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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Painfully exquisite imagery, empathy for characters, intellectual stimulation, etc. - all there in true Murakami style, however - perhaps not one of his best? Kafka on the shore or Norwegian Wood for example plunged deeper into the psyche of the characters: their pain was more raw or the general feel of the novel more electric? The calm resolution was anti-climatic considering the tense (and lengthy) build-up. Though maybe that's more Murakami's style: a sprinkling of magic realism to emphasise life themes, lessons and values? Found myself hurried to return to the characters who (over 700 pages) I had formed a deep connection with, and I'm sure I'll continue to think about them having finished and that is a testament to the literary king! Another take-away: now inspired to seek out magic realism fiction; getting lost in another bizarre/abstract world whilst on the daily commute is nothing short of heaven!
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
adventurous
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Hmmmmm. I'm still not entirely convinced by Murakami.
I have issues with his content - much of which seems to cover very, very similar territory to the single previous Murakami work I've read, and which often seems so surreal as to be not merely provocative but simply unconvincing - and the diction, which often tends toward the awkward (it's nothing like stylish, nor is it un-stylish in an obviously deliberate fashion - take his description of Mozart, whose music is "deep, amazing and gorgeous", sounding like an elementary school student who's discovered a thesaurus!), especially in Murakami's strange, detached descriptions of sexual intercourse - his obsession with breasts noted in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki making a reappearance here; though perhaps the awkward language can be put down to the fact that it's translated; I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there.
The novel is kind of constructed at the intersection of the artist's inner life and the self-growth and development undergone in our middle age - or also at the cusp of adulthood. The unnamed protagonist is very much a typical 'Murakami man' - a middle-aged man whose life is financially successful though artistically a betrayal of his ideals, and whose abrupt rupture from his wife leaves him making a long journey around Japan, then lodging at the house of a friend's artist father, where he undergoes a series of experiences whose supernatural character shake him deeply.
There are, however, so many problems with the book - for one thing, its length is unnecessary. Some long books, like The Mirror and the Light, are lengthy but rewarding; one never feels that there are excessive words, detail or plot. Here, though, the length is definitely excessive - it is almost as if Murakami is trying to convince us that the plot is fantastical and supernatural through the unnatural length of the book. Murakami man's detachment is certainly engaging in a novel like Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki where he is mostly dealing with disruptions in reality and in his life; here, where such improbabilities as the Commendatore appearing as a two-foot-tall apparition and a strange journey through the land of Metaphors (I didn't quite get this; the whole notion of Ideas, Symbols and Double Metaphors kind of flew over my head) deserve something more of a reaction than Murakami man's simple-minded excitement and concern - "it felt like it had taken place in a dream" making both my points about his limitations in prose and the vacuousness of his supernatural exploration. Do we really need to know in such excruciating, yawn-inducing detail the specific happenings of 13-year-old Mariye as she potters around the house of Menshiki?
It also felt very clumsy sometimes, almost as if it was a serialised novel and Murakami felt the need to remind us of what happened in the previous chapter as we read the next one. Also, I didn't always enjoy Murakami's treatment of female identity. Why did the narrator and Mariye speak about breasts and penises on their very first encounter? Why did the supernatural hole that creates all his problems become a vagina, and one whose 'musty' smell pervades the entirety of the land of Metaphors which the narrator is forced to enter? Why does Murakami suggest that the narrator impregnated his wife through a dream where his sperm overflows and overflows uncontrollably out of his ex-wife's vagina? Why does his wife suddenly decide to cancel their divorce and return to their marriage? Is this a comment on the hopeless, cyclical nature of life? I wouldn't be surprised, since that is a Murakami trope - but that only contributed to the sense of excessive lengthiness of the novel.
