The City and its Uncertain Walls

 The City and its Uncertain Walls

By Haruki Murakami

A new Murakami novel! Well, actually, only partly new. This is an extension of one half of the novel Hard
Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which was actually two novellas combined into one. Anyway. It arrived just in time for my annual Murakami read, and I was excited to pick it up.

Part 1 of the novel felt almost exactly like what I'd read before, which was a little disappointing. It was surprising to read in an afterward that he almost stopped there, because it didn't seem like there was much new. A 17-year-old falls in love with a 16-year-old, who claims that she is just the shadow of a real person living in an alternate world, a small city surrounded by a wall where time has no meaning, every day is basically the same, unicorns roam the streets, and no one may leave or enter. The pair carry on an intense relationship, but one day the girl simply stops replying to his letters and seems to disappear. Soon after, this version of Murakami man finds himself there one day at the bottom of a hole that the gate keeper to the city usually uses to burn the bodies of the beasts (unicorns) who die off during the harsh winter. Gotta love the Murakami man in a Murakami hole! To enter the village, the man must be separated from his shadow. His eyes are scarred so that he can fulfill his function: to read dreams that are ensconced in old skulls in the city "library" -- where the "real" version of the girl he loved was supposed to work. He visits with his shadow regularly, and becomes concerned when it seems that his shadow is dying. They make an escape plan, hoping to get back to the other world at the bottom of a mysterious, swirling pool in a river that runs through town. They make it, but the man decides at the last minute to stay back.

Or does he? The novel picks up back in the man's life, but something is a bit amiss. He aimlessly wanders into his 40s and decides he needs a change. He finds a job as a librarian in a small town several hours from Tokyo. He is befriended by his predecessor, who, it turns out, died a year before his hiring; he is, in fact a ghost. And, of course, they meet in the bowels of the library -- kind of like a hole. The shadow makes a few acquaintances in the town, including a woman who runs a coffee shop but, perhaps more importantly, a boy who dresses every day in a Yellow Submarine sweatshirt and spends his days reading everything he can in the town library. One day, "Yellow Submarine Boy" overhears the man talking to his predecessor's grave about the walled city and his time in it; the boy, who is likely on the spectrum, decides he must go there. 

One day, he does, sending the reader back there. The man is there too. Or maybe it's his shadow? Because he recognizes the boy, but only as a feeling of connection not as an actually remembrance. The boy seeks him out and they "become one" in some mysterious ways, which is helpful to the man because the boy, a voracious reader, is far better at reading dreams than the man. Where once, the man could only get through two or three dreams, and poorly, now he can get through seven. The boy and the man "meet" in a room in the man's head, and the man decides he must leave the city. The boy helps him, telling him he must only believe fervently that his shadow on the other side will catch him. As the book ends, we think that's what happens.

Not my favorite Murakami, but enough of the familiar themes and dream-like qualities were there to get a fix. He is still raising questions about the role that our imagination plays in shaping our world. Are we all just wandering around in cities surrounded by walls that we, ourselves, build? Are just acting as our shadows as the real us lives in that city inside our minds? I hope he comes out with another book soon.