If you could change the ending of any book, which one would it be?
I’ve finished reading this Murakami novel, the year’s first physical book. I’ve crested only one other read, Robert Parish’s bio. My last hard copy was John Grisham’s latest in December. I’ve offloaded my iPad A16, hence the lack of reading. I used the tablet to write, edit, and proof my poetry collection’s fifth draft. It’s served its purpose. Three Apple devices were overkill. Regardless, eBooks are better devoured on iPads than on my m4 mba.
Here are my fave quotes from Uncertain:
‘The essay contest was held every fall… The theme that year was ‘My Friend’. We had to write five pages by hand, and sadly I didn’t have a single friend I could write that much about, so I wrote about our family cat…how our old female cat and I got along, our life together, how we expressed our feelings to each other….My cat was clever…and I had a lot of things to say…there must have been a few cat lovers among the judges. People who love cats naturally love other cat lovers.’
***
“By the way, have you ever worried about your shadow?”
“My shadow? You’re talking about the dark shadow I cast?” On the other end of the phone Oki thought this over for a while. “No, I can’t say I ever have.”
“I can’t help worrying about mine. Especially these days. I feel a sort of sense of responsibility, as a person, toward my shadow. Like whether I’ve been treating him right, or fairly.”
‘Oki felt silent again, and the said, “I understand…Well, honestly, I’m not sure I totally get it, but I’ll think a bit more about my shadow. About what’s right, and fair.”
***
‘As I listened to the music, I thought about being forgotten for two hundred years. Two hundred years was a long time. Two hundred years in which he was ‘completely ignored, a forgotten figure from the past.’ No one knows, of course, what will happen in two hundred years. Or even in two days, for that matter.’
***
“To go back to the town surrounded by a wall,’ the younger brother interjected. ‘What aspect of your town do you think he was most drawn to?”
‘I was stuck for a reply. How should I respond to that?’
“I’m afraid I don’t know, since he never told me. He was just caught up in drawing a map…He was drawn to a town where the social skills you mentioned weren’t necessary. All he needs to do in that town is to go the library and read some special books. Basically, the same process he’s been doing in this town, in this library. Nothing else is required. And in that town reading these books is extremely significant.”
“What do you mean by special books?’ the older brother, the lawyer, asked. An obvious question to ask. ‘Why is reading those so important for the town?”
I sighed. For some reason the image of the skinny female cat slowly cutting across the library garden came to mind. And the picture of Yellow Submarine Boy gazing, never tiring of it, at the cat and her five kittens. It all felt, though, like something from the far-off past.’
***
‘There’s a description in the book that goes like this. The village chief spoke to the assembled villagers and said, “Anyone can climb up coconut trees using their legs, but no one’s ever climbed up higher than a coconut tree.” It’s a very specific, easy to grasp expression. An allegory anyone can understand. And full of many implications.’
***
Near the end, I skipped pages of unnecessary description. A very focused effort by Murakami, I’m surprised it sits below 80% on Goodreads. He takes us to a special place and dissects teenage heartbreak. The protagonist carries this angst into his forties. His future relationships cannot steady the unrest of his past. He sees his adolescent girlfriend, forever preserved at sixteen in a parallel universe.
Style guide
The book has many of the author’s hallmarks. Having read a lot of his work, I’m accustomed to them. From Kafka on the Shore to three books of 1Q84. From Sputnik Sweetheart to Elephant Vanishes and Norwegian Wood. References to Beatles songs: Yellow submarine boy. Magical realism in the shadows, dream town, unicorns, and a librarian’s ghost. Furthermore, the separation of shadow and body aligns with his narratives. The jazz element as Murakami owned a jazz shop. The use of felines (one character was allergic to dogs). The subconscious narrative, as pages were allotted to dreams. The cooking routine as his protagonists are often independent males who know their way around the kitchen and housework. Likewise, the telephone element, adding a bit of spice to the plot.
Having feasted on his prose, I look forward to more of his oeuvre. Walls is divided into three books. The first one alternates between past and present. The protagonist is in love with a private school lass. They send long letters and meet in the park. Talking about this dream town, she feels like her body is a shadow. Her real self resides in that other place. He never sees her again.
My ending
Murakami introduces a young love interest, a fellow outlier and coffee shop owner. There, our protagonist buys blueberry muffins and gets his cuppa. While this storyline was explored, it felt truncated. The ending shouldn’t have been darkness but a definitive reunion with this high-value partner. He returns to the real world, reunites with his shadow, and the couple live happily ever after.
He works in Tokyo’s publishing industry for decades before quitting his job. Settles on a library by the mountains. The winter is snowy, shops are scant, and the townsfolk keep to themselves. Outsiders are rare.
He also meets this ghost of Koyasu, the former head librarian who passed away a year ago. Their conversations are productive. You wouldn’t infer that he was talking to a phantasm. Koyasu even unveils this subterranean room in the repository’s bowels. While they share long chats, the ghost’s final disappearance was abrupt. Despite their interaction, it seemed like he ghosted him in the end (pun intended). The book has a few vanishing acts: the teenage damsel, the former head librarian, and Yellow submarine boy.
Verdict
In the afterword, Murakami admits that he wrote the title forty years ago, in 1980. At the time, he was an unknown author working on his first novel. Sheep became his debut but it wasn’t until Norwegian Wood that he became a world beater. Initially, Uncertain was a 150-page novella. Expanded in 2020, as the world coped with the coronavirus. While editing, he rarely ventured out. Forty years later made a world of difference. He was quite pleased with the end result. So was I.
Rating: 4.5/5
