Book Review

20 July 202520 July 2025

Synopsis & Review | Camera by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1989

Summary Synopsis

A young man in Paris began attending driving school to get a driver’s license. He met Pascale Polougaïevski, the driving school’s office employee. They fell in love immediately and unconsciously, and they lived an ordinary but boring life with Mr. Pascal and Pierre, Pascale’s daughter. They also took two aimless but hurried trips to England.

Upon returning to Paris, on a ferry, the young man picked up a Kodak Instamatic camera, and he took photos consecutively, going up and running down the stairs, to finish and remove the film cartridge…

Jean-Philippe Toussaint superficially describes the mundane, boring, and trivial, yet humorous, daily life of Parisians in The Camera (L’appareil-photo). This novel captures a moment or a period of the narrator’s life. The message and the essence of this novel exist in the narrator’s thoughts, which are described somewhere, and in the philosophy that this narrative fully expresses.

The theme of this novel is the passage of time, movement and stillness, ordinary life, banality and chance, as well as the meaning of life and its futility. Driving a car, flying, and traveling are elements of movement. Photography, a gas cylinder, and rain, on the other hand, are immobile or motionless elements. Thus, the deep theme and essence are the sensitivity of the passage of time, the contradiction between movement and stillness, and the meaning that exists between movement and stillness. Humans exist in the place and time between movement and stillness.

We advanced irresistibly, and I felt myself advancing too, cleaving the sea effortlessly and without forcing, as if I were gradually dying, as I was perhaps living, I didn’t know, it was simple and I couldn’t do anything about it, I let myself be carried away by the movement of the boat in the night and, staring fixedly at the foam that spurted against the hull with a lapping sound that had the quality of silence, its softness and its amplitude, my life moved forward, yes, in a constant renewal of identical foam. (pp. 95 – 96)

This description is the heart of The Camera, and the link between the narrator’s thought and the narrative.

The narrator acted well, but he did nothing. He did not perform any significant or grand actions. Nor did the characters have any specific goals. This is the life of our reality, after all.

This novel describes the common contingency and incomprehensible meaning of daily life. All people experience and know these things in the life of contemporary society in developed countries. We experience this subtle, potential, and subconscious lightness and sadness. But, despite this banality and boredom, daily life is a precious and sweet thing.

The camera is a tool and a method for capturing moments of each life. It captures and fixes a succession of a person’s actions, or time, life, and existence.

This novel itself is a series of photos that capture the narrator’s being and movements, and his life. It is boring and ephemeral, yet this novel is beautiful, sweet, and eternal.

Details of the Book

L’Appareil-photo
 Jean-Philippe Toussaint
 Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, France, (initialement publié en 1989)
 128 pages, €5.50
 ISBN 978-2707320056

Summary & Review | The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Dalkey Archive Press, 2000

Summary Synopsis

The narrator was a 28-year-old man living in the apartment of Paris. One day, he was living at home and using the bathroom all the time. Edmondsson and their mother looked after him. The Polish artists Kabrowinski and Kovalskazinski would arrive and paint the walls, cook the chickens… The couple would dine at the narrator's and four would play Monopoly…

One day, out of the blue, the narrator left the bathroom and Paris, headed aimlessly for Italia, stayed in a hotel in Venice, and spent futile days. Finally, Edmondsson came looking for him, and she spent some time in Venice. But the narrator inadvertently sent an arrow to Edmondsson that stuck in his forehead. And Edmondsson returned to Paris.

He was ill with sinusitis and entered a hospital. He befriended their attending physician. The doctor invited him to dinner and tennis. By misbehaving with the head nurse or something, out of the blue, he decided to return to Paris…

Book Review

This novel decribes the ordinary contemporary life of Parisians without sense significant and serious events. The narrator's behavior and purpose are random and strange, as light and unreasonable as they are stagnant from time to time. The narrative progresses lightly, but at times comes to a halt. And it's composed of miniature things and banal episodes.

There's an important description in section 33 of part 1, in a monologue by the narrator. It's described below.

