Haruki Murakami, Trans. by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen
PositiveBookforum\"While [the book\'s plot] may seem like an unmanageably bewildering tangle, Murakami’s first-person prose has a tabulating thoroughness that brings a feeling of calm and control ... Murakami often borrows the detective story convention of combing for clues but strips it of its explanatory role, so that the fine-grained noticing becomes a styleless, camera-like neutrality that forms the quotidian wallpaper against which intrusions of the absurd flare up ... Mostly, though, Killing Commendatore centers on the (not at all apolitical) idea of the sacred importance of imaginative freedom ... To an uncharitably skeptical reader, [Murakami\'s style] might seem formulaic, tilting over into the too-cute, or becoming a version of what James Wood once called \'hysterical realism\' ... To his credit, Murakami... has in the process invented an aggregate fictional world of fierce integrity that isn’t like anything else.\
Elvis Costello
PositiveThe New RepublicFortunately for the fan of Costello’s music the topic of discussion is often his own songs, and he is, unsurprisingly, a witty and eloquent guide.
