This Book Was The Biggest Literary Disappointment Of 2018!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                          Just as Joshua Ferris' short story collection, "The Dinner Party," finished me with him, last year, so "Killing Commendatore does, this year, for me, with Haruki Murakami.

                                            The book was so hyped it demanded to be the Book Of The Year.  Carrying it about was like hauling a massive science text, back in high school!!!!!!!!!!

                                              The story centers around the abandoned house of the painter of the book's title, a semi-retired artist who takes up residence there, a mysterious neighbor, living across the way, and a young girl, her father and aunt, who may or may not be the other neighbor's long lost daughter.  Supernatural things happen, as I expected they would, but it does not matter. Murakami gives us not one shred of originality.  Much of this ponderous, overlong book, that repeats things time and again, is recycled from one of his better works, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                                                It pained me to pick this volume up every time.  But I did out of respect for Murakmai, and because I wanted to see if there was some kind of narrative payoff.  There really was not.

                                                   In the end, I am forced to invoke a quote from Dorothy Parker. When she was the Constant Reader for "The New Yorker," she reviewed a book so distasteful to her she wrote the now famous quote, "Tonstant weader fwowoed up."

                                                     Well, that's how I felt about "Killling Commendatore."

                                                      Constant Reader throwed up.

                                                       Skip this one, girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!