First Impression Friday will be a meme where you talk about a book that you JUST STARTED! Maybe you’re only a chapter or two in, maybe a little farther. Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions and predict what you’ll think by the end.

Synopsis:

When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote village with mysteries of its own.

When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless plae of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house the, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times.

Happy Friday everyone! Well, it is already Sunday. I just arrived home after a twelve-hour trip from Manila. I am home for the first time in a year. HAHA. Anyway, I hope everyone who traveled over the weekend and those about to travel will reach their destinations safely. The holiday rush, thankfully, barely touched me. Last Friday was the last working day here in the Philippines, at least for the corporate world. We have the rest of the year to rest and prepare for the new year. I hope that everyone ended the work week on a high note. The coming weeks will be hectic for me so I am relishing these brief breaks. The coming weeks will also be hectic bordering on hellish for fellow accountants and auditors, so check up on them if you have an accountant or an auditor as a friend. I think they might not be doing fine, at least that is how the meme goes. Regardless, I hope you were able to accomplish all your tasks for the week. It is time to slow down, unwind, and dive into the weekend, for us, the long weekend.

Woah. The year is about to draw toward its inevitable conclusion. In a couple of days, we will be welcoming a new year. But before the year wraps up, I hope that your hard work has been recognized and repaid. I hope the remainder of the year will be brimming with good news, blessings, and pleasant surprises. More importantly, I hope everyone will be healthy in body, mind, and spirit, especially during this season of colds and coughs. To cap another blogging week I am sharing a fresh First Impression Friday update, rather a late update. Ordinarily, my reading months are organized to follow through with a single theme but the past few months have been chaotic. While it was a tumult, it allowed me to explore different worlds through an eclectic mix of books, such as the works of Latin American, African, and Asian writers. I also completed all books shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. Nevertheless, there was always room for surprise. For the rest of the year, I am focusing on books that are part of my ongoing reading challenges.

Thankfully, I completed my two most important reading goals with ample time to spare, my 2024 Top 24 Reading List and 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge. Right now, my focus turned to works of Japanese literature. Interestingly, this is the first year in a while that I was not able to host a Japanese literature month. Nevertheless, I tried to make do with what little time I had. During this run, I was able to read my fifth Yukio Mishima book, Thirst for Love, making him the fifth Japanese writer with at least five works I read. I also read Hiromi Kawakami’s latest translated novel, Under the Eye of the Big Bird, and Satoshi Yagisawa’s More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, the sequel to Yagisawa’s beloved debut novel. These are all to prepare me for the English translation of Haruki Muramaki’s long-awaited new book, The City and Its Uncertain Walls. When the Japanese title – 街とその不確かな壁 – was released last year, I was in Japan, the first time I visited the Land of the Rising Sun.

Murakami’s first novel since Killing Commendatore, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a return to the fabled world of the Murakami lore. The story is narrated by an anonymous male character (no surprises). When the story commences, he is seventeen and has recently fallen in love with a sixteen-year-old girl after they both won an essay writing contest. However, the girl kept her distance from him; like him, her name was never revealed. She told him that her real self was residing in a city beyond a wall. Despite this, his yearning and desire – read: sexual – for her kept growing. Together, they vividly built the city from the fragments of their imagination. A replica of the city soon materialized, with all the intricacies written down by the boy. The city where her real self lives was surrounded by a wall, hence, the title. There were restrictions to entering the city. For one, the shadow must be separated from the physical body. In alternating chapters, the boy conveys his experiences in both the real and the mystical world.

The premise immediately reminded me of an earlier Murakami novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, even without reading the author’s Afterwords. Apparently, the original manuscript for the story, a short story, was published as early as the 1980s. He tried working on it but he felt empty. As an alternative, he worked on the aforementioned Hard-Boiled Wonderland. This makes things more interesting because I have an inkling about the story. But then again, this is the Murakami multiverse. Rarely are things predictable and straightforward. So back to the story. The story of the story’s hero became more complicated when the girl he loved suddenly vanished. No preambles. No goodbyes. Just like that. She vanished and the boy never heard from her again. The boy never got over his greatest love. He never quite moved on. Into adulthood, he carried with him his memories of the moments they spent together.

He could not move on even though he tried several times to pick up the pieces of his life. Working for a book publisher, he tried to get into a relationship. However, everything was for naught. He was still haunted by the city with the walls. This longing prompted him to resign from his job and take on a job at a local library in an obscured part of the country, in a town nestled in the mountains of Fukushima prefecture; he began dreaming about a library in the countryside after resigning from his job. The library has an interesting story itself. Because of the largely agricultural area, the original town library was supposed to be torn down but a businessman fought to keep it. After earning an invitation for an interview, the novel’s hero made his way to the library where he was interviewed by the head librarian, Koyasu. He was barely surprised by the man’s motivation for moving to the countryside: peace. The man was accepted for the job and immediately immersed himself in the routine of the town.

At the same time, the man was still haunted by his memories of the city within the walls. Will he be able to get to the bottom of it? Will he be able to find the city and find the girl’s real self? This is one facet of the story that I am looking forward to. Interestingly, while the starting point of the novel was in the 1980s, the story is well-versed in today’s technology. As such, one barely feels that it was actually born in the 1980s. Regardless, I have so much to look forward to in the story. It is always an experience reading Murakami’s novels. Which reminds me, this is kind of an addition to the growing homage for libraries and books written by Japanese writers, on top of Yagisawa’s Morisaki Bookshop novels, Sosuke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books, and Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking For Is in the Library. I am still waiting for musical references though, a constant in Murakami’s works.

How about you fellow reader? What book or books have you read over the weekend? I hope you get to enjoy whatever you are reading right now. Happy weekend!