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fkshg8465's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Weird and slightly disturbing, but I think that was the point of the self reflective journey.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Infidelity, Rape, Blood, Dementia, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, and Fire/Fire injury
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: Confinement, Rape, Sexual assault, Stalking, and Alcohol
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Infidelity, Sexual violence, Suicide, Medical content, Dementia, Kidnapping, Grief, Abortion, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail
bella613's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I loved this book, but to be honest, after finishing it I still can’t really explain what it was about. I can remember all the pieces and how it made me feel, but it’s very difficult to put any real name to what the book is. A summary of events that happen makes it sound like a silly story and yet it’s strangely powerful. I think it’s meant to be like a great painting, one that you have to let sink in for a long time. Some parts of the book go into almost uncomfortable detail but the descriptions are also what I loved most about the authors writing. Clearly the work of an artist.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content and Violence
Moderate: Child death, Sexual violence, Dementia, Grief, and Murder
Minor: Genocide, Infidelity, Rape, Suicide, and War
risemini's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Sexual content, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and War
steveatwaywords's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I am always a fan of stepping into Murakami's surreal worlds and I admire his minimalist approach to weaving together many threads of expectation and surprise. All of this is here--a disturbing psycho/supernatural realm, a lone artist wrestling with meaning, music and ancient folk tales, some expected traditional-Murakami archetypes--but I cannot rate the novel as one of his better works for several reasons.
Several other reviews have touches upon these, and I will echo them:
1) The novel is quite long for its ambition. I love longer novels for the extended stays. Wind-Up Bird, for instance, remains his masterpiece for me. But there are long cycles of detail and mundane events which add no movement to the work's ideas; and the novel does not set its sights as high as some of his earlier works. This is a (itself very interesting) reverie on the act of painting and (perhaps) on family, but it steps away from more than this. Contrast it to WUBC which encompasses capitalism, political corruption, WW2 guilt, pain, and a host of other themes. In short, Murakami has done much more than this in novels half the length (contrast, for instance, to Hard-Boiled Wonderland, After Dark, or even Dance, Dance, Dance.)
2) The closing hundred or so pages "close the circle" of storylines in a singularly unsatisfying expositional way. This thick description of what actually happened and even what it means struck me as lazy writing, and it is difficult to say this of Murakami, despite his eccentric writing methods. Questions are answered, I guess, but none resonate in a way which satisfy thematically: we capture nothing new, for instance, of the act of art creation, of the realm of Idea, of how our emotional commitments have consequence. Instead, we're drawn a plot-level map of where everyone went.
3) Many have already mentioned what appears an increasingly common fetishizing of women's breasts. More than this, I am increasingly disappointed in his handling of woman characters entirely. In this work, it is the existence and non-existence of women which propel men's actions, and here that seems mostly all they do. With little agency or reason, the women perform their roles for the men to puzzle over. They are objects--quite literally--for voyeurism, both by characters and, regrettably, by author.
Finally, there is much written in the promotional materials of this work of its homage to Fitzgerald's Gatsby. In the sense that a character of mysterious wealth pines for a woman he cannot have, I guess, but this is where the similarity ends. Our narrator is hardly the "objective" and later judgmental Nick; and there is little to nothing of the lifestyles of those he pursues which requires critique. Fitzgerald offers us a novel highly critical of the unsympathetic power of wealth and of the end of Romantic idealism, right down to the rug-pulling moment of osculation/incarnation. Killing Commendatore does not approach the ambition of Fitzgerald remotely in this regard, and Gatsby's story pulled it all off in a scant 150 pages.
And still, with all of this, I still enjoyed the visit to his worlds and will certainly visit again. Buried amidst all of these criticisms are real scenes of power and satisfaction: one of the act of painting itself truly fascinating; passages on the haunting of memories secreted and lost compelling; and also a question left on our ability to normalize just about anything, even an intentional surrendering of personal privacy.
