When reading City and Its Uncertain Walls, I kept thinking about Norwegian Wood. What stood out to me most was the writing style, as in both books, the narration feels less like something happening in the present and more like someone carefully reconstructing the past through memory. Because of that, both stories feel emotionally distant and melancholic. That mood seems very common in Murakami's writing, where even strong emotions are expressed in a somewhat restrained and detached way.
What I found interesting was how this memory-like style of writing affected the portrayal of the girl. Since the narrator tells the story in a dreamlike way, she starts to feel less like a physical person and more like an abstract idea or dream. That feeling becomes even stronger when she says she is a shadow. To me, the shadow idea does not just make the story more surreal, but also makes her seem like someone who exists only partially. I also thought that in some way, Murakami is showing that memory does not keep people exactly the same, but slowly changes them over time. The girl is still very clear in the narrator's mind, but she also feels far away and hard to truly understand. It seems like the narrator is attached not only to the girl herself but also to his memory of her.
- Shannon Li
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