33) There are two ways of watching the rain fall, at home, behind glass. The first is to hold one's gaze fixed on any point in space and watch the succession of rains at the chosen spot; this way, restful for the mind, gives no idea of the finality of the movement. The second, which requires greater flexibility of vision, consists in following with the eyes the fall of a single drop at a time, from its intrusion into the field of vision to the dispersion of its water on the ground. In this way, it's possible to imagine that movement, however lightning-fast it may appear, tends essentially towards immobility, and that consequently, however slow it may sometimes seem, continuously drags bodies towards death, which is immobility. Olé. (pp. 37-38)

This description is the essence of the novel, and it is the thought and theme of the novel. And it is the thought of movement and stillness, so this novel is a tale of flow and stillness.

Three rooms in which the narrator lived and stayed: the bathroom, the hotel room and the hospital's twin-bedded room are the places and points from which the narrator looks at moving things.

Three foods, pouples, dame blanche and flamber les rognons, are symbols of movement and continuous change. They signify the movement or flow of matter between spaces.

And monopoly, darts and tennis are things or elements of standstill. They are essential movement things, but they sew stops in this novel, or developments of the stop.

The narrator lives randomly and freely, causing events or phenomena of the stop, and remains the points for thinking and reflecting.

The three elements, eposodes among others people and these combinations make the rhythm and current pleasant, and composes pretty white scenes.

This novel is the novel of rhythm and flow, which writes people live in rhythm and light flow in the contemporary city without heavy significant. It's a good life. It must be very sympathetic, pleasant and amusing for readers.

Product Details

La salle de bain
 Jean-Philippe Toussaint
 Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, France, (initialement publié en 1985)
 144 pages, €5.50
 ISBN 978-2707319289

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13 April 202314 May 2024

Synopsis & Review | The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, Shinchosha, 2023

Summary Synopsis

When I was 17 years, I came across a girl of 16 years and we made correspondence. I dated with her once or twice a month, and we talked the City of which her true substance lived. I entered the City of her dream world…

In the City, that is enclosed by the tall and very strong wall, my job was only to do dream-reading. I went to the library, the spirit of the girl worked at, and read three old dreams everyday. The winter had came, the shadow of mine demanded me to go out from the City within a week…

After returning from the City, when I was middle forties, I resigned my job to think about job. And I got a job of the chief librarian of the Z Town Library, in a rural town in the mountains of Tohoku. But the job is unusual, unreal and lonely like the job of dream-reader. Then I knew the former chief librarian Koyasu had lived in the City, and he was ghost. And I got to know a mysterious 16 years old boy went the library everyday, M who only to read so many books at there, and memorized them completely. After a while the boy drew a map of the City and brought it me, and he told me that he wanted to…

Book Review

Haruki Murakami’s the 14th novel published at 10 April 2023 in Japan. The title is same as his novel “The City and Its Uncertain Walls” which released in 1980 on a Japanese Magazine “Bungakukai”. But he rejected it, and part(s) of the motif and the story of the rejected novel was adopted in “The End of the World” of “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”. A a new novel for the first time in six years of which he published, from “Killing Commendatore” (2016).

Three chaptered long novel of 661 paged novel, is formed by 70 short sections.

The same titled middle scale novel of 150 manuscripts, published in 1980. Then Murakami rejected it, the novel was unfinished and not mature. So he wrote his one of masterpieces Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World which based on the rejected novel. But he had decided to aide and rewrite the one recently and he started write this novel from the begging of 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic begun to spread all over the world.

Because of the pandemic of Covid-19, he shut himself in his house and was only to wrote during about 3 years. Murakami wrote in the afterword, the situation of the Covid-19 pandemic affected the story or not, Murakami doesn’t know, can’t know. But there would be a kind of meaning or something.

On this novel, there are 4 polots. A is the adolescence with the girl in the this real world and they talked about the City in which she said she had lived. (chapter 1) B is the time in the City. The narrator’s duty is only dream-reading in the library of the City. He read three old dreams almost everyday. (chapter 1) C is Middle age years after returning from the City. The narrator worked as the chief librarian of the Z Town Library. And he met and saw the chief librarian, Tatsuya Koyasu, the librarian Soeda and mysterious 16 years old boy, M. (chapter 2) D is the content of the chapter 3…

The story about the City and dream-reading in the chapter 1 is almost same as the “End fo the World”. And Murakami wrote the chapter 1 is the rewrite of same titled middle scaled novel published in 1980.

