Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Murakami was like the secret center of a candy, the sweet and salty spot. Reading him was like entering another dimension, with the juxtaposition of hypnagogic images, surreal and hallucinatory dreamscapes. Murakami never disappointed me before, with his allegorical symbols such as an empty well or an underground city, and bewildering plots but with accessible characters caught in individual or collective traumas. Many of his novels were postmodern, but even in his realistic fiction, such as NORWEGIAN WOOD, you got a sense of the “other,” due to his dark, searching, and waiting atmosphere and tone. And humor—there was always a piping of humor with the dramatic. Reading him felt like watching a cat with fugitive wings. So why did this one take such a hard nosedive? Did Murakami usually have an editor to keep him in check, to clean it up? It almost seems as if, since the author has arrived, over and over again, that he wanted other hands off his text, or perhaps he was experimenting. But who would experiment with cumbersome prose and bland details? The voice sounded juvenile at times and the plot was buckling under its own lack of subtlety. And, instead of trusting the reader to read between the lines and pick up on suggestion, he habitually jabs us with over-explication and declarations. By the time I was 25% through the novel, I wanted to heave it across the room. It was sagging under its own weight. As an example, the narrator, a portrait painter, talks about why he was attracted to his wife, a secret he never revealed to her. He goes on to say that she wasn’t outstandingly attractive, but rather resembled his dead sister, especially her eyes. There was something hackneyed, unoriginal about it. “…the fact that her eyes reminded me so much of my sister who’d died at twelve…Without those eyes, I probably never would have tried to win her over…That was the sole secret I kept from her…” There are other details that, for me, landed with a thud. Part of it was presentation—a rather flavorless buffet of many “secrets” and anecdotal information I felt I’d heard before. The style was tedious and monotonous. I would have been engaged more if the fictional world and characters blended together more seamlessly, if the sentence structure had some flair. How narrative and description are invented is integral to reader absorption. I suppose my expectations were high, as Murakami had been known for his unique and imaginative language to build his stories. For me, KILLING COMMENATORE—and what a great title, that refers to a hidden painting—it lacked the author’s talent for atmosphere and tone, and I found it too cloying and overexposed, for lack of a better word. The painting idea had muscle, but the telling is where it atrophied for me. If I missed something, or readers heartily disagree with me, I understand. I don’t relish posting a two-star review, but Murakami is no debut writer. Someone of his stature can handle criticism –it’s the fans I am concerned with. I am a dedicated fan, also, and appreciate that not every book is a winner. There are so many earlier books that are top tier, such as THE WINDUP BIRD CHRONICLE, or KAFKA ON THE SHORE, or A WILD SHEEP CHASE, and of course HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND. Choose any of those or many others for a wild and intoxicating ride.