Norwegian Wood

This is the first time I have read one of Murakami’s novels and I am impressed. This book is beautifully written – Murakami’s style is elegant and atmospheric. In Norwegian Wood, he explores love, loss, fear, and memory.

As the book opens, protagonist Toru Watanabe is looking back on his college days, seventeen years past. He had moved from Kobe to Tokyo to study at Waseda University after suffering the loss of his best friend, Kizuki, to suicide. The story follows Toru’s relationships with two young women – Naoko, his friend and Kizuki’s girlfriend, and Midori, an eccentric college classmate. Naoko is struggling to overcome severe mental health issues, which leads her to a secluded sanctuary in the countryside. Midori has show more had a rough early life with parents that paid little attention to her, and she has developed a bold and unconventional approach to life. All three try to overcome painful memories and find their way in the world, some more successfully than others.

This is a powerful story about grappling with loneliness and depression. It portrays how sex and love can be both positive and negative forces. Toru attempts to break through grief and find a path to a happier life. He wants to help Naoko get back to the world of the living. Midori holds a more optimistic attitude toward life despite her earlier hardships. The supporting characters are well-developed and lend depth to the narrative. This book stimulates reflection and will linger in my thoughts. show less

In this book Murakami expounds on the imperfections of us all and demonstrates that no matter how much we try not to hurt the people we love that we can inadvertently end up doing the very thing we do not want to do. This is not a book for the vulnerable but it is about the vulnerable and, if one agrees with my interpretation of Murakami’s work, we are all vulnerable.

The themes tackled in this book are heavy. They include the effect of suicide on those left behind; coping with the illness and death of a close relative; first love; mental illness; self-loathing and self-criticism; coming of age; a sense of duty to the dead; misunderstandings between loved ones. There is much in this book that will make it a difficult read for many but, show more for those able and willing to take up the challenge, it is a rewarding read.

Jay Rubin obviously did an excellent job with the translation as the only clues to its being a translation are the words in the book identifying the translator and the knowledge that Murakami writes in Japanese. I always believe that the more inconspicuous the presence of a translator in a work the greater is the skill of that translator. show less

I went through at least five separate stages with this book. The first: "Whoa, impressionistic. Is this gonna be like a Japanese John Fowles with more confusing sentences and no good translation for 'nantonaku'?" The second: "Oh, I see.He's a kind of scrubbed-clean anomie-and-beauty purveyor, and the kids like him because his classic tale of teen love and confusion is leavened with their same modern 'whatever,' and he's ostensibly J but Americo-global-neutral enough to appeal to the not-Japan-understanding-but-Harajuku-Girls-approving of crowd." The third: "Actually, I wonder how much of the above was translator choice, because way to give them generic slang like 'kiddo' and translate 'bento' but not 'sukiyaki,' you filthmonger. And the show more thing is, I really wanna pin down the real you, Haruki, because I'm starting to realize the inner J-ness of this tale as well as the huge my-damn-situation-relevance, and I'm getting a little bit wound up because the J's have done me right in the how-to-live department before, but I worry about where he's going with Naoko . . . ."

And then: "PURE HATE. How could you, you self-indulging piece of garbage, how could you write the facilest, ugliest, cruelest happy ending imaginable, the one everyone thinks about and hates themselves for. How could you reduce it to a life/death duality and give more professors more hooks to hang their shit on and destroy the trueness at the core?"

Stage five: "Wait, whoa. I just gained huge insight into myself and the world and love by the way I raged at that flatness. Maybe this guy knows what he's doing after all. And the book's not over yet, and Reiko is coming in to Greek-chorus us back on track . . . ."

Stage six(!) and last: Utter dumbfoundment. I've seen the ambiguous ending,and in this tale it was true and right and shit, dawg, Toru IS just Nick Urfe but magic island igai. But OMG how masterly a last line, shaking everything up in a flash and making it sinister, but with just the right ray of not-hope-but-inconclusiveness. But still sinister."

