A sad but beautiful story about love and memories that stay with you, even when things change or people leave.

This is one of the best love stories I have ever read.

This is my first Murakami book.

Norwegian Wood was recommended by Linus Cheung (張永霖) on RTHK radio in Hong Kong.

Long story short, my Hong Kong uncle introduced me to listening to his radio program (張永霖的世界).

This book was bought online and delivered by courier service to my town.

I am grateful that I was so lucky to listen to the radio program.

I am admiring this author. He is a wonderful writer.

I will continue to read Murakami books.

Year 2013.

۲۰ بهمن ۱۴۰۳
ساعت ۱۷:۲۵
آخرین کلمات را از نسخه اصلی خواندم. میفهمم که روزگار سانسورینگ ایران به مترجم هم سخت گرفته و ازش ممنونم که با هوشمندی، به خواننده نشان داد که کجا باید به نسخه اصلی رجوع کند.
بگذریم. میخواستم مثل همیشه، یک ساعت قبل از خواب دست به کتاب بشوم و آخرین صفحات را هم ورق بزنم، اما طاقت نیاوردم. گرچه حدس میزدم بعد از تمام شدن کتاب، دچار نوعی مستی بشوم که شدم:)
کتاب(نسخه اصلی) مثل یک شراب ناب بود. طعمش را دوست داشتم. تلخ بود اما مزه‌اش تا ابد در ذهنم باقی خواهد ماند.
پیش از این، با بار هستی میلان کوندرا مست شده بودم اما این اثر موراکامی واقعا فرق داشت. تلفیقی از زندگی، مرگ و افسردگی و لحظات بینظیر اروتیک که چشمان من را از نوعی باکرگی فکری آزاد کرد!
حال اینجا هستم. روی تخت خوابم نشستم. چای گرمی نوشیدم و به این فکر میکنم که چقدر زندگی عجیب است. و مرگ که بخشی از آن است عجیب‌تر.

Pain is a feeling both sobering and intoxicating at the same time. Its initial shock jolts and slaps you demanding to be acknowledged, while its continued presence inebriates you, transforms your world into a haze where nothing but it exists, rendering you incapable of all basic function. It’s a slow bleed, nevertheless a devastating experience make no mistake. It takes hold of the best of us, the weakest, it doesn’t discriminate, from the most beautiful, to the most scarred, quietly lurking in the background with its cloak of darkness ready to enshroud its next victim unaware. Sadly for Naoko, Kizuki, and Toru, this phantom enveloped them at such an early stage in their lives suffocating their already fragile transition to adulthood, well, that’s for those of them who were able to reach that stage.

Norwegian Wood is a story of people broken by pain. Toru, the last of the three friends untouched by this excruciating darkness, is clinging on to Naoko who has one foot out the door drifting slowly to oblivion. He is a boy-man smitten with this still girl so closely in tune with her death. But how does someone love another who has barely any self to love? Does one love the shell or the memories of who she used to be? Facing this predicament he meets Midori, a troubled yet upbeat girl desperately clinging to life using her bright personality, and finds himself somehow drawn to her. And so he is confronted with the dilemma of choosing between the lifeless girl he loves and the tough yet struggling girl he is drawn to.

Of all Haruki Murakami’s novels, this is by far the most popular. He says it surprised him when this small book catapulted his fame to extreme heights in Japan. It doesn’t surprise me. Murakami’s style often makes use of the absurd or the surreal, from talking cats, to fast food mascot-ghosts, to dream states, however in this case he doesn’t resort to his usually weird bag of tricks but rather highlights the human condition of depression, alienation, and loneliness as if to say, this is already too absurd, this is surreal enough. Human beings and the abnormal depth of their mental-emotional abyss is the strange and dark canvas he opts to work with in probably his most relatable work.

There is nothing more hopeless than romantic love trying to blossom in the backdrop of a surrendered soul. Often, it gets snuffed like a small flame with nothing but a vanishing wisp of smoke to remember it by. Because in order to be able to engage in romantic love, there is a degree of selfishness required that can’t be found in someone who has basically given up on oneself. As with anything there needs to be a desire for it to happen. Loneliness, alienation, depression these are all things that can push someone to look for comfort in another, and it is often the obvious answer most people can conceive. However for some, they stare too deep into the void and their desires all fade, they become lifeless bodies, mere containers with nothing inside, and everything else is just noise, even an outpour of intense romantic emotion. What then is the answer? There is no answer. Sometimes there is no hope, because life is unfair, because life is sorrowful, because life is surreal.

Sometimes we lose, even when we try so desperately to hold on.

