The intention of Murakami With this serial publication for a work so solid as a block, and that as a result of its publication dates it could have closed in a single volume, it cannot be other than to differentiate something that escapes us.
The truth is that the story suffers a fragmentation due to an increase in rhythm, but it is always read as an absolute continuation that, for whatever reason, was understood by the author as something necessarily presented separately, as a second course or as a second orgasm. ...
Be that as it may, the point is that a first part Surrendered to that reflective reading and despite it full of an existential tension, typical of Murakami, we now move on to a more dynamic development in the background. The plot excuse of the mysterious painting that moves and haunts the protagonist in the first part now turns towards a disturbing destabilization of the triangle composed between the painter of the canvas, Menshiki, the protagonist's retirement neighbor and the protagonist himself.
Because Menshiki invites the protagonist and narrator to paint a girl who passes in front of their houses every school day. The young woman, called Marie Akikawa, begins to take her particular alternative life in the outline of her features stolen every day. Until Marie disappears and her fading is suddenly linked to the memory of a fantasy related by Menshiki to the narrator, about a new Alice capable of reaching another dimension.
Marie's search provides a point of suspense between the real and the unreal, between reason, madness and subjective impressions that go from one extreme of human understanding to the other and that reach the most natural explanations in the artistic.
The denouement of the story, which erupts after a reading experience of dreamlike ecstasy, seems to bring us closer to one of those enigmas always sought by the writers of great mysteries.
Only this time it's more about the searing sensation of a wisp. A final effect that caresses all the great answers sought by a nameless narrator. A narrator in whose anonymity we finally understand the intention of total mimicry.
You can now buy the novel The Death of the Commander (book 2), the closing of this particular series by Haruki Murakami, here: