Killing Commendatore

Killing Commendatore (2017), a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, concerns a portrait artist whose life takes a series of dramatic turns in the wake of his separation from his wife. Despite not earning reviews as strong as some of Murakami's other novels, Killing Commendatore earned a spot on Kirkus Reviews' list of the best books of 2018.

The narrator is an unnamed portrait painter. Near the start of the story, the narrator's wife, Yuzu, abruptly tells him she wants a separation after six years of marriage. Lonely and depressed, the narrator quits painting and travels to Japan for several months. At a diner, the narrator meets a distressed woman who appears to be fleeing an unnamed man, referred to as "the man with the white Subaru." The narrator and the distressed woman leave together and have violent sex at a hotel. In the morning, the woman is gone. When the narrator returns to the diner to find her, he instead encounters the man with the white Subaru again. The narrator suspects that the man knows what he and the woman did.

After the narrator's car breaks down, putting an end to his travels, he relocates into a remote and empty house that belongs to Tomohiko Amada, his father's friend. A famous painter, Tomohiko now lives in a nursing home. In the attic of the house, the narrator discovers a painting called Killing Commendatore that depicts a scene from the Mozart opera Don Giovanni.

In order to survive financially, the narrator obtains a job as an art teacher in a nearby village. When his wealthy neighbor Menshiki Wataru learns he is a painter, Menshiki commissions a portrait of himself. After completing the portrait of Menshiki, the narrator resolves to paint the man with the white Subaru.

One night, the narrator is awakened by the sound of a bell ringing. With Menshiki's help, the narrator traces the sound to a group of large, heavy rocks near a shrine in the forest. A construction crew hired by Menshiki removes the rocks to reveal a man-made stone pit nine feet deep that houses the bells and nothing else. Later, Menshiki confesses to the narrator that he bought his house in order to keep tabs on a teenage girl named Mariye Akigawa. Menshiki believes that Mariye, who is also in the narrator's art class, might be his daughter.

The narrator eventually discovers that the source of the ringing bell: the Commendatore from Tomohiko's painting has been rendered into flesh—a two-foot-tall figure of the Commendatore. The figure refers to himself as an "idea." The Commendatore follows the narrator to Menshiki's house, but Menshiki cannot see him. While there, Menshiki asks the narrator to offer to paint a portrait of Mariye so that he can arrange what will seem like an impromptu meeting between them. The narrator agrees.

While painting Mariye, the narrator abandons his efforts to paint the man with the Subaru. He also begins to paint the pit. Meanwhile, the narrator believes that the portrait of the Commendatore sends him secret messages. At the portrait's behest, the narrator places the unfinished painting of the man with the Subaru facing the wall so it cannot be seen.

During his sessions of painting Mariye, she is chaperoned by her aunt, who attained guardianship after hornets killed Mariye's mother. When Menshiki drops by for his supposedly accidental visit, he takes a liking to the aunt and eventually, they begin a relationship.

One day, Mariye goes missing. Suspecting that her disappearance has something to do with the pit, the narrator demands that the Commendatore tell him where she is. The Commendatore reminds the narrator that he is only an "idea" and therefore cannot say whatever he likes. Cryptically, he adds that if the narrator accepts the next invitation he receives, it may lead to Mariye.

That invitation comes in the form of an offer to visit Tomohiko in his nursing home. There, the narrator kills the Commendatore with a fishing knife in a manner similar to the one depicted in Tomohiko's painting. After the Commendatore expires, a portal opens to a metaphorical underworld where the narrator hopes to find Mariye. With Mariye nowhere in sight, the narrator exits the underworld only to find himself in the pit by the shrine. A few days later, Menshiki rescues the narrator.

It is revealed that Mariye, aroused to suspicion by Menshiki, broke into his house. Unfortunately, he came home before she could leave, and Mariye was forced to hide for four days before the opportunity to escape undetected presented itself.

When the book ends, the narrator reunites with his wife, who is pregnant with another man's child.

According to Kirkus Reviews, Killing Commendatore is "altogether bizarre—pleasingly beguiling, if demanding."