“Clutching these faded, fading, imperfect memories to my breast, I go on writing this book with all the desperate intensity of a starving man sucking on bones.”

This is a story filled with melancholy, with pain, with regret, and some short bursts of fleeting romance. Does feeling the warmth of small doses of sunshine make it worth enduring a dark storm? Yes, probably, maybe, hopefully.

In our short time we accumulate scars, we cry from pain, we mourn, we get lost, and maybe we heal. People say it makes us stronger, however sometimes it doesn’t. Occasionally it weakens us permanently, paralyzes us for good, or sadly, it breaks us. But even the damaged can remember, even the broken can hope no matter how weak. Looking back we cherish the memories even if they hurt, and looking forward, we hope things get better even when things seem hopeless.

Remember. Hope.

No.
Absolutely not.
I now live in terror of anyone who gave this book more than 1 star.
Where to even begin?
The main character of this book - if he can be said to even be a character when for the vast majority of the book his internal thoughts and emotional journey are entirely absent leaving the reader to wonder whether he is, in fact, a human being - is alarmingly callous, misogynistic, and dull, while somehow being regarded by all other characters as kind, thoughtful, and incredibly interesting. The only explanation I can think of for this response from the other (notably female) characters is that he is the most painfully obvious author-insert wish-fulfillment vehicle ever written, which makes everything else about what happens in the book that much more alarming.
Because, if one is reading this as an exercise in wish-fulfillment, then the harborer of those wishes must be Murakami himself and, if that is, in fact, the case, then I am terrified.
The main character, who is largely incapable of thoughts or feelings (or, at least, those are not shared with the reader if he possesses them), when he does have a thought it is about a woman's body/beauty, and when he does have a feeling it's about wanting to use that beauteous body for his own sexual satisfaction.
This is ostensibly a tragic love story, but the main character does not reflect on any part of the person who is the object of his love and desire OTHER than her physical appearance. He believes that he is being faithful to her because his numerous other sexual encounters mean nothing to him. So, the fact that he treats a great many other women as objects is meant to redeem these exploits because he's not been emotionally unfaithful? What a guy!
There are numerous other DEEPLY troubling passages, conversations, scenes, and acts in the book, which are spoilery for the plot. But, I hope you do not ever learn what they are because to learn of them you would have to read the book, which I sincerely wish to discourage you from ever doing.
The fact that this book is as lauded as it is will be keeping me up at night for some time.

n  Don't worry, it's only death. Don't let it bother you.n

As I was reading the last page of Norwegian Wood and the book slowly came to an end, I suddenly realised I was not ready to be finished with it. Do you know that scent, the one of rotten fruit? It's sweet in a sickening way, and leaves you feeling hazy and slightly nauseous, as if you just want to turn your head away and take a few steps back. Somehow, this is how this book left me feeling. Uneasy.

This is the first book I've ever read by Murakami. I've read some Japanese literature before, but this is the first time I read it with the purpose of educating myself on it, and I reckon that maybe I did not pick the right book to get acquainted with this author. I know that he's famous for his magical realism and dreamlike atmospheres, and while Norwegian Wood does have a peculiar feeling to it, it is still realistic fiction.
I knew of this book as a love story. Most people warned me that it was going to be sad and, to a certain extent, it was. But maybe - no, I don't think sad is the appropriate word for it. It was like when something makes you feel so much pity that you just want to stop looking.

Norwegian Wood is a coming of age story. Watanabe Tooru is a university student in Tokyo, and he's not particularly interested in what he does. He's fine with his life. He's fine with his classmates, his classes, his assignments, but there is no passion in what he does. He just goes with the tide.
His best friend, Kizuki, killed himself when he was seventeen, and left behind not only an heartbroken Watanabe, but also his girlfriend, Naoko. And somehow, Watanabe and Naoko meet once again, and they fall in love; but Naoko's mind is in pieces. Sometimes, I wondered if Watanabe's was any different.
There was something disconcerting about Naoko's calm and security, while everything was shattering inside her own head. A part of me always expected her mind to finally not be able to hold it together anymore, and it wasn't a surprise when she left university and decided to spend some time at a mental health facility. Her illness didn't always show itself. Sometimes she was just a melancholy girl that could not get over her boyfriend's death, and some other times it was like all her walls were crumbling down, and she was left stripped raw. I don't think Watanabe fully understood her. I probably didn't, either.

