The City and Its Uncertain Walls

(I'm an editor at The Chicago Review of Books, and was sent an ARC for consideration for coverage.)

Funny a book so concerned with shadows and vestiges ended up feeling like a shadow of another book. I'm a Murakami defender till-I-die, but this one lacked some of the distinct pleasures I find in other Murakami novels:

1. A protagonist searching for something they can't have, either because it's permanently lost or simply a mirage.
2. A strong perspective or voice that feels relatable in terms of their aesthetic sense and what they find beautiful.

This book superficially has 1., but perhaps because it's so futile in this case or simply how it's handled, I didn't find it that compelling. I also wasn't that bought in to the protagonist's voice this time around.

It was interesting to see Murakami handle another sequel or reimagining, but especially after revisiting Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The City, and its Uncertain Walls feels like a bit of a mirage. Not sure it really expanded upon that earlier world in a meaningful way.

This book is the second rewrite of the 1981 novella that bears the same title. The first rewrite is the "End of the World" section of "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." It still reads as fresh even after all these years.

"Run as far away as you’d like, the wall had told me. I will always be there."

Our dear Unnamed Protagonist has a bit of an identity issue. He met a girl when he was 17, had a brief, unrequited love, and then she vanished. During their time together, they played a game imagining a walled city together. This stuck with our Unnamed Protagonist long after she vanished, until circumstances bring him to the very city the two of them dreamed up when they were kids. Lo and behold, the 16 year old girl is there, acting as the Unnamed Protagonist’s assistant in dream reading. Things get along swimmingly (if a bit same-y, day after day after day after day after….), until the Unnamed Protagonist helps his own shadow leave the city, never to return. Suddenly we’re back in Japan, in Fukushima, with our Unnamed Protagonist acting as a librarian in a very remote town. Where did the walled city go? What does the dead-but-not old head librarian know about the walled city and how to get back? Who is the kid with the Yellow Submarine sweatshirt? All these questions and (so many) more are yours to explore by the end.

I won't get into my deeper thoughts on what I thought this book meant, because that's more for the reader to find. I will say I liked the themes here of (thematic spoilers here) duality, the perception of reality, and moving on from unrequited love, amongst other things.

Right off the bat I feel like this had some pacing issues in the middle. I enjoyed the young love setup in the beginning, and enjoyed the satisfying payoff as things start accelerating past the midpoint of the book, but the day-after-day sameness of the library in Fukushima felt a little thin. The detail is certainly there though, so if you love Murakami depicting everyday life (I do), you’ll get that itch scratched here. In true Murakami fashion, don’t go into this looking for definitive answers from the author, because the real answers are the ones you find (or, make up convincingly) along the way. I appreciated being able to revisit the town from Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t feel like a rehash exactly, just another story layered over the same town. And finally, while there’s no sex in this book (Murakami bingo card holders with ‘weird sex’ as a square, I’m sorry), we do get some of that patent ogling of underage girls and dated-feeling thoughts about middle aged women here. If you can’t overlook those things and enjoy the story told here, I’d give the book a pass.

Just a pleasant read from one of my favorite authors.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.