Name: The City and Its Uncertain Walls
ISBN: 9781787304475

Haruki Murakami

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times. When a young man's girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

街とその不確かな壁

Bastien Vaucher

"Have you ever loved anyone else as much as you loved that girl? Had someone who was that precious to you?" I gave it some thought, though I really didn't need to. "I've met several women over the years and liked some of them. And had fairly intimate relations with them. But I've never felt the same way I did with that girl, not even once. That unadulterated feeling where your mind goes blank, like you're in the middle of a deep dream though it's daytime, like you can think of nothing else.

"I think I've been waiting for that unadulterated emotion to grab me again. Or for the woman, the person, who gave me that feeling."

Jemima Scott

‘Sometimes numbers can be more eloquent than words.’

‘Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change and movement. Isn't this the quintessential core of what stories are all about? At least that's how I see it.’

having just read the book, i'm naturally experiencing such conflicting emotions. to put it unkindly, it's your classic murakami that makes any self-aware woman want to puke. but at first, at the beginning, when it still seemed promising, i couldn't shake off the tingling sensation of a dream unfolding. memories of details from the previous book kept punching me again and again, drowning me in memories of my teenage life, of a lost friend i gave my precious hard-boiled wonderland book to. i wanted to finish all of it in one go but was too anxious, too agitated to keep reading. so it required pauses to calm myself down. until the tension deflated, never reaching a climax.

first, a schoolgirl. then, a grown woman. reading a book about a city hiding behind perfect walls, where elegant beasts roam and shadows are stripped away. 

then, i gifted it to a dear friend of mine. and repurchased it on a whim. in a different language, with a different cover. never read it again, though. it was needed to fill the gap, to calm down the nagging feeling that something was lacking. this book is just like that in some way. i didn't find it poetic or meaningful, it felt like witnessing a slow death in progress, a withering of any meaning. the death of the time i'll never get back, the vast nothingness of now. it's just a placeholder with the stale whiff of nostalgia and stagnation; dare i even say, please forgive me for that, a nostalgia slop. the main character is such a useless pathetic loser, sometimes a weird repulsive lump of flesh if you pay attention to the thoughts he has of that one girl even when he's already three times older (or the thoughts he has about any woman he meets in his life, but this one isn't new).

but it's a suitable fit for the situation, i guess. some of us have grown up to be just like that for the past decade or two, minus the creepy awkwardness of the schoolgirl situation. 

i don't regret reading this, but i do regret hoping that it would become a place where you could hide the imminent grief and pain of getting older, sicker, lonelier, etc. instead, it was a revelation that i couldn't extend my heart to the main character at all, and that i wouldn't want to be like that. that at the end of the day i, the person who grew up reading and loving these stories, am not like that, or at least i hope so (for maybe i am just like that — stuck, and that’s why i’m so pissed). that, even for someone so afraid of growing, getting older, curving and twisting in so many unnatural physical and emotional directions, there's a possibility in this world to be a better human, and to get over things and our past selves and their experiences, however sad or joyful.

i'm saddened to find out that this book, which kind of feels like a farewell and not a see-you-tomorrow type of book, is so directionless, unnecessarily drawn-out and split into many pieces that don't seem to form a single dream. i'm not a dream reader. i'm that same 16ish year old girl, and i'm the woman she has grown up to be, who wanted to make sense of so many scary things. sometimes it's better to let the past be. let it exist in its precious, finite state. otherwise you risk violating it in futile struggles to bring it back. and when it's back, it's ugly, with all of its limbs mismatched, words muddled, and meaning & dearness lost. or it’s nothing more than a hush, a shadow cast by loss

lily lily 

having just read the book, i'm naturally experiencing such conflicting emotions. to put it unkindly, it's your classic murakami that makes any self-aware woman want to puke. but at first, at the beginning, when it still seemed promising, i couldn't shake off the tingling sensation of a dream unfolding. memories of details from the previous book kept punching me again and again, drowning me in memories of my teenage life, of a lost friend i gave my precious hard-boiled wonderland book to. i wanted to finish all of it in one go but was too anxious, too agitated to keep reading. so it required pauses to calm myself down. until the tension deflated, never reaching a climax.

first, a schoolgirl. then, a grown woman. reading a book about a city hiding behind perfect walls, where elegant beasts roam and shadows are stripped away. 

then, i gifted it to a dear friend of mine. and repurchased it on a whim. in a different language, with a different cover. never read it again, though. it was needed to fill the gap, to calm down the nagging feeling that something was lacking. this book is just like that in some way. i didn't find it poetic or meaningful, it felt like witnessing a slow death in progress, a withering of any meaning. the death of the time i'll never get back, the vast nothingness of now. it's just a placeholder with the stale whiff of nostalgia and stagnation; dare i even say, please forgive me for that, a nostalgia slop. the main character is such a useless pathetic loser, sometimes a weird repulsive lump of flesh if you pay attention to the thoughts he has of that one girl even when he's already three times older (or the thoughts he has about any woman he meets in his life, but this one isn't new).

but it's a suitable fit for the situation, i guess. some of us have grown up to be just like that for the past decade or two, minus the creepy awkwardness of the schoolgirl situation. 

i don't regret reading this, but i do regret hoping that it would become a place where you could hide the imminent grief and pain of getting older, sicker, lonelier, etc. instead, it was a revelation that i couldn't extend my heart to the main character at all, and that i wouldn't want to be like that. that at the end of the day i, the person who grew up reading and loving these stories, am not like that, or at least i hope so (for maybe i am just like that — stuck, and that’s why i’m so pissed). that, even for someone so afraid of growing, getting older, curving and twisting in so many unnatural physical and emotional directions, there's a possibility in this world to be a better human, and to get over things and our past selves and their experiences, however sad or joyful.

i'm saddened to find out that this book, which kind of feels like a farewell and not a see-you-tomorrow type of book, is so directionless, unnecessarily drawn-out and split into many pieces that don't seem to form a single dream. i'm not a dream reader. i'm that same 16ish year old girl, and i'm the woman she has grown up to be, who wanted to make sense of so many scary things. sometimes it's better to let the past be. let it exist in its precious, finite state. otherwise you risk violating it in futile struggles to bring it back. and when it's back, it's ugly, with all of its limbs mismatched, words muddled, and meaning & dearness lost. or it’s nothing more than a hush, a shadow cast by loss

Tina Villarete

Kaarthik sekar 

very stunning na beautiful to see murakami rework a plot he had previously done and make it far more cohesive and just a better read overall, i think at the time of writing this review i feel very strayed from fiction but murakami is a very important writer to me and for my practice so it felt like an injustice to not read this . i enjoyed many moments of this book especially the themes of romance and am having interesting thoughts of my shadow self and what they’re up to 

juneau

When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own.

When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times.

Murakami is a literary genius! What a thought provoking book. It will stay with me for a long time. Detailed review to come soon.

Devika M

It’s been years since I was so excited to pick a book back up as I was reading this. It’s classic Murakami (almost literally), so don’t come at this expecting it to be a departure so much as an iteration on the themes and tropes that repeat throughout all of his most ambitious works of fiction. The interleaving of mundanity and surrealism, the incredibly efficient world building, the sensory experience of being in Japan, in a cafe, listening to Jazz music playing on a tinny speaker with occasional trains rattling through a rural train station. I will read every version of this story murakami writes again and again. 

Stuart Frisby

I had to get over the fact that it's 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland' revisited. But other than that: vintage Murakami. Shoot that stuff straight into my veins. 

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

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