*PRE-ORDER HARUKI MURAKAMI’S NEW NOVEL, THE CITY AND ITS UNCERTAIN WALLS, NOW* We all live our lives carrying secrets we cannot disclose. 'Beguiling... Murakami is brilliant at folding the humdrum alongside the supernatural; finding the magic that's nested in life's quotidian details' Guardian When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld. A stunning work of imagination, Killing Commendatore is a surreal tale of love and loneliness, war and art.

If half of Murakami is beautiful, dreamlike surrealism, and the other half is quasi-sexist, random nonsense, this book is solidly in the sexist and random camp. The sad thing about this novel is that all of us saw such potential in it. There were so many great horror setup -- the bell rings from nowhere, the image of the elderly painter in the studio, the man in the white Subaru lurking -- any of which could have launched us into a dark story about a painter living in isolation, obsessed with the old tenant's hidden masterpiece. But none of it delivers. Instead, we get a three-foot tall Idea that speaks in ridiculous stiltedness (If I hear 'my friends' one more time, I will use that sword to kill myself.), a pointless and confusing adventure through metaphor, and a young girl who for some reason shares with a complete stranger her obsession with how big her breasts will become, something it appears Murakami actually thinks girls talk about. The threats in the book aren't real -- why is the girl hanging out in Menshiki's house for three days so dangerous? The mysticism doesn't add up -- it is never explained how the pit in the backyard leads to the hospital, why the Idea needs any of the characters, and what the narrator's journey into the metaphor tunnel is for or how it matters. If none of this is making sense to you, welcome to reading Killing Commandatore. There's something interesting about the way that painting is used in the story to create dangerous Ideas, and the tie to the elderly painter's tragic loss during WW2. We even found an interesting theme about what truths one is willing to face in the contrast of Menshiki's decision to never know the truth of his daughter vs the narrator's decision to accept his role as a father despite the lack of evidence. But all of this is just buried in random actions, unconnected plot twists, and far too many near-sexist observations. If you're going to do surreal, you need a storyworld that holds together, and it is there that Murakami fails to deliver. Go back to Windup Bird -- this book just never commits enough to anything to make Murakami's magic shine.