Crazy good, but nothing can forgive that lynchpin moment I went mad about. But I'll read him again. show less

This book says so much in so few pages and is probably the best I’ve ever read about mental health, depression and suicide. The book is told through the voice of a young Japanese college student called Toru. It is about his coming-of-age and how three very different women helped him grow up and gave him what he needed to keep him from falling into the depression that ever threatened after the death of his friend. It is set in the 1960’s culture revolution in Tokyo. It begins with the unexpected suicide of Toru’s best friend in high school, and takes Toru to college in Tokyo where he tries to forge a life for himself while dealing with the death of his 17 year old friend. The book is like a symphony with the blending of the music, show more the culture, and the dreaminess of the beginning of the rock and roll and drug culture. The book is marvellously real and we see the world through Toru’s eyes. I is like being in the middle of a dream. So much is said about mental health and the book illustrates so clearly the fragileness of the human psyche. Throughout, the pathos of the words from the Beatles song Norwegian Wood wrap a web around Toru and his world.
“I once had a girl, or should I say she had me?”—Norwegian Wood by The Beatles. This happens to be my favourite Beatles song and I will never be able to listen to it again without thinking of earnest, honest and caring Toru. I urge everyone to read this book. It is magical! show less

Norwegian Wood by [a:Haruki Murakami|3354|Haruki Murakami|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1350230608p2/3354.jpg] is an absolute delight. It is, without a doubt, one of the best books I have ever read. Norwegian Wood captures the essence of a lot of things - one should imagine Murakami wearing a wizard's robe while slowly cooking up the ingredients of a masterpiece.

The main story focuses around Toru Watanabe, who is, in all respects, just a guy. A young man with emotions, with desires, who isn't limited by his own body or mind. The rest of the book is a love story, it's about attraction, special moments, the wounds that distance and time inflict on a loving heart. It's about settling down while looking for adventure (Midori). But most of show more all, it tries to capture the permanent sadness that lingers within (specifically through Naoko, making for some heartbreakingly beautiful scenes). The novel is drenched in solitude, and the difficulty of both sharing and appreciating the good that comes our way.

I could really go on and on about this book. It's sheer storytelling pleasure, and one of the most subtle attacks on the heart one could imagine. show less

perfect book for when the year is ending and it’s cold and you feel all depressed and angsty, because the book is chock full of depressed angsty teenagers who do the whole depression and angst thing REALLY well, actually; what’s worse than two of your top five emotions being misrepresented, right? main character is really funny, and smart, too, in a nonchalant way, which is likeable for the main character of a murakami book, but if you meet a guy like this in person, you’d better run the opposite way. my favourite scenes were probably all the times midori called toru out for being self-centred. also reiko’s letter to toru when he writes to her about his ‘moral quandary’ (read: being in love with two girls, bollywood style) show more tugged at my heart strings for some reason i do not wish to disclose and/or am unable to. transcribing some of it below (pg 355):

“…all of us (by which I mean all of us, both normal and not-so-normal) are imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. We don't live with the mechanical precision of a bank account or by measuring all our lines and angles with rulers and protractors. Am I right?
My own personal feeling is that Midori sounds like a great girl. I understand just reading your letter why you would be drawn to her. And I understand, too, why you would also be drawn to Naoko. There's nothing the least bit sinful about it. Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours.

It's like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up. Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course. Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. Life is like that. I know I sound like I'm preaching from a pulpit, but it's about time you learned to live like this. You try too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. If you don't want to spend time in an insane asylum, you have to open up a little more and let yourself go with life's natural flow. I'm just a powerless and imperfect woman, but still there are times when I think to myself how wonderful life can be! Believe me, it's true! So stop what you're doing this minute and get happy. Work at making yourself happy!”

i haven’t read a lot of murakami myself, but this would be The murakami book i recommend to new readers (if you can get around the suspiciously high frequency at which unremarkable male narrators get laid, which i did) show less

In the few days after reading this, my appreciation of this book fell from "Not his best" to "I wish I hadn't read this book".

I think this is mainly because of the almost offhand way suicides are treated here. Sure, they hurt the people that are close, but that's just because they're dead, not because they decided to kill themselves. How can he treat suicides like they are some kind of natural disaster, instead of a choice, and a tragic and/or aggressive choice at that? He does talk about the choice of his main character not to commit suicide, when there is nothing in his life that would warrant such an act. Is this choice the only thing that keeps him alive?

Apart from that, there doesn't seem much point to the whole story, which makes show more the suicides, and the casual sex as well, even more pointless. Maybe the pointlessness is the point of this book, like in Catcher in the Rye, but even then I would have liked some kind of glimpse, some kind of intuitive inkling, that this isn't all there is to life. show less