My first book of 2019 proved to be a good one.  No big surprise. I’m a great admirer of Murakami and I found this long and sprawling novel to be one of his most engrossing. As is always the case, what captivates is the unique world he creates and that singular voice. No one sounds like Murakami.

When his wife announces that she wishes to end their marriage, the novel’s narrator, a largely unknown portrait painter in his mid-thirties, leaves Tokyo and ends up living in a remote mountainside house previously occupied by a much more celebrated artist, Tomohiko Amada. Settled into the new house and studio, the narrator agrees to paint the portrait of a neighbor, a mysterious, white-haired man who lives nearby in a grand mansion for no other reason, it seems, than to be close to a teenage girl who may or may not be his daughter.  This being a Murakami novel, the natural and supernatural worlds co-exist quite comfortably.  The narrator is woken in the middle of the night by the tolling of a bell traced to a deep, uninhabited pit in the woods nearby. A painting by Amada is found in the loft and one of the figures in the painting, the Commendatore, takes human shape, appearing from time to time to dispense gnomic wisdom to the narrator.  Amada himself appears in the dead of night, revisiting his old studio and staring at the painting.

Those puzzled by Murakami’s popularity often voice their frustration about the rambling, unfocused quality of his most recent long-form fiction.  There’s some truth in the criticism.  His newest novels are getting longer and longer and they certainly lack the beautiful precision and polish of his short stories and early novels.  Having said that, at no point did I find myself wanting the 700 pages of Killing Commendatore to end.  For sure it’s bulky.  Murakami can’t resist telling you in detail what every character is wearing and what they’re eating.  Some obviously find that irksome.  I don’t.  That layering of detail seems to me an intrinsic part of his later work.

It’s worth saying also that Killing Commendatore is a handsomely produced book.  The UK edition published by Harvill Secker, the one I read, is more beautifully designed than its US counterpart and properly reflects Murakami’s position and popularity as a novelist.