Killing Commendatore

I like Haruki Murakami’s writing and was looking forward to reading Killing Commendatore.  The narrator (who is unnamed) is a young portrait painter whose wife has left him, leaving him in a state of existential crisis. He jumps at the opportunity to move from Tokyo to the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada, who suffers from dementia and is living in a care facility. He hopes that living there will inspire creativity. He listens to classical music, teaches two art classes, has a married lover he meets for sex twice a week and thinks about his wife and his dead sister more than he should. Then a mysterious wealthy neighbour asks him to paint his portrait and is willing to pay a lot of money for the work so he accepts the commission. The neighbour, Mr. Menshiki, confides to him that a neighbourhood child might (or might not) be his and that he has built his mansion on the opposite side of the valley for the express purpose of keeping an eye on the girl. When the narrator finds a previously unseen painting by Amada in the attic, things get weirder. The work, Killing Commendatore, inspired by Mozart’s Don Giovanni, appears to be a portal for spirits and mysterious events ensue. He lost me at the magic realism turn and, in my opinion he also gave up on any semblance of a plot. He seemed to be making it up as it went along and along and along for more than 700 pages but nevertheless I persisted. My pet peeve: his obsession with the 13 year old neighbour's breasts which he portrays as her obsession, but I don't believe him. Many of Murakami's works are well worth reading. I would not recommend this book as an introduction.