Murakami is an author I have found fascinating for many years. Though I don't always fully grasp the worlds and stories he creates, the words are lyrically beautiful and well painted in the mind's eye.

In this book, our narrator is unnamed and yet there is so much emotion behind the stories he tells and the lives he lives, both inside and outside of the walled city. In the world outside the city, the narrator meets and falls in love with a girl. They meet at a poetry competition and continues as they get older. One day she tell him that her real self lives within the walled city and if he were to ever join her in the city, since her real self cannot leave, she will not remember him but she encourages him to come and seek work as a dream librarian.

One day she disappears from the outside world and the narrator must decide when it is the right time to enter the city. When he enters, and gives up his shadow as payment to enter, he soon realizes time has passed for him outside the walls, but the girl he loves is still as young as when they were teens.

There are so many points I wondered what was real and what was a dream; which parts were the real world and which was the shadowless world where dreams fill a library with beautiful stories. You never know where this story will take you and what emotions may arise, but I enjoyed it and am glad I picked up this book.

While one could easily play Murakami bingo with jazz, the Beatles, Unicorns, libraries and a fantastical setting, for newcomers to his writing, The City and Its Uncertain Walls offers dual narratives about two young lovers separated by unknown reasons and a mysterious depressed town where no one has a shadow and they cannot leave beyond the walls.

Our couple, is the narrator, a 17 year boy who is in the throws of young love with his 16 year old girl friend. They met as both received prizes for their writing, and in an unusual fit of courage, the boy trades contact information and the couple begins to meet in parks. During their conversations where they share bits of their pasts, they together invent a walled in city that only lets certain people in. The boy becomes a reader of dreams, the girl their keeper.

Something happens to the girl, and she no longer arrives at their shared places. Hurt by the disappearance and unable to find her the boy never really moves on, first just merely existing before trying his best to move, never truly able to forget the girl. In his middle ages he suddenly quits his job and changes careers, finding some place quieter that puts him in the trust of a ghost but despite the possibilities, he may be just in time to help others.

Dreamy and fantastical, Murakami's latest an expanded rewriting or one of his early works, The City... is an exploration of love and meaningful relationships and how they two are not always the same.

Recommended to readers of fantastical fiction, fables, or readers of stories within stories.

I should have put more time between this book and book one in the series. What I found in the first book seemed over-written in the second. I no longer expected any clarification and I didn't find any. Still interesting but not fulfilling.

I'm a huge fan of Haruki Murakami and have read every book he's written that was translated to English. His lastest is a novel about love and loss. It's a back and forth novel that has the trademarks of a great Murakami novel. From the first page you know that you ar entering a world unlike any other novelist writing today. It's a book about a man named I who tells the story of his first love and the tragedy that transpired. He leik is past love have so mcuh in common that they have power that othr don't have that only people woth it can recognize. You hear sweet stories of how they met and the fears that they have. It breaks out into the fear that humans have for thing unknown. Unlike our world today. We like to stay safe in our own bubble and not deal with things we have no idea about. What the charcter realizes is that he must break down the walls in order for him to find himself and see the world as it really is and not what he wants it to be. I know this review is a bit esoteric but you really need to experience it in order to try to capture the brilliance of the what the author is trying to do. Murakami is not a young man and as I was reading it it was almost like he was contemplating his own life in this novel. He realizes his own mortality as well as what his works left behind will mean to people if anything (though I can't imagine people not reading him in a 100 years time!) Thank you to #knopf and #netgalley for this remarkable read. .

I will write out some more thorough thoughts at a later date but for now I’ll just say that I think this is really really good and one of his best. The man still has the juice and I’m really glad that he’s still writing at this age. I had written out a review on here already, but I messed up and it got deleted so this is just me regurgitating the thoughts I wrote down like five minutes ago, so forgive me for the brevity.

