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lilreddress's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I really enjoy Murakami, but find him hard work (possibly as a result of the translation rather than the original writing) and the female characters are comically awful at times.
I think nothing would have been lost if we just didn't mention the aunt or child's breasts at any time. It was pretty irrelevant to the story, and was pretty uncomfortable coming from a male writer. I think a female author would have probably left them out, or at least would have written female voices in a more realistic way.
The length is also questionable. I kept stopping reading to go read something else instead and coming back to it. I don't mind slow paced, and in fact the artist holed up in the country cottage gave some nice cosy vibes, and I loved reading about the everyday parts of life. However, this was truly glacial. Could have cut a hundred pages and still had the story intact, I think.
This is one of his weaker ones, but still very good. And definitely matches the level of weirdness I have come to expect.
I think nothing would have been lost if we just didn't mention the aunt or child's breasts at any time. It was pretty irrelevant to the story, and was pretty uncomfortable coming from a male writer. I think a female author would have probably left them out, or at least would have written female voices in a more realistic way.
The length is also questionable. I kept stopping reading to go read something else instead and coming back to it. I don't mind slow paced, and in fact the artist holed up in the country cottage gave some nice cosy vibes, and I loved reading about the everyday parts of life. However, this was truly glacial. Could have cut a hundred pages and still had the story intact, I think.
This is one of his weaker ones, but still very good. And definitely matches the level of weirdness I have come to expect.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexual assault, Stalking, Rape, Alcohol, and Confinement
Minor: Death, Fire/Fire injury, Suicide, War, Abortion, Kidnapping, Adult/minor relationship, Grief, Dementia, Sexual violence, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Infidelity, and Murder
frankahilde's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Killing commentatore is a beautiful book. It reminds me a lot of the wind up bird chronicles because it has a lot of similar motives (a dreamworld colliding with reality, a middle aged man left abruptly by his wife not really knowing what to do with his life, that man having a strange friendship with a young teenage girl, a house that is much more than that and sitting for hours in a dark confined space under the earth with only one other person knowing) But I really did prefer Killing Commendatore. Maybe because I am an artist as well, the topic of paintings and their meaning really fascinated me. I only think that the book was a little bit too long and could have been shortened at some points.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Suicide, War, and Rape
Minor: Abortion
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