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Our Assessment:
A- : rich and satisfying See our review for fuller assessment.
From the Reviews: - Return to top of the page - The complete review's Review:
The first part of The City and its Uncertain Walls is presented in more or less alternating chapters, in not so much alternating time- as place-lines.
In the one, set in the recognizable, familiar, everyday world, the narrator recounts his first, great love, a girl he met when they were both still teenagers in high school.
He addresses much of this account to her -- neither of them ever named ("At that time neither you nor I had names") -- and recalls their months together, exchanging letters, talking endlessly, as well as making out some ("We never went beyond that, though").
They went to separate schools, and lived at some distance from one another -- "Not far away, but not so close that we could drop by whenever we wanted" -- and so only saw each other occasionally.
The me here with you now isn't the real me. It's only a stand-in. Like a wandering shadow.Surrounded by a wall, it is also a difficult town to enter (and even more so to leave) -- but the girl assures him that if he can find it, and as long as he is seeking the real her, he would be able to get in. There's even a position already available for him -- as a 'Dream Reader'. ("All you need to do is read all the old dreams collected on the shelves of the library".) There is one catch, however, the real version of the girl won't recognize him or remember anything about him. The narrator alternatingly tells of their real-life youthful relationship as well as then his experiences in this mystical town -- which he does indeed reach and where he does encounter the girl again, though: "you were still sixteen, I was no longer seventeen. For you I was now a grown man, far older than you" (while: "She was sixteen. For her, time stood still at that age"). When he entered the town, the narrator had to give up his shadow; no one here has one: "You either leave him here or give up on going inside", the Gatekeeper at the town's sole entrance had told him. The Gatekeeper rips his shadow off, and they become separate entities; the shadow lives on as well, the Gatekeeper giving him room and board and asking him to help out with various tasks; still: "Shadows separated from the body are like plants without roots. They don't live long". The town is also a Hotel California-type situation: "This gate is the sole entrance to the town," the Gatekeeper said, pointing a plump finger at the gate. "Once a person passes through and goes inside, they can't ever go outside again. The wall doesn't allow it. That's the rule.Eventually, the narrator's shadow weakens, and this storyline builds up to whether or not the narrator will try to be reünited with his shadow -- and whether he/they will try to escape the town. Even as he is uncertain about whether it would be possible to leave, he wonders: "Which world should I belong to ? I couldn't decide". Meanwhile, however, he adjusts to a very simple life there, working as a Dream Reader -- apparently the only one in the peculiar, in many ways lifeless -- certainly under-populated -- town. He has his doubts about his abilities -- "Maybe I didn't have what it took to do the job ?" -- but he keeps at it. The storyline about his teen-relationship with the girl continues as well, to the point where she disappears from his life, with one last letter -- and how he stumbles on after that, going to college, getting a job (with a book distribution company) -- and never finding a woman he could settle down with: "in the end, I could never build a genuine relationship built on trust with any woman I dated". He putters on, to age forty five -- and then, metaphorically and physically: "I once again fell into a hole". The second, longest part of the novel finds the narrator (back) in the real world, in his mid-forties, working at the book distribution company, and soon quitting his job: "I simply felt that this reality wasn't suited to me". He can't go (back) to the mystical town -- but another, if more down-to-earth, opportunity presents itself. He sets his sights on working in a library, and a former co-worker helps him find a position -- at an unusual town library in a small place in Fukushima, Z**. The narrator travels to Z** for an interview, meeting the Head Librarian, Tatsuya Koyasu, whose position he would be assuming. Koyasu is not exactly who he first seems -- and not just because he wears a skirt --, but it takes the narrator quite a while until he realizes that; the interview itself is a mere formality, and the narrator gets and takes the job. Koyasu then continues to be an occasional helpful presence in dealing with what also turns out to be a somewhat unusual town. As in the mystical town, the narrator lives a simple, isolated life, with little human interaction -- though here at least at work there is a pretty busy and efficient library staff. Eventually, he also makes the acquaintance of a woman who also recently moved here, buying a business -- "A coffee shop without a name". (The woman, too, remains unnamed, as Murakami plays with nameless-ness throughout the novel, the narrator noting of his seventeen-year-old self and his sixteen-year-old-love: "At that time neither you nor I had names"; among the oddities/disappointments in the novel is that the final letter he received from her as a teen is apparently signed (presented as: "** [Your name]" in the text), even as elsewhere (also with her town-alter-ego/'real' self) her name is never mentioned or alluded to.) A relationship develops between the coffee shop-owner and the narrator but, as with his sixteen-year-old love, is not consummated. The girl had told him she wanted to give herself to him, but she wasn't ready yet; the mature woman now is someone for whom sex is so physically unpleasant that she has no interest in it (one of the reasons she got divorced); just as the town has an impregnable wall, she even armors herself against the possibility ..... This lack of sexual fulfillment is one of the novel's curious themes; it doesn't seem to bother the narrator too much, but there's an undertow -- occasionally surfacing -- of great sexual tension throughout. Another local figure in Z**, a young boy from a prominent family, also then comes to play a significant role. He practically never speaks, but is an avid and intense reader; he learns about the mystical town and is determined to go there ..... The short third and final part brings the story to its conclusion, if not a simple, clear resolution. At one point, around half way through the novel, the narrator finds: With a small creaking sound, the reality around me was cracking ever so slightly. Assuming that this was, in fact, reality.Murakami leaves readers similarly uncertain of how firm the ground beneath them is. There's a duality to many of the significant figures -- me and my shadow, as it were -- and the question of connecting with or being separated from oneself (as in the teen girlfriend, sure her other, 'real' self is out there) seems more significant than connection with others. Tellingly, only secondary characters have significant others in their lives, while the most prominent -- including the two versions of the teen girl, as well as Koyasu -- have lost, or never had their better (or at least other) half. Those who had been in traditional relationships -- the coffee shop owner and Koyasu were both married -- could not sustain them, for reasons beyond their control (with Koyasu's loss of self(s) having gone even further by the time the narrator gets to know him). With quite a few dreams -- mostly the narrator's, rather than the one he reads in his erstwhile professional capacity -- and fantastical elements, such as the beasts the Gatekeeper sees to in the mystical town, or the town's seeming un-mappability (as well as the whole 'Dream Reader'-concept), and the many identity-questions/issues (as well as the odd hole here and there), The City and its Uncertain Walls is typical Murakami fare, with reality on the one hand so simple, but then so warped at its edges. The City and its Uncertain Walls is basically a novel about longing(s) and seeking -- more even for self than for an other, a person to be with, as the main characters are isolated and, decidedly, un-joined (no one's having sex; they're missing their shadows, etc.). The novel meanders along, much as the narrator does, only rarely forcing the issue(s), and this works very well. Even -- or especially -- without a neat resolution (much as the narrator's teen-relationship never found one, then or later), it is a very satisfying read, appealingly suggestive without trying to be meaning-full. (Note, however, that much of the critical reaction sees it very differently -- more tiresome mess .....) Murakami also includes an Afterword, explaining the novel's origins in a novella he published in 1980, the one work of his that, however: "was never published as a book, either in Japan or in other countries". He continued to engage with the material, however, and: "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was one response to the original story" (explaining the overlap of some of elements found here) -- and this now is a final reworking of it. - M.A.Orthofer, 13 November 2024 - Return to top of the page - The City and its Uncertain Walls:
- Return to top of the page - Japanese author Murakami Haruki (村上春樹) was born January 12, 1949. He attended Waseda University. He has written several internationally acclaimed bestsellers and is among the best-known contemporary Japanese writers. - Return to top of the page -
© 2024 the complete review
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