Norwegian Wood | Haruki Murakami | The new Salinger without being repetitive.

Norwegian Wood | Haruki Murakami | A small miracle

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Norwegian Wood

	Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami Vintage, 2000 - 298 pages average customer review:based on 164 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

First American Publication

This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.

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The new Salinger without being repetitive.

Murakami's Norwegian Wood seems like another Catcher in the Rye without any traces of annoying repetitiveness of themes. Watanabe, the protagonist of the novel, has already become a figure to emulate in some respects...

A small miracle

Murakami has captured me for years with stories about modern Japan and his strange pasta making anti-heroes. The mear thought of him writing a plain romantic novel has kept me from reading this book for years - after finishing it, I can say that all these doubts has been cleared. Even though it lacks the mysterious sheeps and vanishing elephants of his other works, it still is a true Murakami master piece.

Norwegian wood is a extremely moving novel about tragic young love, and as a Murakami love story it is everything one would hope it to be. A terribly intimate story, filled with memorable characters and exceptionally fine prose. Retaining the authors typical musing of life, death, music and literature, in a fine blend with a young person troubled with a world he cannot understand - the world is strange when you're a stranger.

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Good book by Murakami

This is the third book by Haruki Murakami I read (after Sputnik and South of the Border) and the best so far. Originally written in 1987, the book begins in an airport in Germany, as the titular song by the Beatles playing in the sound system makes middle age Toru Watanabe remember his life as a college student in the late 1960s. As a drama student living in a pension in Tokyo he has to chose between the love of the unstable Naoko (a friend from high school, girlfriend of a friend of Watanabe that commited suicide, and who now lives in a sort of asylum in rural Japan) and the increasing approaches of his college classmate Midori. Meanwhile, he makes two friends: the nerdy, cleanliness obsessed, geography student nicknamed "Storm Trooper" and the ladies man Nagasawa, an amoral student who plans to enter Japan's diplomatic corps. A great book about remembrances, love and the joy and occasional sadness of young life. Perhaps not for the prurrient, since, as in other books by Murakami, explicit sex often punctuates the story.

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Earthy, romantic, sad

This novel is earthy, romantic, sad and very occasionally dull, for after all the protagonist is often bored and lonely. He has few friendships, but those he has, with one exception, are very strong. He has a very strong moral sense, and deep skepticism of the values of the majority of other college students around him. He is delightfully honest.

The novel is well written. What struck me is that while written in the autobiographical style, dialogue is very important, and in fact you sometimes learn important things about the protagonist through dialogue first: (stop if you haven't read book) how much he is in love with Midori, and just how much self discipline it takes to go through the day and remain active. This is quite realistic, as conversation often gives us insight into ourselves.

As an interesting aside with some relevance, Barack Obama's two years attending Columbia University were spent in relative isolation with few friends (source, Wall Street Journal editorial, Sept 11, which was actually objective).

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Not just a love story

It is always a hard task for me to review a novel by Murakami because of the sheer complexity of his work. This particular novel christened 'Norwegian Wood' after the famous Beatles' song has been looked at as one of Murakami's simplest novels where he was accused of succumbing to the story lines that he has prided himself on avoiding. After reading 'Norwegian Wood' I must say with absolute conviction that these accusations are indeed invalid and have been based on the apparent plot of the novel that at first might seem simple, it is true that there were no signs of any sheep or disappearing elephants in this novel, but it is far from being simple.
I think Murakami has taken a great risk with this novel in the sense that he had the courage to step out of what is natural to him and attempt to write a story in a different style yet he succeeded in making it his own. 'Norwegian Wood' is simply a love story but by saying that we have not even scratched the surface on the intensity of this novel. By the time Murakami was finished with it, this love story has sucked you in its nostalgic era of the 60's and enveloped you in the smells and sounds of every season from January through to December. This isn't just a love story, it is a coming-of-age story, and it is a story within a story. The characters have the definite Murakami style, selfless, sweet some even lovable yet all are intriguingly twisted such is the real world we live in.

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