3.5
Killing Commendatore
ByPublisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art—from one of our greatest writers. • “Exhilarating ... magical.” —The Washington Post
When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he secludes himself in the mountain home of a world famous artist. One day, the young painter hears a noise from the attic, and upon investigation, he discovers a previously unseen painting. By unearthing this hidden work of art, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances; and to close it, he must undertake a perilous journey into a netherworld that only Haruki Murakami could conjure.
When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he secludes himself in the mountain home of a world famous artist. One day, the young painter hears a noise from the attic, and upon investigation, he discovers a previously unseen painting. By unearthing this hidden work of art, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances; and to close it, he must undertake a perilous journey into a netherworld that only Haruki Murakami could conjure.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesKilling Commendatore Reviews
3.5
andurill
Created 1 day agoShare
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jqi
Created 3 days agoShare
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Alec Piergiorgi
Created 4 days agoShare
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“Like most other Murakami books, this was a banger. This one leans more into his magical realism, especially in the areas concerning the Commendatore, which was pretty cool, but the majority of the story stays grounded.
I was actually a bit surprised by how little occurs for large chunks of the story; we mostly follow the unnamed protagonist as he navigates mundane issues in his life and his new relationships with his neighbors. As a result, I do think the book is a little long and there are portions of it that feel repetitive, especially when we're merely following the protagonist or Menshiki repeating the same conversations or actions. Particularly, I think Mariye's time spent in Menshiki's house at the end could've been shortened. All of the details relating to portrait painting specifically and painting in general were cool, but I also didn't care that much about the technical side.
That being said, I was never bored with the story, and I found it a very rewarding experience to complete. Due to the limited character list, Murakami spends most of the novel drilling down into each of these characters and really building out their outer and inner selves; the protagonist, Menshiki, and Tomohiko Amada being the biggest recipients. I was especially interested in Menshiki, and I think he turns out to be one of Murakami's most complex characters to date; his own personality traits are compelling enough, but then his relationship with Mariye and the Commendatore's warning of the gap in his heart add a lot more to him.
The story ends up resembling a circle, and things come to a nice conclusion by the end. I could see some people being upset that not everything is cleared up; like, what is that Underworld the protagonist entered into, or who is the man with the white Subaru? But I thought all of the biggest plot-oriented questions were answered, and as one of the themes suggests, some secrets are meant to be kept hidden.”
Turnthepageez
Created 5 days agoShare
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About Haruki Murakami
HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, whose previous recipients include J. K. Rowling, Isabel Allende, and Salman Rushdie.
Other books by Haruki Murakami
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