Review: "Killing Commendatore" by Haruki Murakami

I am well aware it is predictable at best and hackneyed at worst to come into this review of Killing Commendatore, the new novel by my favorite author Haruki Murakami telling you how great it is, but it is. It is a phenomenal reading experience, one that envelops the reader throughout its 690 pages and is filled with enough engaging mysteries and riddles that it is hardly a disappointment that many of them go unanswered (it is quite the opposite most of the time) and shows that he has not slowed down as the man approaches 70, with this being his second longest book, behind 1Q84 and just a tad bit longer than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which I will get too shortly). While I really, really liked it, I’m quite positive it is not going to be a “pillar” book, a work of art and artist can prop up their legacy with. Despite its length and the ideas contained with it, Murakami has tread similar ground in the past and like his other long haul novels mentioned previously, it is not a good introduction to his work. But for fans of his who have read most of his books, this is something worth checking out immediately (who am I kidding, you’ve picked it up already). The book focuses on an unnamed painter whose wife Yuzu has recently left him. After quitting his job as a portrait painter and spending a little while driving up the coast of Japan, he settles in the childhood homes of his friend Masahiko Amada, whose father Tomohiko was famous painter. In the house, the narrator tries his best to adjust to his newfound autonomy, but once he finds an old, undiscovered painting in the attic depicting a scene from the opera Don Giovanni (the titular painting of the book’s title), it sets off a chain of events that bring a strange cast of characters into his life as well as some unexplainable phenomena, such as his eccentric neighbor Menshiki, whose motives are slowly revealed and may be the book’s most noticeable tribute to The Great Gatsby, a big pit in the wooded area behind the house which might have a creepy back story, an Idea come to life in the form of one of the characters in the painting, a young, talkative 13 year old girl and a strange journey through a world of Double Metaphors that is both hypnotic and menacing. I could see how critics could tear this book apart, because a lot of the plot points have been found in other books, like the pit and the martial trouble harkening back to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the underworld excursion bringing to mind it’s futuristic cousin in Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the painting come to life recalling the symbols of Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders come to life in Kafka on the Shore,  as well as countless other references to other books, the most blatant one being to his last novel, but that was part of the fun of the book or any of his books: finding odd parallels between two or more characters, watching abstract ideas and concepts take shape and making the world a more meaningful, or at least interesting place. Murakami’s books have basically become critic proof, fans no what to expect and love what they get, and for better or worse, I am one of them. 

Rating: 5/5