New to Murakami? Start with a short work, even his short stories. Save this one once you are firmly committed to Murakami's methods. Or set it aside and choose a dozen or more of his more successful books.
Several other reviews have touches upon these, and I will echo them:
1) The novel is quite long for its ambition. I love longer novels for the extended stays. Wind-Up Bird, for instance, remains his masterpiece for me. But there are long cycles of detail and mundane events which add no movement to the work's ideas; and the novel does not set its sights as high as some of his earlier works. This is a (itself very interesting) reverie on the act of painting and (perhaps) on family, but it steps away from more than this. Contrast it to WUBC which encompasses capitalism, political corruption, WW2 guilt, pain, and a host of other themes. In short, Murakami has done much more than this in novels half the length (contrast, for instance, to Hard-Boiled Wonderland, After Dark, or even Dance, Dance, Dance.)
2) The closing hundred or so pages "close the circle" of storylines in a singularly unsatisfying expositional way. This thick description of what actually happened and even what it means struck me as lazy writing, and it is difficult to say this of Murakami, despite his eccentric writing methods. Questions are answered, I guess, but none resonate in a way which satisfy thematically: we capture nothing new, for instance, of the act of art creation, of the realm of Idea, of how our emotional commitments have consequence. Instead, we're drawn a plot-level map of where everyone went.
3) Many have already mentioned what appears an increasingly common fetishizing of women's breasts. More than this, I am increasingly disappointed in his handling of woman characters entirely. In this work, it is the existence and non-existence of women which propel men's actions, and here that seems mostly all they do. With little agency or reason, the women perform their roles for the men to puzzle over. They are objects--quite literally--for voyeurism, both by characters and, regrettably, by author.
Finally, there is much written in the promotional materials of this work of its homage to Fitzgerald's Gatsby. In the sense that a character of mysterious wealth pines for a woman he cannot have, I guess, but this is where the similarity ends. Our narrator is hardly the "objective" and later judgmental Nick; and there is little to nothing of the lifestyles of those he pursues which requires critique. Fitzgerald offers us a novel highly critical of the unsympathetic power of wealth and of the end of Romantic idealism, right down to the rug-pulling moment of osculation/incarnation. Killing Commendatore does not approach the ambition of Fitzgerald remotely in this regard, and Gatsby's story pulled it all off in a scant 150 pages.
And still, with all of this, I still enjoyed the visit to his worlds and will certainly visit again. Buried amidst all of these criticisms are real scenes of power and satisfaction: one of the act of painting itself truly fascinating; passages on the haunting of memories secreted and lost compelling; and also a question left on our ability to normalize just about anything, even an intentional surrendering of personal privacy.
New to Murakami? Start with a short work, even his short stories. Save this one once you are firmly committed to Murakami's methods. Or set it aside and choose a dozen or more of his more successful books.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Infidelity, Sexism, Grief, Stalking, Death of parent, and Pregnancy
All of these content warnings are integrated fairly naturally into the plotting of the book. However, the author's personal fetishizing of women's bodies--especially of a young girl's developing breasts--will be disturbing to many readers.scout_jones's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Dementia, Grief, and Death of parent
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship
sneako's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Confinement, Rape, Violence, and Grief
Moderate: Death, Genocide, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Blood, and Dementia
Minor: Torture
some more content notes: lengthy discussions of the sudden death of a parent, and the sudden death of a sibling (as memories from the past, not current events). / there is a creepy relationship which is never explicitly said to be pedophilic or incestuous but is sort of implied that it might be, and it involves some stalking. there is no violence against the child, however. / there is also a scene in which a character asks the protagonist to choke her during sex which brings him to some dark psychological places. / the rape scene is a dream/fantasy and does not occur in "real life." / there is a decapitation scene which is brief but bloody and graphic. / there is discussion of war crimes including the various mass killings of nazi germany, kristallnacht, and the nanking massacre.