POV, the unnamed narrator speaks to his high school sweetheart, a girl who disappeared one day to go to a town surrounded by a wall and unicorns. When the narrator arrives in the town, he starts to have conversations with his shadow.

Haruki Murakami has been on my radar for more than a decade and yet this is my first novel from him. When I saw it was available on NetGalley, I immediately picked it up to try to understand what the hype was. As promised, there are references to music and Western pop culture including multiple references to the Beatles, which seems to be a Murakami signature. The pacing is also quite slow as this fits the literary classification of spending a lot of time in a character’s thoughts instead of a constantly moving plot. The reader is meant to savor those feelings of losing a teenage love but also trying to find it, and yourself, again.

The shadow aspect is quite interesting and something I'm probably going to continue to contemplate off-and-on. One of the stipulations of the walled town is that nobody there has a shadow, forcing the narrator to cast his off in order to stay. But his shadow comes back and asks for them to leave the town and go back to the regular world. In some ways, I got the impression that this was an on-going conversation between an immigrant who is living in their new home and the part of them that still belongs to their place of origin, the part that might always want to go back. In this case, the shadow seemed to be right as there wasn't much for the narrator in this town except their job and high school sweetheart, but neither seemed to be fulfilling them, making their days a shadow of what they could be (pun intended).

There are some subtle Queer themes in here, though that will be up to each reader’s interpretation. A higher-up in a library is a man who wears skirts because it feels poetic and all of the narrator's potential love interests might be sex-repulsed Asexual women. There are other interpretations for both beyond Queerness (such as grief and certain medical conditions), but given Queerness is becoming more discussed and accepted in many parts of the world, it's hard not to think that these themes are intentionally meant to normalize different kinds of relationships and preferences. The narrator might think something is odd or draw attention to it, but there's a difference between being surprised and confused and being disgusted and what we had here was more surprise and confusion followed by acceptance.

I would recommend this to fans of literary magical realism, readers who love explorations of shadows, and those looking for a long literary read set in modern Japan

👉🏻 For my friends who enjoy mind-bending stories that leave them blinking into space and whispering, “What did I just read?”

THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS by Haruki Murakami (Philip Gabriel, Translator) Brian Nishii (Narrator)

🎧 Thanks, @PRHAudio, for the #gifted audiobook and Knopf for the advanced review copy via NetGalley. #PRHAudioPartner #sponsored (Available 26 Nov 2024)

I loved this author’s memoir (WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING), but his fiction might be beyond my comprehension. This magical realism story is told in three parts. First, a nameless boy falls in love with a mysterious, nameless girl who describes an equally mysterious town with high walls, a gatekeeper, unicorns, and shadowless people. She then disappears without a word. Next, the nameless man, now middle-aged, wakes outside the mythical city, relinquishes his shadow, and becomes a dream reader in the library where the mysterious girl (still the age when he last saw her) serves him tea. Finally, the nameless man, suddenly back in the “real world,” finds a random job as a librarian at a remote, mysterious library where he meets more unusual people.

I kept searching for the connection, the extended metaphor, or the parable behind this twisty, dreamlike tale, but came away confused.

However, the narrator of the audiobook was exceptional. I could have listened to his lovely voice for 17 hours and 27 minutes without understanding a speck of the story. Which, in fact, I did.

This is a deeply muddled and uncertain book that I wouldn’t recommend for the classroom or anyone beyond a staunch Murakami enthusiast. Even then, it feels like a good Murakami book took a weird dream - all the facets of the odd and mystical are emphasized, and the real and internal/relatable are either diminished or wholly absent. The book is also far too long and feels more like a novella that got out of hand.

If appreciating Murakami's books is an acquired taste, something you develop by exploring his work book by book rather than something that can happen with any of his books, then it was a mistake for me to request this. I was interested in the premise and I've never read a book by the author, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to start, but maybe I was wrong.

I like magical realism and absurdity, I do, but not when it's meandering and doesn't seem to have a point. And if I have to drag myself through the rest of this book to understand the point of all this nonsense, like it's a chore, then I'm not interested.

There are many things in life that I do simply because I have to, even if they're unpleasant, but I refuse to let reading become one of those things. That's why I DNF as soon as thinking about reading a book makes my eyes roll, and that's what happened with this one. Maybe I'll give any other of his books a try at some other point in life, but this was not it for me.

Book Review: The City, and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, Translated by Philip Gabriel
Published by Knopf, November 19, 2024

★★★★★ (4.5 Stars rounded up!)

"The City, and Its Uncertain Walls" (English version, 2024) by Haruki Murakami, was first published as a 150-page novella in a Japanese literary magazine in 1980, when the author was still running a jazz bar in Tokyo. It was just about that time when Murakami decided to close up shop and be a full-time writer. He remains an aficionado as evidenced by the jazz influence which pleasantly bleeds into his prose.

The rewritten "City" now a 464-page novel crafted by an older and wiser 75-year-old Murakami 45 years after the novella, took three years to write, protracted due to the coronavirus pandemic. He takes the original story from his 1980 "City" novella and fuses in seamlessly the plot of his 1985 novel, "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World", as the "Dream Reader", Narrator and enigmatic protagonist of "Hard-Boiled", carries the torch through a Kafkaesque maelstrom to the finale of the rewritten "City" novel.

Simply breathtaking!

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// "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" (1985) //

An experiment in the subconscious mind.
The Narrator, a nameless protagonist, is presented as a "human data processor" and rides an elevator underground through the depths of the Tokyo subway to the secret lab of an eccentric old scientist. Eventually, the protagonist receives a special gift from the old scientist.

