Killing Commendatore

June 1, 2018

The acclaimed Japanese author's fans will not be surprised that his new novel ranges from love and war to art and isolation, but it's also an homage to The Great Gatsby. The publisher has sold more than 4.2 million copies of Murakami's 19 books across formats. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

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August 1, 2018
Murakami (Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, 2014, etc.) returns with a sprawling epic of art, dislocation, and secrets.As usual with Murakami, the protagonist of his latest, a long and looping yarn, does not bear a name, at least one that we know. As usual, he is an artist at loose ends, here because his wife has decided to move on. And for good reason, for, as he confesses, he has never been able to tell her "that her eyes reminded me so much of my sister who'd died at twelve, and that that was the main reason I'd been attracted to her." A girl of about the same age haunts these pages, one who is obsessed with the smallness of her breasts and worries that she will never grow to womanhood--and for good reason, too, since she's happened into an otherworld that may remind some readers of the labyrinthine depths of Murakami's 1Q84. Dejected artist meets disappeared girl in a hinterland populated by an elusive tech entrepreneur, an ancient painter, a mysterious pit, and a work of art whose figures come to life, one of them "a little old man no more than two feet tall" who "wore white garments from a bygone age and carried a tiny sword at his waist." That figure, we learn, is the Commendatore of the title, a character from the Italian Renaissance translated into samurai-era Japan as an Idea, with a capital I, whose metaphorical status does not prevent him from coming to a bad end. The story requires its players to work their ways through mazes and moments of history that some would rather forget--including, here, the destruction of Nanjing during World War II. Art, ideas, and history are one thing, but impregnation via metempsychosis is quite another; even by Murakami's standards, that part of this constantly challenging storyline requires heroic suspension of disbelief on the reader's part.Altogether bizarre--and pleasingly beguiling, if demanding. Not the book for readers new to Murakami but likely to satisfy longtime fans.

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August 13, 2018
Murakamiâs latest (following Men Without Women) is a meticulous yet gripping novel whose escalating surreal tone complements the authorâs tight focus on the domestic and the mundane. The unnamed narrator, a talented but unambitious portrait-painter in Tokyo, discovers his wife is having an affair, quits painting, and embarks on a meandering road trip. The narratorâs friend offers to let him stay in the home of his father, Tomohiko Amada, a famous, now-senile painter whose difficult secret from 1930s Vienna unfurls over the course of the book. Once situated on the quiet, mysterious mountainside outside Odawara, the narrator begins teaching painting classes and finds a hidden, violent painting of Amadaâs in the attic called Killing Commendatore, an allegorical adaptation of Don Giovanni. He begins two affairsâone with an older woman who sparks the novel whenever she appearsâand is commissioned by the enigmatic Mr. Menshiki to paint his portrait. Menshiki is preoccupied with a 13-year-old girl named Mariyeâan intriguing character, but one whom the book has an unfortunate tendency to sexualize. At night, the narrator is haunted by a ringing bell coming from a covered pit near his house. This eventually leads him to a magical realm that includes impish physical manifestations of ideas and metaphors. His discovery provokes a pivotal, satisfying moment in his artistic development on the way to a protracted, mystic denouement. The story never rushes, relishing digressions into Bruce Springsteen, the simple pleasures of freshly cooked fish, and the way artists sketch. As the narrator uncovers his talents, the reading experience becomes more propulsive. Murakamiâs sense of humor helps balance the otherworldly and the prosaic, making this a consistently rewarding novel. 250,000-copy announced first printing.