There were redeeming features - while the prose may have been awkward and the narrative confusing, it was still eminently readable (though perhaps, given his supposedly literary credentials, this is not what Murakami is striving for above all). Also, there were some powerful attempts at symbolism - for one, I very much enjoyed attempting to decipher the mystery of what Long Face - yes, this will not make any sense if you haven't read the book - might represent. I did also enjoy, unlike some other reviewers, the ending - one gets the sense of a very tentative attempt to reconcile ourselves to the inevitably cyclical nature of life. To borrow the eloquent expression of a friend's research paper on Murakami - he maintains a sincerity without naivete and
a distance without irony, avoiding both postmodernism’s tendency for despair and
postmodern humanism’s tendency for escape through ultimately characterising nostalgia as ephemeral. Nostalgia, in the sense of recall - as in the repeated, though fleeting parallels our narrator draws with the female characters in his life and his long-dead younger sister - is a transient, dreamlike moment whose presentism suffices for the moment of narrative. This is plausibly why Murakami's characters, including youthful Mariye, are almost irritatingly inept with technology - because such temporal conventions may not recur, yet the cycle between atemporal idealisation of the past, something the narrator is complicit of in clinging on to the vestiges of his memories of his sister, and the ultimately temporal, fleeting moments of realisation (as in the all-too-brief epiphany of the narrator, before he inextricably returns to his old life) are perhaps almost universal to the human condition.
I did think that, somewhere deep in the text, was buried a poignant, emotional and deeply important narrative - but the execution was simply not up to par. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki shared many of the flaws of this work, but at least left me feeling deeply for its eponymous protagonist; here, all I was left with was exhaustion and confusion. Murakami may very well have cornered the field of ennui and nostalgia, but the awkwardness of his prose simply does not befit a supposedly front-rank writer.
I have issues with his content - much of which seems to cover very, very similar territory to the single previous Murakami work I've read, and which often seems so surreal as to be not merely provocative but simply unconvincing - and the diction, which often tends toward the awkward (it's nothing like stylish, nor is it un-stylish in an obviously deliberate fashion - take his description of Mozart, whose music is "deep, amazing and gorgeous", sounding like an elementary school student who's discovered a thesaurus!), especially in Murakami's strange, detached descriptions of sexual intercourse - his obsession with breasts noted in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki making a reappearance here; though perhaps the awkward language can be put down to the fact that it's translated; I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there.
The novel is kind of constructed at the intersection of the artist's inner life and the self-growth and development undergone in our middle age - or also at the cusp of adulthood. The unnamed protagonist is very much a typical 'Murakami man' - a middle-aged man whose life is financially successful though artistically a betrayal of his ideals, and whose abrupt rupture from his wife leaves him making a long journey around Japan, then lodging at the house of a friend's artist father, where he undergoes a series of experiences whose supernatural character shake him deeply.
There are, however, so many problems with the book - for one thing, its length is unnecessary. Some long books, like The Mirror and the Light, are lengthy but rewarding; one never feels that there are excessive words, detail or plot. Here, though, the length is definitely excessive - it is almost as if Murakami is trying to convince us that the plot is fantastical and supernatural through the unnatural length of the book. Murakami man's detachment is certainly engaging in a novel like Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki where he is mostly dealing with disruptions in reality and in his life; here, where such improbabilities as the Commendatore appearing as a two-foot-tall apparition and a strange journey through the land of Metaphors (I didn't quite get this; the whole notion of Ideas, Symbols and Double Metaphors kind of flew over my head) deserve something more of a reaction than Murakami man's simple-minded excitement and concern - "it felt like it had taken place in a dream" making both my points about his limitations in prose and the vacuousness of his supernatural exploration. Do we really need to know in such excruciating, yawn-inducing detail the specific happenings of 13-year-old Mariye as she potters around the house of Menshiki?