The skull of a unicorn.

Unicorns. And a town with high walls.
Which leads to a desolate town with a high wall around it, a library without books, a watchtower with a clock without hands, three bridges spanning its lone river, and communal housing. The woods around the town have but one denizen species: unicorns, many of whom die in long winters.

The Dream Reader. His Shadow. And his Love.
It is here where our protagonist morphs into the "Dream Reader", the only position open in the town, where he meets his long-lost teenager girlfriend, the "Librarian", still the 17-year-old she was then. The town is guarded by the "Gatekeeper", and people who are allowed to enter are separated from their own "Shadow". That's right, the "Shadow" is a living, breathing character in these environs, and, severed, becomes a separate but identical person. The Dream Reader's only function is to read old dreams. These are the only items on the shelves of the library without books. It is a world of the protagonist's imagination where "...you'd have to wish your way in". Or fall in through a hole, or climb a river upstream, as it turns out.

The End of the World.
Which leads to that part of the novel which leaves Murakami readers perplexed. The Dream Reader's brain, shuts down, slowly in degrees, locked in his own subconscious. As he parts ways with his own Shadow at the edge of an isolated pool, he meets his own metaphorical end...

-------------------

// "The City, and Its Uncertain Walls" (English version, 2024) by Haruki Murakami //

/// "Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change /movement.
Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are all about?”
—Haruki Murakami, 2024, from the book's afterword. ///

Part 1.
The first part of the novel is a reprise of "Hard-Boiled Wonderland", with further elaboration on the multi-dimensional romantic relationship between two Tokyo high school kids, coming of age, who find themselves transported through the ether by their own consciousness into a city with walls, a product of their own creation, where they emerged as the "Dream Reader" and his "Shadow", and the "Librarian". Part 1 goes all through that final pool scene when the Narrator meets his metaphorical end, as he parts ways with his Shadow.

/// "The real me lives there, in that town surrounded by a wall..." ///

Parts 2 & 3.
The Narrator finds himself as a salaryman back in Tokyo, now forty-five-years-old. He resigns from his job as a traveling book distributor and moves from Tokyo to Fukushima (site of Japan's post-tsunami nuclear disaster). His becomes the head librarian in a small town. There he meets and becomes close friends with Mr. Koyasu, the library's colorful former head, a man without a shadow. Who as it turns out, passed away long before the arrival of the narrator. Koyasu, too, knows of the city with uncertain walls. He has a romantic encounter with the lonely owner of a Coffee Shop endlessly playing jazz music, just the right interlude for a Murakami exhibition of fancy jazz tidbits.

It is in the library where he meets a mysterious boy he christens the "Yellow Submarine Boy". A boy who draws for the Narrator a map of the city with uncertain walls, and proceeds to tell him their purpose.
"To prevent an epidemic. A never-ending epidemic", says the Yellow Submarine Boy.

The boy vanishes, "spirited away" in classic Japanese anime fashion. He had wished, with all his heart, to go the city with uncertain walls.

The Narrator follows a river upstream — and gets reunited with the Librarian, still at her 17-year-old self, in the city with uncertain walls. And over the distance, on a bridge, he sees a boy. It is none other than the Yellow Submarine Boy, who now wishes to be the Dream Reader. Their conversation is a soliloquy.

/// "Did you know that? The two of us are nothing more than someone else's shadow.
Yes, that's right. It might sound outlandish, but it isn't.
You and I joined together. Since I am, from the start, you, and you are from the start me.
So you're saying it's no big deal which is the real person and which is the shadow...." ///

Even as the Dream Reader's Shadow, in a most unexpected form, recaptures his own consciousness, as the Narrator, in a single breath, blows his own candle out...

/// "Darkness descended. A darkness deeper than anything, a darkness ever so soft." ///
—Haruki Murakami, 2024, from the book's finale. ///

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Magnificent prose, maudlin at times with overextended expressions of puppy love.
In many parts, repetitive. — And yet unputdownable!

Review based on an advanced reading copy courtesy of Knopf and NetGalley.

A quiet, gentle, mysterious story in which it is hard to differentiate between what is reality and what is illusory. In essence, it's classic Murakami. By the time I was 75% through the book I was certainly intrigued with how it would resolve at the end but I also didn't really care because it was so enjoyable to read that I was just happy to be in this story, along for the ride. Compelling characters, interesting questions, relatable experiences of grief and heartache, sure it's magical realism (complete with a nod to Marquez) but it's also about human experience. I very much enjoyed the journey.

I found this novel more enjoyable than I thought I would, given the lack luster reviews that have been posted so far. It is a tale of magical realism...a tale of young love and the pursuit of lost love. It deftly explores the boundaries of reality and unreality in the way only Murakami can, seamlessly flitting from one world to another without leaving the reader behind. The worldbuilding is masterful and intricate, as is the character building. The plot development is leisurely and unhurried, in keeping with the novel's dreamy atmosphere. "It is a fantastical kind of fiction. And probably classify me as some starry-eyed dreamer. That's all." -Murakami. iykyk.

4.5 rounded up.

My appreciation to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.

A strange tale about a Japanese man that's told in three different locations/time periods. The book interweaves a shadow world/fantasy/magical realism with plausible worlds. I liked each individual story/location but did not like how they overlapped

This book was a little different for me and I could not finish. Probably just bad timing on my part. Too much magical woo-woo for right now.