Reviews - Killing Commendatore

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2.09k reviews for:

Killing Commendatore

Haruki Murakami

3.76 AVERAGE

eilidhwarnock's review against another edition

2.75

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I usually like Murakami books and love the mystery and weird twists and turns - but this is the exception!
First of all, it was far too long. 680 pages? And it only started to get exciting at page 500 for me. There were so many times when I thought about DNFing this but I decided to push through and wanted to know what happened in the end.
Then I forget that Murakami does not know how to write women at all. There are no female characters which are not reffered to in a sexual way. Even the younger women and girls are all constantly only worrying about their breast size, and this was VERY repetitive. It actually came across as pretty gross and off-putting at many points, I would skip the graphic sex scenes throughout the story (and don't get me started on the r*pe scene. )
I felt this whole book was actually quite repetitive, and I don't know if that's down to the translation or if Murakami is aware of how long this damn book is and his editor wanting him to keep reminding the reader of the plot? So all in all not a great pace ! And I'm not so sure that the ending had good pay off at all - I feel that there were also some storylines left open?
But in saying this, I still do appreciate the worlds and lives that Murakami builds and being able to lose yourself in these stories. They are always unique and like nothing I've read before! In the future though I will be wary of picking up anything which is over 400 pages !

gauravgary's review against another edition

2.0

This has been sadly a very disappointing book. I gave 1 extra star because I liked the writing style.

racoongod's review against another edition

4.0

I agree with other reviews that it is quite boring compared to Murakami's other works, but I still quite enjoyed the story. One more note, not sure how I feel about how he writes about women in this one.