It also felt very clumsy sometimes, almost as if it was a serialised novel and Murakami felt the need to remind us of what happened in the previous chapter as we read the next one. Also, I didn't always enjoy Murakami's treatment of female identity. Why did the narrator and Mariye speak about breasts and penises on their very first encounter? Why did the supernatural hole that creates all his problems become a vagina, and one whose 'musty' smell pervades the entirety of the land of Metaphors which the narrator is forced to enter? Why does Murakami suggest that the narrator impregnated his wife through a dream where his sperm overflows and overflows uncontrollably out of his ex-wife's vagina? Why does his wife suddenly decide to cancel their divorce and return to their marriage? Is this a comment on the hopeless, cyclical nature of life? I wouldn't be surprised, since that is a Murakami trope - but that only contributed to the sense of excessive lengthiness of the novel.
There were redeeming features - while the prose may have been awkward and the narrative confusing, it was still eminently readable (though perhaps, given his supposedly literary credentials, this is not what Murakami is striving for above all). Also, there were some powerful attempts at symbolism - for one, I very much enjoyed attempting to decipher the mystery of what Long Face - yes, this will not make any sense if you haven't read the book - might represent. I did also enjoy, unlike some other reviewers, the ending - one gets the sense of a very tentative attempt to reconcile ourselves to the inevitably cyclical nature of life. To borrow the eloquent expression of a friend's research paper on Murakami - he maintains a sincerity without naivete and
a distance without irony, avoiding both postmodernism’s tendency for despair and
postmodern humanism’s tendency for escape through ultimately characterising nostalgia as ephemeral. Nostalgia, in the sense of recall - as in the repeated, though fleeting parallels our narrator draws with the female characters in his life and his long-dead younger sister - is a transient, dreamlike moment whose presentism suffices for the moment of narrative. This is plausibly why Murakami's characters, including youthful Mariye, are almost irritatingly inept with technology - because such temporal conventions may not recur, yet the cycle between atemporal idealisation of the past, something the narrator is complicit of in clinging on to the vestiges of his memories of his sister, and the ultimately temporal, fleeting moments of realisation (as in the all-too-brief epiphany of the narrator, before he inextricably returns to his old life) are perhaps almost universal to the human condition.
I did think that, somewhere deep in the text, was buried a poignant, emotional and deeply important narrative - but the execution was simply not up to par. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki shared many of the flaws of this work, but at least left me feeling deeply for its eponymous protagonist; here, all I was left with was exhaustion and confusion. Murakami may very well have cornered the field of ennui and nostalgia, but the awkwardness of his prose simply does not befit a supposedly front-rank writer.
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Some ideas are so real, so vivid, it's difficult to distinguish between reality and what’s in one’s head. Sometimes ideas help, sometimes hurt. Sometimes ideas lead to redemption. Sometimes, maybe, an idea leads to a second chance. Sometimes, you need to kill an idea.
Finishing Killing Commendatore, I’m left with a palpable feeling. A feeling that life’s journey is as much determined by the ideas that one fosters (or kills) as it is determined by happenstance, or dare I say, the hand of God. Each of us have ideas that constantly come and go. Yet, how much thought is put into which ideas should stick around and which should be killed? Not much, really. Ideas are thought of as these untouchable, nebulous things. Things that only grow if given full attention. But what about forgotten ideas? Whether deliberately or unintentionally forgotten, these abandoned ideas can fester and take on a reality of their own. Leaving you, or worse, someone else, the responsibility of putting to rest a potentially dangerous idea. What we do with ideas have consequences beyond ourselves.
Finishing Killing Commendatore, I’m left with a palpable feeling. A feeling that life’s journey is as much determined by the ideas that one fosters (or kills) as it is determined by happenstance, or dare I say, the hand of God. Each of us have ideas that constantly come and go. Yet, how much thought is put into which ideas should stick around and which should be killed? Not much, really. Ideas are thought of as these untouchable, nebulous things. Things that only grow if given full attention. But what about forgotten ideas? Whether deliberately or unintentionally forgotten, these abandoned ideas can fester and take on a reality of their own. Leaving you, or worse, someone else, the responsibility of putting to rest a potentially dangerous idea. What we do with ideas have consequences beyond ourselves.