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the_maxtasy 's review for:
Killing Commendatore
by Haruki Murakami
I started my Murakami journey at a weird spot with Dance Dance Dance, not really knowing much about the author and accidentally jumping in halfway through a series. But the book came at a weird point in my life and its dreamy vibe led to it being very important to me, allowing me to develop a love of Murakami's prose. As such, I wanted to continue reading from this author and I thought that Killing Commendatore would be a good next step given that it was about art and war, both of which are topics which interest me. However, I left this novel a little underwhelmed.
I wanted to like it a lot, and there are themes within it that I think are really cool and I enjoyed a lot. But the slow pace of the novel and the veil of mystery which I couldn't really penetrate through meant that the beginning of the book, where the protagonist goes on a road trip of self discovery, became my favourite part. And yet I still had a whole book to get through. The middle portion of the novel was something of a slice of life, meeting the very small cast of characters which lived around the protagonist's home and their quirks, while he developed a routine in the house he was living in. However, the pace was so slow for me that this book took really long for me to read. So long, in fact, that it kind of put me in a reading block, which is not what you want a book to do. Plus, the messages in the ending were unclear and it somewhat felt as if I'd started watching the end of a movie without watching the rest. The thing was that in this case I did watch the rest of the movie and yet I still didn't really get what was going on.
I don't know about Killing Commendatore, honestly. There were some parts of it which I really liked but to me it was so bloated that I don't really have many kind thoughts about it. I think that maybe its not my kind of book, because the pacing and the overall ideas of the novel really didn't come across to me, and as such I found that the book was kind of disappointing. I think I was going into the novel looking for the same feeling that Dance Dance Dance gave me, and the only part I really got that in was the very beginning of the book. Then again, I can barely remember anything that happened in Dance Dance Dance, I just remember the feeling it gave me, so I'm not really sure if I'll ever find that feeling I'm looking for again. I'm not sure if I could wholeheartedly recommend Killing Commendatore because it was such a time commitment that turned out to be somewhat disappointing, but it also feels wrong to give it any lower than 3 stars. I don't know why, I think that Murakami has some influence over me.
Has this review kind of become a review for Dance Dance Dance? Yes. And I don't think I mind that, given that I don't remember anything about it and in order to write an actual review about the book I'd need to read it first, which I'm scared to do because it might break the feelings and manufactured nostalgia which I've developed towards it. So yeah.
I wanted to like it a lot, and there are themes within it that I think are really cool and I enjoyed a lot. But the slow pace of the novel and the veil of mystery which I couldn't really penetrate through meant that the beginning of the book, where the protagonist goes on a road trip of self discovery, became my favourite part. And yet I still had a whole book to get through. The middle portion of the novel was something of a slice of life, meeting the very small cast of characters which lived around the protagonist's home and their quirks, while he developed a routine in the house he was living in. However, the pace was so slow for me that this book took really long for me to read. So long, in fact, that it kind of put me in a reading block, which is not what you want a book to do. Plus, the messages in the ending were unclear and it somewhat felt as if I'd started watching the end of a movie without watching the rest. The thing was that in this case I did watch the rest of the movie and yet I still didn't really get what was going on.
I don't know about Killing Commendatore, honestly. There were some parts of it which I really liked but to me it was so bloated that I don't really have many kind thoughts about it. I think that maybe its not my kind of book, because the pacing and the overall ideas of the novel really didn't come across to me, and as such I found that the book was kind of disappointing. I think I was going into the novel looking for the same feeling that Dance Dance Dance gave me, and the only part I really got that in was the very beginning of the book. Then again, I can barely remember anything that happened in Dance Dance Dance, I just remember the feeling it gave me, so I'm not really sure if I'll ever find that feeling I'm looking for again. I'm not sure if I could wholeheartedly recommend Killing Commendatore because it was such a time commitment that turned out to be somewhat disappointing, but it also feels wrong to give it any lower than 3 stars. I don't know why, I think that Murakami has some influence over me.
Has this review kind of become a review for Dance Dance Dance? Yes. And I don't think I mind that, given that I don't remember anything about it and in order to write an actual review about the book I'd need to read it first, which I'm scared to do because it might break the feelings and manufactured nostalgia which I've developed towards it. So yeah.