Thanks to Murakami I am now able to pinpoint exactly the issue I have had with Marquez’s writing, which haunts me throughout this novel as well. The brand of magical realism Murakami decides to pursue here seeps too much into /ordinary reality/, becoming too grounded, too lodged in reality’s throat. In his previous novels Murakami walked a tightrope smoothly balancing between magic and realism, dipping his fingers a little bit here and a little bit there, and that way magic never truly left reality the same way as reality made magic such a tangible thing. Here he puts up the titular wall and severs us completely from the magic on the other side of it, we are left stranded - us and our shadows without any hope at all.