Excellent, I write below the striking prologue – loving the faceless man and the penguin charm offered in exchange for a portrait. The man-boy artist makes endless cups of tea, stares at canvases, and belts out similes so big, I duck to take cover. But as I plough on, red pen almost spent, it all starts to read like the first draft of a book, the big version of the big book, of Genesis, where everything is included and then included all over again. Killing Commendatore often feels lazy, like a painting-by-numbers version of an Old Master done in crayonsThere’s a whole host of characters in this book, skipping around in the magic realism more as “types” than anything else. Murakami the master?

Source: The Irish Times October 20, 2018 04:52 UTC