Norwegian Wood

Having read (and loved) Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and currently reading (and loving) 1Q84, both by Murakami, I was excited going into this almost completely blind. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed as Murakami's charming writing felt like it had disappeared and all I was given was a story about the main character's miserable life feat. women he had sex with in the most boring and dullest way possible.

If I want to read a japanese author's book about a man's misery, all the women and shitty people he met in his life told in first person ever again, I'd rather reread No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. At least that book evoked some kind of emotion in me.

I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by James Yaegashi, and I recommend it. I chose it because I don't like hearing names getting butchered, but his performance was very pleasant overall. If it weren't for him I might have not finished this book at all.

It's been a long time since I last consumed a novel as voraciously as I did Norwegian Wood. One for the emotions rather than the intellect, but not in a negative sense.

Toru's final sexual encounter was possibly a little far-fetched in my eyes, but it helped reinforce the role that sex played in the novel more generally.

**i'm going to think over the book more and give it more a fair review. but yeah, the two stars' description of “it was ok” is how I feel about it overall.Just finished so I'm kind of a mess. Just as affecting and beautifully written as [b:South of the Border, West of the Sun 17799 South of the Border, West of the Sun Haruki Murakami https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1443685506s/17799.jpg 1739145], but somehow much less defined conceptually. I think it suffers a little in comparison to Murakami's other plain-love-story because of that. The only way I can think of this book, having just finished it, is as a moody, tangled labyrinth of life and death. The subject matter was mostly horrible for where I am right now, and the deaths hit me forcefully, yet I couldn't put it down.

This was a bittersweet story for me. I found myself thinking back to people I have known and family members I have lost, especially in the last half of this book. I've read Murakami's recent stuff and am working backwards now, and I appreciate seeing how his style has changed. This was very much a straightforward story when compared to other Murakami books I've read, and I enjoyed it all the same.

I don't see what all the hype around this book is, like yeah I guess it's kinda sad and explores loss and sexuality but like I wasn't really into all that. It was ok and picked up around the end but not by much. Overall I feel like there are better books out there that I wouldn't really recommend reading this one, but also I haven't read much of the authors other works.

“Letters are just letters. Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish”

Expect Murakami to blow you away by his ever so subtle way of writing, which stays with you days, and months after reading his work.

Now I understand why people insist on starting Murakami with Norwegian Wood.
Its more normal and relatable, than his other works.

Norwegian Wood ends on hope, of new beginnings after love and loss.

This book was really good and I would read again but good lord the very end got to me- I probably would have given it 4 stars otherwise. It had me in tears, it touched my heart...yada yada.

The protagonist struggles with Naoko's death and the fact that his heart wants him to move on with Midori but he feels guilty. And then out of the blue he sleeps with Reiko repeatedly before feeling ready to move on and call Midori. Like, what? By sleeping with Reiko he feels ready to move on with Midori?

Ok.

There are a lot of criticisms in other reviews that cover my other concerns with the book, and it was slow at times - but all in all it was a decent, eloquent novel.

Tasty reading from beginning to end. Visiting a Murakami is like doing something you haven't done in a long time, and yet you still remember how to do it. Reading Murakami is like playing chords of a guitar song that you haven't played in a while. This, apart from maybe his memoir, is Murakami's sole piece of non fantasy, it's just a story of a college student that has some misfortunes, but the japanese writer makes it seem so much more than that. The structure, flow of the pages and the sentences made this a pleasant and light read. The plot twist at the end was not unexpected, but the easiness with which it was delivered made it even more impactful. Many bits of culture that defined 1960s Japan and its people, such as The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald or Miles Davis' Kind of Blue jazz album, made me smile and at the same time relate to the character. Undeniably one of the best best books I've read this year and a must read for everyone that is a fan of Murakami and/or contemporary literature.

Que livro fantástico! Não me lembro da última vez que li um livro que me tenha deixado agarrada desde a primeira página, bem como não me lembro da última vez em que tenha devorado um livro tão rapidamente.
O que eu adoro na escrita de Murakami é o facto de ele conseguir tornar algo que, à partida seria vulgar, em algo fabuloso e foi isso que senti com a leitura desta obra.
Não lia um livro tão bom há imenso tempo e termino este pseudo-review com uma pergunta retórica: Posso só ler Murakami até ao fim dos meus dias?

I wasn't sure how I felt about this in the first half. It was different than the other Murakami I have read, no supernatural twists, etc. Then something happened and it turned into a love story that really captured that feeling of wanting to spend every minute with someone. Murakami has a way of transporting the reader to a setting and really making you feel the emotions of the characters. This book covers grief, love, guilt, and sex in a way that feels tender and familiar.

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”

“Will you wait for me forever?”

“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.”

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

“What happens when people open their hearts?” “They get better.”

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”

“But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”

It's really a problem when a character driven book has characters that aren't likable. I really couldn't get past the surface level discriptions of the side characters, especially the way the female characters were described or should I say not described at all beyond being sexual objects. In a world created so beautifully, more effort was put into describing scenery than describing any person in the book. Absolutely a loss of opportunity here to discuss themes such as mental illness, death, wartime. Instead, the author minimizes all of these to background noise and focuses on hyper sexualizing every character as a way to cope with being a very one-dimension main character. A complete bore of a book and anyone who says otherwise is reading between the lines things that are simply not there.