There are many Murakmai’s unique elements and motifs such as fragments-style, dual-world-story, alter world, separation between mind and body, books, reading, library, dream, loneliness, strange and awkward but sweet love with a girl, cooking, taking a long walk, coffee (and tea), fashion, ghost (or being like ghost), lost of persons or objects, and strange experiences.

This novel is a combination of Murakami’s odd romance stories (for example Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart) and his unique urban adventure stories (Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-bird Chronicle, 1Q84 and Killing Commendatore). This is based on the same titled middle scale novel published in 1980 then was rejected and the End of the World of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. (Also this novel is the alter version of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Murakami wrote.) And there many elements and episodes resembles Hear the Wind Sing, Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart, Killing Commendatore and Kafka on the Shore. I think it must be a big fruit and one of consequences of his writing carrier.

Also another feature of this novel is the theme treats reading, library, books, writing, story and their meanings. This novel is a story of to read, to treat, to cope with and to create a story or stories. The first job of the narrator was a book agent and the second was the chief librarian of a small library, in the City his duty was to read old dreams. The City is created by the story made by the girl and the people have no shadow. And the Z Town Library is a dreaming place of Mr Koyasu who loved books and had wanted to be a novelist. And there was an ideal place of reading for the narrator and M. And the story develops about the libraries, books and stories. A story is people’s each own idea and world or micro-cosmos, also the story is the world, the universe or the nation. A big question and a main theme of this novel is connection and meaning between them.

To read a book or a story is a way of mental treatment and keeping sanity, a method of living in the world and of communicate with lost people. This motif is the same as Kafka on the Shore. Almost characters of this novel loved books and reading, so they wanted to spend time by only reading. Reading is the way to escape from the world, also is the method to solve the problem of this real world, however to dive into reading or a story is a happy but dangerous act.

I think Murakami’s message of this novel is “how we deal with the reality and stories, the connections among them?”. Almost of character in this novel and their activities and jobs are only very practical or only very unreal. Living people must live in a story or stories including ordinary, empty or superficial stories made by television, cinema, magazines and so on. People forced to trace ordinary stories such as “One must continue to work a big and stable company”, “One must marry till the middle age” or “One must live in this real world (and its story or the grand narrative of a nation)”. Some people shut in their dreamy stories or own micro-cosmos. It’s also the question and the problem to Murakami himself as a novelist. The conclusion and the consequence of this novel is that he made end or shut out…

The matters about the Covid-19 pandemic made clear, there were divides between a grand narrative of a nation and individual realities, administrators and practitioners, rules and practices, students and adults, and patients and non-patients. So Murakami mentioned the Covid-19 pandemin in the afterword and this novel must be affected by the matters.

Incidents in Japan, for example the 2008 Akihabara Massacre, the Kyoto Animation Arson Attack and Studio, the Assassination of Shinzo Abe, they should be caused by the problem of story. There were many causes of many complex things, but the problem of story is huge one. I think these criminals can’t cope with their stories, the stories they followed, they forced to follow or they want to believe. And connections between the reality with a story or stories are wrong, so each one committed a crime. They can’t correctly cope with a story that was made by themselves or other(s), and reasons of commit murder are unreal, trivial and inconsistent.

The wall of the City should be a shell of collective minds of people. And the people in the City have no shell of mind but there were no flowing and progression of time and no complex social duties and responsibilities. They did only simple own duties. They look like residents in the Heaven, but also look like prisoner. However, a life in a prison might be the most great, regular, stable, clean and happy way of life in the Earth… ?

This novel is one of the most favourite Murakami’s novel of mine equal to The Wild Sheep Chase, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Dance, Dance, Dance and the part of Kafka Tamura in Kafka on the Shore. I read a great novel which newly published, for the time in a long time. It’s a masterpiece of the 21th century and philosophical fantastic grand narrative owns common sense, the meaning of life, love and its compassion and a truth, that I wanted to read. Are there’s Murakami’s full of love for library, books, reading, writing, stories and literature.

By this novel Murakami splendidly successes to create and set up his ideal place and world, or two eternal utopias like the heaven. So sweet, precious and pure… But the narrator…