Have you ever had a dream where you thought you woke up, but you were still dreaming, analyzing the previous part of the dream? This book feels like a giant dream journal, pieced together from leftover dreams and previous works. The result is confusing, dreary, depressing, and plotless—like a battleship grey, lifeless version of someone's dream life. It's just not fun or interesting.
All the typical Murakami elements are here: memory, loss, middle-aged men pining for teen love interests. I thought I liked Haruki Murakami as an author, but this book is making me reconsider. He may think he's a peer to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical-realist style, quoting Love in the Time of Cholera in the last section, but The City and Its Uncertain Walls is definitely in the fantasy and surrealist genres.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part is the longest, a rambling and incoherent mess of time skips between the protagonist as a teenager and his first love, and his entry into nameless city which requires a hefty fee of separating from one's shadow and getting stabbed in the eyes (so he can "work" as a Dreamreader of old dreams). Both teens seem to suffer from major depressive disorder. This part could easily be halved. The second part represents the protagonist's transition after helping his shadow escape from the nameless town with sentient walls. He wakes up in his own life, quits his job, and moves to a rural town as the head librarian. The third part covers his interactions with the ghost, cafe owner, librarian, and an autistic boy at the library (aka M**** or Yellow Submarine Boy). It's possible that Yellow Submarine boy doesn't actually exist -- and is yet another shadow of our primary protagonist but that's never fully fleshed out.
The protagonist's life is described as masking: interacting with people because that's what one does, but internally, he is deeply depressed. The writing is stilted and awkward at times. For example, the town is only referred to as Z***, and the cafe owner, who becomes the protagonist's love interest, doesn't even get a name but has a rock-hard body shaper acting as a chastity belt. This feels like a repeat of the teen romance—our protagonist will wait and wait. His lack of engagement and commitment seems to have destroyed his past relationships. He drifts along aimlessly, like a spineless sea creature.
The most interesting character is Mr. Koyasu, the scion of the local sake brewer who set up a private library and manages it for the town of Z*** until his death. He continues supporting the library as a ghost until they hire the protagonist as the head librarian. Mr. Koyasu could have been the primary subject of a much shorter version of this novel.
Overall, the book feels lifeless, colorless, and flavorless. The only foods mentioned are a few kinds of tea, apples and apple cake, coffee, blueberry muffins, and fried egg. Even the descriptions of sounds feel like throwaways, as if added at the editor's suggestion. Essentially, the protagonist is living his life inside a boring box, passing time and struggling to discern reality from dream.
Ultimately, The City and Its Uncertain Walls feels like a self-indulgent exercise that wastes the reader's time. Murakami's reliance on familiar themes and motifs, combined with a meandering and incoherent plot, results in a lifeless and colorless narrative. While some may find value in his introspective style, this novel fails to deliver the engaging and magical experience that many have come to expect from his work. For those seeking a captivating story, this book is likely to disappoint.
REVIEW: The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
RATING: 2-stars