Murakami is clearly working through a lot of feelings that he has as a writer and as someone who’s been doing this for the past 40 years. It was really fascinating. Seeing those ideas worked out in the form of novel and metaphor. I don’t think you have to be a 70-year-old man who spent 40 years of his life writing novels to relate to the stuff that he talks about in this book. There’s romance there’s fantasy and there’s all the usual Murakami isms that you’ll know and recognize if you’ve read any of his other books. Spaghetti, cats, ears. The whole shebang.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me in advanced copy. Truly, the coolest thing that has ever come for me yapping about Murakami on YouTube. I have a lot more to say about this and I’ll do a video about it, but I really just want to let this one sit for a while. I really really like this and I think on second read or really just after I’ve let it sit for a while. This might bump up from four stars to five stars regardless I think this is definitely in the upper echelon of his writing and it’s kind of a huge relief to feel that way.

In 2024 we have a lot of creative minds that are making really great work in their later years. Scorcese. Spielberg. Murakami. This could very well be his last book if he wants it to be, but I hope he keeps writing until he can’t anymore.

Thank You NetGalley for giving me an opportunity to read and review The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami.

Wow, my first Murakami and I am still processing the story. First, for me this was a very slow read. I was engaged with the story but constantly thinking about the characters and plot. Am I seeing the whole picture? Do I need to think more about this part of the story? What should I be learning from this passage? This book has me contemplating "Is it just a story or is it more?" I am not a big consumer of books that straddle genres: literary fiction and magical realism. In fact, magical realism is a genre I want to explore a bit more broadly.

I think this book is for the reader who likes magical realism, a slowly spun tale, a story that teases the brain to unlock it's riddle long after "The End", and those who love Murakami. This book started out as a short story and was built into a book over many years. For myself, I am eager to read one of his other best sellers and compare everything.

I enjoyed this read, and hope you do too. 3.75⭐️ for me is you need that sort of thing.

What to say about The City and Its Uncertain Walls now, when I've just finished the book.....

It seems almost a cliche to compare Murakami and David Lynch at this point. But, still, there's a dreamy quality to both men's work that hits me the same way. Like everything almost exactly fits together, but not quite. I'll think I've grasped something and then it will slide away and I'll see something different.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is broken up into three parts. The first introduces the narrator, explains his teenage love with an unnamed girl, and reintroduces the city from both the novella The City and Its Uncertain Walls and the novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The second part involves the narrator taking a job at a library in a small town. The third part...well, that would be giving things away, wouldn't it?

Murakami has come back to this world three times, and there are parts of this novel that feel like a retread. But there are parts of this novel that are also wonderfully written vignettes of characters' lives. Throughout there's a dreamy surrealism that permeates the story.

Is this Murakami's best book? No, not really. But it's a very interesting book and I'm glad I spent time with it.

4.5

i love Murakami. His stories are always unlike anything else I've read. Even though others might disagree, this is actually one of my favorites. Maybe because of all the literary references or the library. But I loved the time I spent with it as I always do when I get lost in one of Murakami's worlds.

with gratitude to netgalley and Knopf for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a book that I am still thinking about. We follow the main character as he falls in love as a 17-year-old boy and copes with lost love and then into adulthood as a man in his mid-forties as he has still not forgotten his first love and reminisces by returning to the “fictional” city they created as teenagers. There is most definitely some deeper meaning as to what the “real” world and the city “with its uncertain walls” where they have no shadows and I have some ideas but still unsure. I finished this book yesterday and have not been able to stop thinking about it. I think I would rate it closer to 3.75 or maybe higher the more I think about it? Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for providing me an early ebook copy of this book!

I liked this well enough, but I'm questioning whether this was the right book to begin my Murakami journey with. I'm actually not sure what to say about it. The author did a great job of getting me engaged with the characters. The main protagonist is searching for his lost teenage love, but also for his higher purpose. He finds himself, in middle age, working as a librarian in a tiny town in Japan and the rest of the story sort of unfolds from there.

This is beautifully written but I would maybe suggest starting with a different book by this author, unless you have already done that, and this rounds out your collection.

