Norwegian Wood (1987)

I've been interested by all of the reviews I've seen on LT for Japanese authors in the last year or so inspired by the Author Theme Reads Group, but I wasn't convinced any of the books would really appeal to me. This one caught my eye and got positive reviews from some readers whose tastes often align with mine so I decided to give it a try. I'd say I had a mixed response.

On one hand, Murakami writes memorable, meaningful characters. Toru Watanabe is the narrator of this book. He remembers a year in his life, 1969, when he was in college and torn between two loves, Naoko and Midori. Naoko is in a mental institution after the suicide of her high school sweetheart and Midori is a larger than life, brutally honest, funny fellow college student of Toru's. I loved the shifting atmosphere that Murakami can create and think I'll remember this book for a long time to come.

However, there were some things that I didn't love. I had a hard time with the flow of language and especially the dialogue in the book, much of which sounded kind of stilted and unnatural to me. I'm not sure if that's a translation issue? I did get used to it the farther into the book I got. I also think the book would have meant more to me if I'd lived in 1969 Japan. I have a feeling that Murakami recreates that particular time period well in this book, but I wouldn't know since I wasn't alive then and certainly wasn't living in Japan! I had no idea what the student riots were about that are referred to repeatedly.

So overall, I loved the characters in the book and the atmosphere and could sense a brilliance in the writing, but the stilted language and my lack of knowledge about the time period detracted a bit from the overall picture. I'd be curious to try something else by Murakami, though, and I'd call it a successful first foray into Japanese novels. ( )

Murakami is a beautiful writer and my enjoyment in his words is constant and intense. This "bi-polar" exploration of years of transition from child to adult swings from drama nearly soap opera caliber to real pain and struggle to mind numing mundanity is spectacular. So too is the snapshot of a moment in time - Tokyo. 1970. This was a 5-star book for me until the last paragraph. I don't want to include spoilers so I will just say that I had no sense of an ending here and I was too invested in these people to go without one (good or bad). Absolutely a wonderous read. ( )

Hard to go wrong with Murakami. ( )

I've been meaning to read Murakami's Norwegian Wood for ages. It's a fascinating book encompassing a coming-of-age story with larger themes of love, death, choices and issues of emotional instability and suicide. The characters that populate this novel all come with their own little quirks and nuances, all adrift like the main character, Toru Watanabe, and trying to find their way of making sense of everything both inside their heads and around them. Murakami has a wonderful narrative style of bringing a sense of art and beauty to everyday thoughts and activities and despite of its dark, serious and thoughtful themes, I greatly enjoyed it.

You could read my full review of the novel over at my blog: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2013/01/19/review-norwegian-wood/ ( )

This is not your typical 'coming-of-age' stories. In a way, protagonist Toru Watanbe's life is sometimes dreary and sad at other times. Yet reading the book brought so much of pleasure unlike other 'happy' books. This book is not even a love story - just a young man's complex relationship with a woman. Yet it's hard to ignore his evolving relationships with other few people he has in his life. Character development of Reiko, Nagasawa and Midori is fantastic. (Sorry can't explain who they are).

I loved the books Toru reads in the novel and sometimes they are mentioned really aptly. Like Thomas Mann's novel 'The Magic Mountain' when he goes to visit his friend Naoko in sanitorium. Premise of book and sanitorium. There is a cryptic remark from Reiko wrt to that in the book.

The book reminded me a lot of Murakami's short story collection (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman) - the story Firefly and the cover story - lot of it has gone into Norwegian Wood. And consistency of few details in these books makes me speculate once again some parts of it are maybe autobiographical. A book one can visit again - I found several quotes inside that I was nodding to in earnest. ( )