The City and Its Uncertain Walls

8/10

Published in 2023 by Haruki Murakami.

The City and its Uncertain Walls isn’t anything new; but it is perhaps Murakami’s best rendition of his formula, and that alone makes it well worth a read.

Spoilers for this book and Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of the World, and vaguely every Murakami book.

I’ve been reading a lot of Murakami, and I’ve skipped writing up any thoughts on a good number of his novels. As it stands, I’ve read all his fiction novels except for Sputnik Sweetheart and After Dark. I haven’t read any of his nonfiction or short story collections yet, but will read them eventually for sure. As I said in some other review, most all of Murakami’s novels read very similarly, and The City is no different—I mean, it is based on a manuscript which beget Hardboiled Wonderland, so a lot of the City’s ideas are identical between the two books. I liked Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of the World, and that was perhaps at least decoratively a bit of a change from Murakami’s typical “plain” magical realism, eschewed instead for a proto-cyberpunk/Sci Fi theme which greatly appealed to me (though again, the people and the plot are very similar). Wonderland and The City, Murakami noted in the afterword to The City, are based on a manuscript he wrote right before starting his professional writing career, and was a story he wanted to flesh out properly for a while. 40 years later, he put out The City, but before that, he did end up adapting that manuscript into Hardboiled Wonderland, which led to some confusion at the start of this novel when the exact same mechanics were referred to, though summarized far quicker and were not as integral as they were in Hardboiled Wonderland.

I know how pretentious or ridiculous it is for me, a twenty something not-author to be saying this, but this work really did feel like a mature Murakami; a Murakami who has spent four decades(!) refining his craft, polishing his instrument and practicing with deadly precision until he was able to output this. I think it isn’t too reductive to say that this novel doesn’t do anything new—it is no 1Q84 or Colourless—but it does what Murakami always does, very well. I liked it more than Norwegian Wood, which I’ve seen touted as one of his best novels, and I think it better addresses the foolish ideas of childhood romance. I think it does an overall better job about speaking on loss, alienation, uncertainty than his prior novels, all of which tend to touch upon one of the three.

Murakami is formulaic, but that’s ok because his magical realism is his special sauce. That being said, I like the books where he deviates the most from what I think his formula is the most. 1Q84 is a modern classic, though not without its flaws, but there is no way I’d say the same thing about any of the formulaic Murakami’s—except for maybe The City. It just does the formula so well, with all the lingering melancholy infused with the smell of dying cigarettes mixed with petrichor; the unrequited romance tinged just the right amount of pink and crimson; the magic played out intricately and beautifully—not overdone, but not underbaked so as to seem too convenient.

Here is, broadly, the Murakami Formula, laid out for you:

1. Unnamed, kinda bland Protagonist who likes fine, imported whiskeys, classical and/or jazz music, and has lived an uneventful and plain-Jane life
2. He either has fell in love as a child and is nursing and dealing with that romance, or is unaware that he is in a failed marriage
3. Sprinkle in a little magical realism here (a bold reduction, and the part that is the most different across all his novels)
4. Protagonist meets a younger child (girl) who derides or otherwise challenges him, both playfully and seriously
5. Protagonist goes deeper into this magical realism, and there usually is a cat thrown in somewhere—it could be earlier, or later though.
6. The kid somehow affects Protagonist through this magical part, thereby saving or otherwise altering Protagonist’s path
7. Sprinkled in, from step 2/3 to now, encounters with another mainstay character who is very curious in some way, often in a Gatsbyian manner
8. Start to pull the threads of the magical realism together as Protagonist learns more about his love and comes to terms with it/fixes it through some almost deus ex machina
9. Resolve most things, but never all plot lines, and let the magical realism tie itself with a ribbon and disappear, thereby leaving changed Protagonist with his stitched up not-as-normal life and developed character

And of course gratuitous sexualized, or just downright sex, scenes which has always been somewhat disgusting, and is getting really old now. I think there was a bit less but not enough. It just doesn’t add anything, and almost never has.

All of his works aren’t subject to this, and even those that are don’t necessarily follow all the beats, but as a broad formula I think its pretty accurate. Again, there are definitely novels in his oeuvre which do their own thing, and those tend to be the best.

Again, this is fine—I’ve read it five or six times or whatever, in a short time frame, and I’ll happily do it again—but it can get a touch stale, a touch too predictable. Like here in The City, I thought it extremely obvious that once the girl (essentially Naoko) stopped mailing him, they’d never see each other again. I wasn’t expecting the quick time jump right after, but the major beats are all to be expected. Focusing again on The City, I think it reads best if one has already read Hardboiled. Yes, that does mean that parts of the novel are identical, but The City is oddly lacking in detail about the titular City, at least when compared to Hardboiled. Half the novel is dedicated to the city there, and here it is used more as a plot device. I liked having that background though, transplanting those details to colour The City.

I don’t think this work is flawless or unique or whatever, but it is polished—there are a number of dei ex machina, but I’m usually not reading a Murakami for the plot to begin with (see above list outline). I’m reading it for the small moments, for the brilliant quotes and pretty, sad, pictures painted about failed or unrequited tender love against an Alice in Wonderland backdrop. One may then, object to my rating of this novel given that it admittedly skimps on details, and all I can in return is that, as I was reading it, I felt like I was reading a (mostly) maturer Murakami.

I’ll say it again because I like the line and it is worth repeating: The City and its Uncertain Walls isn’t anything new; but it is perhaps Murakami’s best rendition of his formula, and that alone makes it well worth a read. I think The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles could reasonably be seen as a better novel, thereby being the best rendition of his formulaic works—to be honest, I think, as I’m writing this and remembering more about The City, I’m coming to this conclusion as well—but I think The City and Wind-Up are at the very least comparable, though the question of whose first I will set aside for now. It’s probably Wind-Up, but it’s close.

Anyway, I’ll probably read the remaining two fiction novels, a few short story collections, maybe his book about running, and then I think I’m basically done with Murakami’s catalogue. Then it’d be time for rereads? I might catch up on Sanderson or read more Stephenson next