Killing commendatore: a novel

*Starred Review* E. M. Forster began Howards End with the now-famous epigraph "Only connect." Writing nearly a century later, in his latest mind-expanding novel, Murakami says, "Everything connects somewhere." In the space between those statements lies the evolution of the novel from early twentieth-century modernist realism to the kind of genre-leaping metafiction practiced today by Murakami, David Mitchell, and others. And, yet, Forster's plea for the primacy of human relationships remains central to Murakami's work, even if, as happens here, those connections can sometimes be terrifying as well as life-sustaining. For Murakami, the journey to connecting often begins in a hole in the ground. As much of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997) takes place with the protagonist sitting in the bottom of a well, so the portrait-painter hero of this novel, recently abandoned by his wife, is jolted out of his lethargy by what he finds in a mysterious hole near his rental home on a mountaintop outside Tokyo. A mysteriously ringing bell alerts the narrator to the hole, which leads in turn to his discovery of a painting called Killing Commendatore, hidden in the attic of the house by the former resident, a famous Japanese painter. So far, reality has only slightly begun to bend, but the hairpin curves hit the reader as soon as a character from the painting, the murdered commendatore, appears as a two-foot-tall living person. From there, it's a long and winding road back to the hole and through a nightmare landscape bedeviled by mind-twisting Double Metaphors before the connection our hero seeks can be achieved. Murakami's multifaceted genius is expressed not only through his wide-ranging imagination but, even more important, through his ability to ground those imaginative flights in the bedrock realism of human experience. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The complexity of Murakami's fiction would seem to preclude a mass readership, yet he is the most popular writer in Japan and a best-seller throughout the world.--Bill Ott Copyright 2018 Booklist

Murakami's latest (following Men Without Women) is a meticulous yet gripping novel whose escalating surreal tone complements the author's 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 narrator's 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 Amada's in the attic called Killing Commendatore, an allegorical adaptation of Don Giovanni. He begins two affairs-one with an older woman who sparks the novel whenever she appears-and is commissioned by the enigmatic Mr. Menshiki to paint his portrait. Menshiki is preoccupied with a 13-year-old girl named Mariye-an 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. Murakami's sense of humor helps balance the otherworldly and the prosaic, making this a consistently rewarding novel. 250,000-copy announced first printing. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Relatively early on in this latest novel from -internationally renowned Murakami (IQ84), the main character states, regarding his current situation, "It was like trying to put together a puzzle that was missing some pieces." The feeling is much the same for the reader, but, in this case, putting together the pieces is delightful fun. Strange things begin to happen to our nameless narrator shortly after he moves into the home of a famous artist and stumbles upon a painting hidden in the attic. Recently divorced and with no real plans, he slowly realizes that uncovering the work may have been a mistake. As the novel unfolds, he's introduced to his Gatsby-like neighbor, begins hearing a mysterious ringing bell, finds a menacing pit in the woods, meets a precocious 13-year-old girl, and is visited by a two-foot-tall physical manifestation of an idea (more than one, actually). The connections to these events are eventually made somewhat clear as the work progresses. While readers are kept guessing at what it all means, Murakami takes his time, slyly amusing us as he goes along. Verdict Those familiar with the author's inventive writing will certainly devour this, as will readers seeking challenging and thoughtful fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 4/30/18.]-Stephen Schmidt, Greenwich Lib., CT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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 womanhoodand 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 forgetincluding, 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 bizarreand pleasingly beguiling, if demanding. Not the book for readers new to Murakami but likely to satisfy longtime fans. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* E. M. Forster began Howards End with the now-famous epigraph Only connect. Writing nearly a century later, in his latest mind-expanding novel, Murakami says, Everything connects somewhere. In the space between those statements lies the evolution of the novel from early twentieth-century modernist realism to the kind of genre-leaping metafiction practiced today by Murakami, David Mitchell, and others. And, yet, Forster's plea for the primacy of human relationships remains central to Murakami's work, even if, as happens here, those connections can sometimes be terrifying as well as life-sustaining. For Murakami, the journey to connecting often begins in a hole in the ground. As much of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle? (1997) takes place with the protagonist sitting in the bottom of a well, so the portrait-painter hero of this novel, recently abandoned by his wife, is jolted out of his lethargy by what he finds in a mysterious hole near his rental home on a mountaintop outside Tokyo. A mysteriously ringing bell alerts the narrator to the hole, which leads in turn to his discovery of a painting called Killing Commendatore, hidden in the attic of the house by the former resident, a famous Japanese painter. So far, reality has only slightly begun to bend, but the hairpin curves hit the reader as soon as a character from the painting, the murdered commendatore, appears as a two-foot-tall living person. From there, it's a long and winding road back to the hole and through a nightmare landscape bedeviled by mind-twisting Double Metaphors before the connection our hero seeks can be achieved. Murakami's multifaceted genius is expressed not only through his wide-ranging imagination but, even more important, through his ability to ground those imaginative flights in the bedrock realism of human experience. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The complexity of Murakami's fiction would seem to preclude a mass readership, yet he is the most popular writer in Japan and a best-seller throughout the world. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.

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.

Relatively early on in this latest novel from internationally renowned Murakami (IQ84), the main character states, regarding his current situation, "It was like trying to put together a puzzle that was missing some pieces." The feeling is much the same for the reader, but, in this case, putting together the pieces is delightful fun. Strange things begin to happen to our nameless narrator shortly after he moves into the home of a famous artist and stumbles upon a painting hidden in the attic. Recently divorced and with no real plans, he slowly realizes that uncovering the work may have been a mistake. As the novel unfolds, he's introduced to his Gatsby-like neighbor, begins hearing a mysterious ringing bell, finds a menacing pit in the woods, meets a precocious 13-year-old girl, and is visited by a two-foot-tall physical manifestation of an idea (more than one, actually). The connections to these events are eventually made somewhat clear as the work progresses. While readers are kept guessing at what it all means, Murakami takes his time, slyly amusing us as he goes along. VERDICT Those familiar with the author's inventive writing will certainly devour this, as will readers seeking challenging and thoughtful fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 4/30/18.]—Stephen Schmidt, Greenwich Lib., CT

Murakami's latest (following Men Without Women) is a meticulous yet gripping novel whose escalating surreal tone complements the author's 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 narrator's 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 Amada's in the attic called Killing Commendatore, an allegorical adaptation of Don Giovanni. He begins two affairs—one with an older woman who sparks the novel whenever she appears—and is commissioned by the enigmatic Mr. Menshiki to paint his portrait. Menshiki is preoccupied with a 13-year-old girl named Mariye—an 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. Murakami's sense of humor helps balance the otherworldly and the prosaic, making this a consistently rewarding novel. 250,000-copy announced first printing. (Oct.)