Norwegian Wood

The novel is split into two volumes and beautifully presented here in a "gold" box containing both the green book and the red book. Young Japanese fans became so obsessed with the work that they would dress entirely in one or other colour denoting which volume they most identified with. And the novel is hugely affecting, reading like a cross between Plath's Bell Jar and Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women, if less complex and ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical, work. He captures the huge expectation of youth, and of this particular time in history, for the future and for the place of love in it. He also saturates the work with sadness, an emotion that can cripple a novel but which here underscores the poignancy of the work's rather thin subject matter. --Mark Thwaite

Reader Reviews:

Love and sex and death (1/1 people found this helpful)

I read one Murakami book a few years back, couldn't make head nor tail of it, and forgot about him. Then I picked this up in a charity shop and was intrigued and then totally immersed as I read it in a couple of days. The variety of the responses here is interesting too.

At heart, the plot is very simple: teenager falls in love with his best friend's girl, but the relationship is stuck. Enter a second girl, who he also loves. Add lots and lots of one night stands with anonymous other girls, and there you have it. It's set in the late 60s but the period doesn't really come through; adding a few Beatles songs does not make it a novel about the 60s.

Sure, the lead character's detachment is unsettling, and the two girl friends put up with a lot. There are sections that are not really needed or relevant to the central plot. And the ending gets way too sentimental for me. But I still enjoyed it, and think it's far far better than off the wall stories about sheep or elephants. He should leave the magic stuff to Jonathan Carroll!

Incredibly Bad! (1/6 people found this helpful)

Having read Kafka on the Shore which I absolutely adored I then read this and was I shocked!! Was it the same author? It was childishly pornographic and the explicit way the author described sexual activity was cringe making. Kafka had a fair amount of sex in it but it was justified and done well. This book had too much banal sexual description, totally unnecessary, and it left me feeling a little uncomfortable with the author's state of mind. As another reviewer said 'this is not literature'. I totally agree. If I had read this book first I would not have read Kafka which would have been a shame. But I am now reluctant to bother with anymore.

A wonderful book (2/2 people found this helpful)

I hadn't read Murakami before and so picking up this book was a new venture- exploring a work that I had wanted to read for a while but not really knowing what to expect.
The novel has a central protagonist, a young man starting university, leaving his family for the first time but learning to cope with the recent suicide of his best friend. As he starts his studies in Tokyo, we are gradually drawn into his world and the tensions he feel. Whilst the novel is set in Tokyo in the late 1960s, the detail of the characterisation and the tenderness and clarity of the emotional journey the characters face, means that the novel has a real resonance, evoking the nostalgia with which we all look back at those difficult and confusing years.
There is much to love about this book- Storm Trooper the annoyingly tidy roommate from hell; the energy and beauty of Midori and the tenderness of the scene in the hospital as Watanabe feeds cucumber ot her dying father. There is also the sense that we gradually realise that Watanabe is a complex and confused figure, that he makes mistakes, that he treats people poorly and that he cannot always understand his own actions and reactions. The more we read, the more we begin to appreciate the detail of the depiction of this character.
This is a special nove and one I would like to read again and again.

This Place that isn't a Place (0/1 people found this helpful)

'Haunting' doesn't quite do justice to this book by way of description, but it is truly brilliant. Following the life of Toru Watanabe as he struggles with the concepts of life and death, the deterioration in mental health of his dead best friend's girlfriend and the impulsive behaviour of his friend Midori, along with the usual trials and tribulations of the ages 18-20.

This book kept me up at night, I read it almost non-stop on the train and completed it in the small hours before my father's wedding, that was an entire month ago and still, when I'm sitting somewhere alone or walking from college to my house, thoughts of it sneak up and press their hands over my eyes softly saying 'guess who'.

A part of this book was actually a short story that ended up part of the collection entitled 'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman' which was actually the first example of Murakami's work I ever read, and the second I read that section of this book my heart skipped a beat and I thought 'Oh God, here it comes'.

Murakami is one of those very special writers who grab a fistful of your inards and hang on tight long after you finish the book, he's one of the most prfound authors I've ever had the good fortune to read.

A Phantasmagoria (0/1 people found this helpful)

Beautiful, dreamlike, sad, flowing, entralling, touching, honest. A story to drift along with. You can take as little or as much meaning from this novel as you like. Questions the fine line between sanity and insanity. As with all of murakami's novels, i feel that the journey is more important than the whole. The prose is simple and effotless. Murakmi is surely one of the greatest modern writers.

Haruki Murakami

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