Watanabe tries to go on with his life. He has his own way of doing things - he speaks strangely and hardly ever cares - and, waiting for Naoko to get better, he surrounds himself with the most peculiar characters. It's the late '60s, the student activist movement is more active than ever, and yet Watanabe sees everything with utter disillusion. And why shouldn't he? The people around him are mediocre, and they deem themselves revolutionaries only to be the firsts to attend class once the protests are over.

n  What a joke. The wind changes direction a little, and their cries become whispers.n

But while Watanabe is very much aware of the hypocrisy and indifference all around him, he often doesn't have the courage to say anything about it. He lives. He does the same things every day.
His friend Nagasawa experiences life very differently. I have a really strange relationship with Nagasawa: while I do understand that he doesn't have an ounce of kindness in his heart, I still admire the way he never lies, never holds back, and would rather hurt the people he loves than not tell the truth. He does not live in an healthy way, and I know that after what happened to Hatsumi I would have every right to hate him, and some part of me does, but his anger... there's something devastatingly real about that anger.

n  I look around me sometimes and I get sick to my stomach. Why the hell don't these bastards do something? I wonder. They don't do a fucking thing, and then they moan about it.n

Still, my favorite character out of them all ought to be Midori. Since the very first time Tooru met her, I knew she was going to leave an impression on him and me both, and that she did. There was a stark contrast between Naoko and her. If Naoko was slowly fading, Midori was a breathing, living person, and despite everybody else - even Watanabe, and probably even herself - judged her silly and superficial, she saw the world in a surprisingly accurate manner. She always saw right through the other students' arrogance, and through the way they pretended to know everything just because they were so scared to admit they knew nothing. She was lively and sad, childish and wise, and she embraced it all.

Norwegian Wood is, ultimately, a book about death. Watanabe never fully gets over Kizuki's suicide, and from the first chapter there was a gloomy shadow looming over him, some sort of prophecy predicting that something terrible was bound to happen. First his roommate, Storm Trooper, disappeared. Then a fleeting mention - that Hatsumi, worn out by Nagasawa's antics, was one day going to commit suicide. And then, finally, the inevitable. Naoko killed herself. I shouldn't have been surprised. Tooru was right: she'd chosen death from the very beginning. The ultimate truth about death, is that the pain of losing a loved one never goes away. Time doesn't heal your wounds: you just have to learn to live with the scars. And yet, as Watanabe himself understands, even when you finally manage to learn something from all that pain, it is of no use. Because it doesn't matter. Because the next time it happens, nothing will spare you the same pain all over again.

I'm not sure how I feel about Norwegian Wood. If I were being technical about it, I could say that the writing is beautiful and poetic, that the pacing is slow and almost comforting in its sadness, and that the story unfolds slowly into an inevitable ending full of symbolism and uncertainty. The truth is, I don't know. Books like this one always have a strong impact on me, and I know I will soon read something else by Murakami, because Norwegian Wood left me unsettled - and I want to understand more, to experience more.
And still, I am left with that lingering feeling, with that sickening sweetness. It reminds me of white flower bouquets at funerals. Of how it feels to say goodbye, and the loneliness you're left with afterwards - all by yourself.

n  You'd yell at the top of your lungs, but nobody would hear you, and you couldn't expect anyone to find you, and you'd have centipedes and spiders crawling all over you, and the bones of the ones who died before are scattered all around you, and it's dark and soggy, and high overhead there's this tiny, tiny circle of light like a winter moon. You die there in this place, little by little, all by yourself.n

It's strange to think the mind that created A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World could come up with such a conventional and schmaltzy story but here we are. Thankfully Murakami is able to pep it up a bit. I ended up enjoying Norwegian Wood but it's the novel that's wowed me the least from Murakami so far.

This didn't work for me at all. It all pretty much starts and ends with our narrator, the nondescript Toru. Here we have a man who can only relate to women in sexual terms. Everytime he said he was in love with one of the female characters, it would take me by surprise, I had no idea he had any feelings towards them. He shows the same amount of interest in every person, male or female, in love with or indifferent to. When he does profess his love, he'll remember some sexual encounter, nothing about their personality, or some actual form of emotional intimacy.

And you could say, that's what Toru as a character is supposed to be, but as I as a reader spend a novel's length inside his head, it's just draining.

The female characters feel verrrry written by a male novelist - veering between suicidal hysterics, and manic pixie dream girl. There is no reality to these women, they only exist for Toru to bounce off of. There is nothing real about Toru's relationships with any of the women. There is no insight into love or relationships here.

