Haruki Murakami: “The City and Its Uncertain Walls”

Published this week: a new book by Haruki Murakami. I've been looking forward to this, and purchased and read it as soon as it was available to me. I was captivated by the novel, which had many of the elements expressed in earlier Murakami novels, but offered a different set of events, other-worldly settings, and characters. In retrospect, I realize how very much it was like his earlier books, but I enjoyed it anyway, in the moment.

 

As in all the Murakami novels and stories I’ve read, the juxtaposition of reality as I know it (and probably also as you know it) and a very unreal not-reality is powerful and dominates the story. But there’s much more to the story than this, and the jagged edges of reality and unreality are what makes the story so readable, at least to me. 

The features of Murakami’s magical realism are very much present in this novel, and clearly, he knows it and knows the reader is conscious of it. Here’s a key conversation between the central character, who narrates the novel, and a woman who is in his life for a brief time:

“You like García Márquez?” 

“I think so. I’ve read most of his books, but I especially like this one. This is the second time I’ve read it. What about you?” …

“In his stories the real and the unreal, the living and the dead, are all mixed together in one,” she said. “Like that’s an entirely ordinary, everyday thing.”

“People often call that magical realism,” I said. 

“True. But I think that although that way of telling stories might fit the critical criteria of magical realism, for García Márquez himself it’s just ordinary realism. In the world he inhabits the real and the unreal coexist and he just describes those scenes the way he sees them.” (Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls  p. 601-602)

 

The reader will no doubt accept this as a comment not just on García Márquez but on the author’s own way of seeing reality and not-reality in his many novels. In this novel, a parallel world exists in a mysterious town with a self-sustaining wall that keeps its inhabitants imprisoned, as well as a gatekeeper who tends a flock of golden-furred unicorns. The narrator, when he is in this surreal town, works in a library; he also works in a library in the maybe-real world (though this world also has some magical elements). The thing about the narrator is that he’s a pretty ordinary guy who just has surreal experiences. He had an ordinary education, a fixation on a lost love from adolescence, an unimaginative job in Tokyo, and then a move to a more unreal mountain town with a mysterious library. I like this. 

Every Murakami novel that I can think of has at least one long description of a man cooking dinner for a woman. I was beginning to fear that this element was missing, but finally, on page 504 out of 690, the narrator invites a woman to dinner. The cooking scene is almost a replica of such scenes from other Murakami novels right down to the spaghetti and salad, but I liked it anyway —

“In the kitchen I sipped my wine while tossing together the salad and spaghetti. She watched curiously as I buzzed around the kitchen. As I waited for the water to boil for the spaghetti, I minced a clove of garlic and sautéed calamari and mushrooms, then minced some parsley. I shelled the shrimp, sliced a grapefruit into even pieces, tossed soft lettuce and herbs together, and added a dressing of olive oil, lemon, and mustard. 

“‘You really look like you know what you’re doing. Very efficient.’  She seemed impressed.” (p 504)

 

I wondered if this novel will appeal to readers who aren’t deeply immersed already in the works of Murakami, so I looked up the New York Times review by Junot Díaz— published this week — which put it this way:

“If you’ve read any Murakami, this will seem very familiar. All the author’s standards are here, from the classic Murakami male narrator — described perfectly by Hari Kunzru as ‘a listless, socially isolated guy whose interests tend to circle around music, books, home cooking and cats, and whose lack of anchor in the everyday world often precipitates a sort of slippage into a netherworld of ghosts and spirits’ — to the apocalyptic disappearance and the reality-confusing shenanigans.” (source)

Unless you are already a hard-boiled fan of this author, if you want to read Murakami I would suggest beginning with one of his earlier novels. I’m sorry to say this.

Review © 2024 mae sander