From The City and Its Uncertain Walls, by Haruki Murakami:
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" 'The real me lives there, in that town surrounded by a wall,' you said. 'So the you that is sitting here next to me isn't the real you?' I had to ask. 'That’s right. The me here with you now isn't the real me. It's only a stand-in. Like a wandering shadow.' I thought it over. A wandering shadow? But I kept my opinions to myself."
Book Review: The City and Its Uncertain Walls
"The City and Its Uncertain Walls" is the latest work of magical realism by Haruki Murakami. Calling it his "latest" novel is a bit misleading, as it's an expanded work based on a magazine story Murakami wrote in 1980 and never allowed to be translated or republished.
I'm a big fan of magical realism as practiced by Haruki Murakami. In Murakami's works, fantastical events occur within an ordinary setting without being treated as extraordinary. Here, we encounter a city with a wall whose shape and extent defy mapping. The town's clock tower has a clock with no hands and time itself seems irrelevant. People there seem to have shadows that can separate from the people and have independent existences. And there's a library in which the narrator "reads dreams," not books. Like much of the magical realism in Murakami's fiction, separating reality from imagination is often left to the reader's interpretation.
The story begins outside the city. A middle-aged man, going through a midlife crisis, quits his job in Tokyo and moves to a small town in the mountains, taking a job at a strange library that recently lost it benefactor and head librarian. Our unnamed narrator reminisces about a teen-age love of his who made up stories about a mysterious city where her "real" self lives. Ever since she disappeared, he has longed to travel to that city. And so begins a long series of interleaved chapters of reality and imagination. Or maybe it's all magical realism.
Grade: B+
"The City and Its Uncertain Walls" is available from the Richardson Public Library. :-)
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