While I normally review books based on character, plot, and setting, for this review I am going to structure my review based on the book's parts, as each was a completely different reading experience.

Part 1 follows a nameless teen boy and girl. The girl vanishes from the boy's life, with his longing for her haunting him into middle age. He sets off to find her in a city where people's shadows are not allowed. This part of the novel bounces back and forth between the mysterious city (and the middle-aged man's experiences there) and the "real" world (and the teen's living in it). For me, this part of the novel felt very slow, despite the events taking place. It wasn't until I finished the book that I realized I had a hard time connecting with this part of the novel because the characters felt very flat. I did not have a sense of who the boy/man was, or any sense of the girl he stated he was in love with. As a result, the longing he described didn't resonate or pull me in.

In Part 2, the man (now firmly middle-aged) is entirely in the "real" world, still haunted by memories of the girl he loved. He moves to a small mountain town and takes up a job as a librarian. This part of the novel was a better reading experience for me, as the main character began to feel more developed. We also meet several new characters who, while not deeply developed, did not feel completely flat. The story here also had more motion, which resulted in a better pace. Mysteries and questions in this part also helped pull me into and through the story, and held echoes of part 1.

In Part 3, the man is returned to the mysterious, no shadows allowed, city, now in pursuit of a young boy he met in the small town in Part 2. I expected this part of the novel to pull together threads from Parts 1 and 2 and clarify what Murakami was trying to say about death and existence.. Many of the story world rules set up in Part 1 are broken in Part 3, with the story acknowledging the breaking of the rules. There is no explanation for how, or why, however, which resulted in this part of the story not making sense to me as a reader.

In the end, I was left with a sense that Murakami was trying to say something about death and human existence, but I did not have a clear sense of what that statement was. I am curious if other readers had a different experience of the novel, and a better understanding of Murakami's intended message.

To me this was the perfect fall read. It moved slowly, was calmer in tone and less edgy than some of Murakami’s previous works while still keeping his signature style and themes. It was introspective and circular and I really liked taking my time to read it. I’ve been noticing a trend of authors revisiting their previous works after years have passed and I’m a big fan of seeing the shift in their approaches. I think what I loved the most with this one was that it felt like a magical realism novel that was ultimately a love letter to books and magical realism itself. I definitely don’t think you need to have read Murakami before to enjoy this one (and if you enjoy his hard edges this might feel too mellow), it might even be a great start to a magical realism journey if you’re new to the genre.

An excellent and moving novel by one of the masters of the magical surrealism genre. Really enjoyed this one.

thank you netgalley for the e-arc. i have not read murakami before and after hearing good things, i decided to start with this one. it's not that i didn't like or love it, but that maybe i am not smart enough for the concepts? it was a lot of metaphors and talking around things. i took a long time to get through it and unsure how i feel in the end.

5 Stars

I just completed this novel and I loved it! This is the type of story that works for me on a personal level as a reader. I’ll do my best to review it without leaning too heavily into my personal tastes.

This story, put simply, is an exploration of the surreal and the introspective. Murakami demonstrates his unparalleled talent for blending the mystical with the mundane. Fans of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (my personal favorite Murakami novel), this will feel like returning home to a familiar yet intriguingly altered dreamscape. Its themes echo earlier work, particularly in its exploration of dual realities, memory, and the fragile boundaries between self and the external world.

The narrative is haunting and layered, filled with Murakami’s signature motifs (parallel worlds, enigmatic characters, and a melancholic sense of longing… cats!). The writing is vivid and lyrical, drawing readers into an intricately imagined universe where every detail, no matter how small, seems to hold symbolic weight. The story begs you to reflect on identity, the nature of connection, and the struggle to reconcile inner truths with external realities. Despite all this, the novel never loses its human touch. It is emotionally resonant, as we examine the vulnerability of the human experience. The pacing is deliberate but absorbing, pulling you further into a labyrinth of mystery. This story will definitely stick with me, and I’m already considering a reread!