And then there's the last chapter, where Toru finally gets to boink the last female character left unboinked, and it's a sexual awakening for her, Toru delivering revelatory orgasms to any woman that'll have him and what IS this trite ass SHIT I've been reading

Valiantly wrestled through this mess with the effervescent Safa

هذه الرواية أيقظت تساؤل دائم داخلى كان يزيد مع انغماسى اكثر فى الرواية ووصل لذروته بعد انتهائى من الرواية

الحياة تخذلنا جميعا بشكل او بأخر  جميعا نتعرض لمشاكل وصعوبات منا من يستسلم ومنا من يقاوم
 مالفرق بينهم؟  ربما تتعرض شخصيتان لنفس المشكلة فتنجو احدهما وتستسلم الاخرى لماذا ؟

من راى الشخصى المتواضع اجد أن هناك فاصل خاص هو : هل الحياة هى من خذلتنا ام انفسنا هى من خذلتنا ؟
ربما نستطيع مقاومة او تجاهل خذلان الحياة لكن تخلى انفسنا عنا هو المشكلة ،  تخلى عقلنا عنا ،تخلى مشاعرنا عنا ، انهيارنا ارضا حتى ان كنا نبدو من الخارج اقوياء نقف على اقدامنا بثبات ، انتهاء قوتنا هو المشكلة باختصار  انتهاء مقاومتنا وانتهار قدرتنا على المقاومة .

n  n

كنت من قبل اعتقد ان ربما وجود الحب او اشخاص قريبين منا بشكل خاص يحبونا بشكل خاص ريما ينقذنا لكن اتضح لى ان ليس هذا صحيح دوما فيرجينيا  وولف على سبيل المثال انتحرت رغم انها فى رسالة انتحارها اخبرت زوجها ان كان يمكن لاحد ان ينقذها كان سيكون هو .
و شخصيات الرواية هنا ايضا لم يستطع الحب انقاذهم حتى لو انقذهم لفترة يأتى وقت وينهار الانسان ربما يصل للانتحار وربما يبقى على قيد الحياة لكن هناك شى ما داخله قد مات .
n  n
قوة عقولنا ، قدرتنا على التحمل والتجاوز ، سلامتنا النفسية ،هى من تنقذنا ، القوة التى تخلق بداخلنا من البداية.

تحياتى لكل من يقاوم وادعو ان يساعدك الله على المقاومة حتى النهاية والرحمة لمن لم يستطع المقاومة
ولاحديث عن الجنة او النار هنا لن اتجه الى هذا الطريق ، انا اتحدث من منطق انسانى عاطفى شخصى بحت  .

ماذا عن الرواية؟ لا استطيع الحديث عنها بشكل خاص ، وتاثير الاحداث والنهاية لاتزال تنهكنى وترهقنى ، كما ان يوجد الكثير ممن كتبوا تلخيص عن الرواية فلا يوجد مااضيفه كما ان المشاعر لاتختصر ولانتحدث عنها يجب التعايش مع شخصيات الرواية لتتفهمها

 لكن اجدها بالمجمل عن الحياة ،الموت ، الصداقات ، الحب ، علاقات اجتماعية ، انتحار ، حياة اكثر من شخصية،  اكثر من قصة ، اكثر من مشكلة نفسية .

n  n

خيال هاروكى غير متواجد كما تعودت منه حين اتوه منه ف الفصل بين الواقع والخيال ،  هاروكى هنا واقعى بشكل غير معتادة عليه  ، اجتماعى ، مأساوى ، ركز على متاعب شخصياته ، اكتشفت من هذه الرواية  بعدا اخر لحبى لهاروكى لم افكر به من قبل وهى شخصيات هاروكى :
تعجبنى   شخصيات هاروكى،  تعجبنى فرادتهم ، يعجبنى اهتمامه بالشخصيات المنبوذة من المجتمع ،و الشخصيات الوحيدة ، الشخصيات المختلفة ، الانطوائية ، شخصياته غالبا تهتم بالقراءة والموسيقى

n  n

يزيد عليه هنا الكثير من مختلف المشاكل والمتاعب النفسية التى تجعل احدى الشخصيات تذهب للمصحة والشخصية الصديقة لها هناك لاترغب فى مغادرة المصحة والعودة للحياة خارج المصحة مرة أخرى ، الشخصيات التى تنهى حياتها .


ربما لا يحب البعض الكآبة والاستسلام فى الرواية لكن بالنسبة لى هذا من الاسباب الذى يجعلها تعجبنى ، هذا النوع من الواقعية ، الشخصيات التى تعانى نفسيا اكثر من يمس قلبى بشكل خاص .