I recommend this novel to longtime fans and newcomers who love the weird and surreal.

*Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for access to the advanced reader's copy for this book!

Attempting to read my first Haruki Murakami book while in the midst of a book and life slump? Probably not a great idea.
I have been interested in reading a Murakami book for quite a while and could not pass on the opportunity to receive early access to his latest translated novel. Unfortunately, I have struggled throughout the month of November with regards to feeling engaged and invested in the books I've been reading.
I was initially highly intrigued with the way Murakami deftly alternated between the two timelines of this story in the first part of this book. It piqued my interest and made me want to keep reading, wanting to unravel the mystery of The City.
As this book, which is told in three parts, progressed to part two, I found myself disengaged from the meandering plot and less invested in solving the story's hidden secrets. I feel this section of the book is far too drawn out and would have better served the overall story with some heavy editing down.
The third part of this novel does pull together our alternating timelines and brings clarity to the happenings within the story, but it almost feels too little, too late given the exasperating second part of the book.
Would I feel differently about this story had I not read it while in a major book slump? It's possible, especially with my initial positive feelings towards this work. Unfortunately, I'm left feeling underwhelmed and dissatisfied, and will likely not be picking up another Murakami book for a while (if ever). To me, this book is highly skippable, but take that with all book slump context included!

I'm very far behind on my Murakami reading. I've read several of his earlier books, but nothing (aside from <i>The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle</i>) more recent than <i>Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World</i>. In a sense, that's unexpectedly appropriate - Murakami's afterword places the initial attempts at this story around the same time as <i>Wonderland</i>, and I feel like that book (what little I remember of it) had a similar vibe, with some weird dreamlike shit going on at various times. This book is kind of two narratives sandwiched together, one about a strange city where nobody has shadows (or maybe, everyone <i>is</i> a shadow) and people can read dreams, one about a guy who goes to become the head librarian of a rural library where there's some strange goings-on about his predecessor. The library part was far more coherent and captured my interest much more; the shadow city part was too bewildering for my taste and I found myself skimming much of it. Perhaps I could have discerned more of a meaningful connection between the two parts, were I skimming less, but ultimately I just didn't care about the city. The library part was a lot more interesting, but ultimately a little unsatisfying because it is obviously trying to circle back around to the city part.

Murakami is one of those authors where people seem to either love them, or hate them. There's not much middle ground. I'm in the first camp and this book didn't disapoint. The City and its Uncertain Walls was deeply weird. As akways, the language was beautiful, the characters introspective, and the plot full of myseteries. Reading this book made me want to give up my own shadow and become a Dream Reader in the City.

The only thing that was a little jarring for me was that the main character grows into a man in his 40s, but is still thinking about the girl he met at 16 who was going to give all of herself to him. I get that there was a deeper connection and that the relationship led him to the city... but it just felt a little weird at times.

The border between reality and the imaginary is explored in this novel. It begins with the teenage protagonist falling deeply in love with a girl his age, and the paths he follows after she disappears without an explanation. The two of them had imagined a walled town in considerable detail, and one way of dealing with her loss was for him to inhabit that town, which required him to leave his shadow behind. He was eventually able to regain his shadow and leave that town. After spending many years in Tokyo he found a job as librarian in a remote small town, where he is mentored by the former (and late) head librarian. This is a quiet, dreamy, and lengthy exploration of lost love, alienation, and sense of displacement. The main character says, "Some power might have separated me into two at some point... And thee me who's here now chose to be here. And somewhere is another me who chose to be there."

Thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for letting me read an eARC of The City and Its Uncertain Walls. This novel was my first time reading Haruki Murakami, and I absolutely loved its wonderful take on magical realism. The main setting of the novel is this unearthly town shrouded in mystery where a library of dreams is located. The two main characters and their experiences are so realistically mundane yet rendered beautifully that you can visualize their interactions in the town. I highly recommend The City and Its Uncertain Walls for people who love fantasy and magical realism.