مأخذى الاكبر على الرواية هى الشتائم كلمات مثل خراء وهذه التعبيرات تضايقنى وتعصبنى اكثر من اى شئ اخر
اكثر من العلاقات والاحاديث الجنسية فى الرواية واجدها هنا اكثر عما قرات من قبل لهاروكى
لكن اجمالا  وبغض النظر عن كآبة الرواية لكن ننهى بها عام ٢٠١٩ ونستمتع بشكل ما برواية اخرى لهاروكى

٣١/١٢/٢٠١٩

اتمنى عام سعيد و كله خير وسعادة وقوة  للجميع

Great ending. This sure was the saddest book I've ever read. Seems very dark and depressing, but the light comes out at the very end and you can see the sunshine through the clouds. I've never read a book like this and to be honest, I'm not sure I ever want to read another one. It just takes a piece of you and leaves you feeling a little empty. I don't even know how to explain it. It's like traveling up a mountainside on a dark gray day. Yes, the beauty is still there, but you have to look for it. You don't even notice the beauty before you because of the overcast skies. The higher up you go, the more drained you feel. At the very end, as you reach the top, you're bone weary and exhausted, both mentally and physically, but suddenly you can see above the clouds and it's so bright that your eyes hurt and the whole mountain suddenly looks different...you suddenly feel renewed...the world you thought was gloomy and gray is suddenly bright and new....and beautiful.....

n  ‘death is not the opposite of life, but an innate part of it.’n

imagine you are standing in the middle of the road. to the left is the past, lined with death. to the right is the future, paved with life. sometimes we become so focused on choosing one way over the other that we forget how interconnected the two are, that we cant go in one direction without having previously come from the other.

there are a lot of themes/components to this novel (so much so that each deserve their own review), but the one that most profoundly resonated with me was murakami’s ability to convey what it means to be broken by heartache and how to cling onto life; how you can be in love with the past, but also drawn to a provocative glimpse of the future.

this story so thoughtfully depicts how throughout life we accumulate scars, we cry from pain, we mourn the loss of a loved one, we get lost and feel crippling loneliness, and maybe we heal with some regret. sometimes our suffering makes us stronger, and sometimes it doesnt. occasionally it robs us of all that is good and eventually breaks us. but even the damaged can remember, even the broken can hope. so that one day we are able to look back on those memories, even if they are painful, and we can also look forward, hoping for brighter days even when it seems hopeless.

we can remember. we can hope.
and we can discover reasons to live.

ps. john, you are the reason murakami is now in my life. so, thank you.

↠ 4 stars

It’s been almost nine years, but my thoughts haven’t changed much. I love Murakami, just not that version of him. This is the horniest Murakami book ever.

————

2015 Review:

So, let's clear something up right off the bat, right out of the gate, whatever....

Haruki Murakami is a great writer. He could write about his observation of paint drying on the wall, or staring at a pot of water waiting for it to boil, or watching the hands of a clock turn while waiting patiently at the doctor's office, and I would read it because he would probably describe all of those things beautifully. He makes mundane events like walking down a crowded street captivating. He makes ordinary conversations about movies and books exhilarating.

There's just too much sex in this book. And maybe it's the translation, but it all feels so clinical and professional like how a doctor would talk about it or how your junior high teacher would talk about it. Every scene like that just felt awkward, and they just kept going. Then, the end of the book..... ahhhh.... like the last few pages..... yeah that scene..... I saw it coming in the middle of the book, but I didn't want it to go there and wasn't sure why it had to go there.

So that's really all that bothered me with this book. I do want to read everything this guy has written now though. I just hope all of his books aren't full of awkwardly written sexual situations between college kids. I'd rather read his perspective on paint drying, I think.

Puedo decir que me gusta mucho los libros que cuentan toda la vida de un personaje, hace que me conecte con él y pueda simpatizar.
Y este caso no es una excepción. Creo que el protagonista es un personaje muy real, sus problemas y acciones es lo que le dan vida. Incluso los secundarios también se sintieron así, aunque unos pocos sí tenían una personalidad forzada, como uno o dos.
Mi problema con el libro fueron las escenas innecesarias. Sí, hay algunas que estaban bien, e hicieron que la historia no se tornara aburrida algunas veces, pero sí hay algunas de más. Pero bueno, no sé cómo serán las relaciones en Tokio, y si son como en este libro, quedaré sorprendido.
Creo que lo mejor de este libro es cuando el protagonista tiene dilemas, o cuando está en sus "problemas de pareja".
Está narrado en primera persona, que le da otro plus a la historia.
La historia me gustó, tal vez lea otro libro de Murakami para saber bien cuál es su estilo.