This is the first book I have read by Murakami.

I had read various reviews about this particular book and knew that it belongs to the category of those that either you like or you don't. From the very first pages, I understood that I would love it. I hardly put it down at all. The life of the hero who loves solitude, reading, and is different from the other students in the center of the university in Tokyo. I liked his writing style, the frequent references to emotions, solitude, depression, and his youthful love with Naoko. The descriptions of nature are incredible, as if you are there and see the landscape yourself. Of course, there are many thoughts as well as many musical references to songs of that era. Also, the way of life and thinking of the Japanese.

The ending is written in such a way that the reader can interpret it as he thinks.

Certainly, I will read another one of his books.

In the interest of safeguarding my creative output from the stagnating grip of routine, I have devised a novel format for documenting my thoughts on the permutations of the written word. As a sage once opined, "For if a secretion ceases to secrete, is it not then a crust?" (Let's not worry about attribution here.) I believe the optimal way to sidestep any unoriginal output is to commence with some hypotheticals. A few queries, if you will, to compel the readership's engagement.

Have you ever, after buffing the exterior of a watermelon to a mirror-like shine with bacon grease, endeavored to luge down a hill of spine-chilling verticality, draped in the slippery funerary attire of thoroughly lubricated trash bags? In my case, hurtling through the air afforded precious instants to ponder the accumulation of poor decisions that piled up like sound waves, one upon another, before the sonic boom of this, my catalytic climax, sent the entire screeching Rube Goldberg machine slumping forward. Crucial to this reflection, I drew parallels to how Murakami's books tend to impact me. The moment-to-moment writing, while proficient, doesn't often surpass that crucial threshold that leaves my attentional systems in a state of wonder. Until, after amassing countless minute resonances of narrative force and cultivated atmosphere, something triggers an avalanche that buries me in sensations. This is especially true when concluding one of his books. Where I seem to apprehend the Rorschach of themes and motifs in a kind of flashbulb intuition. These afterimages are, for me, the very reason why I hold his work in such high regard. Even if they are often极其 difficult to articulate, his work is crafted in such a manner that almost anyone can extract something of profound personal significance from it.

Have you ever, after nonchalantly concurring that it would be best to part ways with your long-time lover, calmly walked back to your bedroom, closed the door without fuss or fanfare - and then collapsed like a convulsing lungfish and writhed in your bed so maniacally that Linda Blair advocated, on behalf of the sheets, that you seek assistance? Rolling and blubbering with such torsional agony that you entombed yourself in the comforter like a colossal enchilada stuffed with sorrow and drenched in the gooey cheese of regret? Certain that you've just been dealt a mortal blow, one that has dislodged some essential element of your élan vital and hurled it into the inferno of Mount Doom? Did your father then enter the room, attempting to reassure you that the sun would rise again? With you responding nasally:

"I must seek the waters which flow through the cave of Hypnos whose murmurings induce drowsiness."

Your father, inured to your eccentricity from long exposure, effortlessly deciphers your mournful lamentation, strokes your hair, and says:

"I know, honey. I know." (?)

Well, this is a prime illustration of how Murakami, if you're not a whole lot tougher than yours truly, can inflict such intense pain on you that you'll start hankering for Mexican cuisine. So, be prepared accordingly if restaurants are still closed in your area. I'd caution those who find the topic of suicide too weighty to bear to not work up an appetite. However, unless your aversion to the darkness of life is prohibitively strong, I encourage you to put yourself through the wringer. It can be extremely cathartic.

And so, here's the pitch.

Norwegian Wood. Undoubtedly the most straightforward narrative from the maestro of self-reflection himself, Haruki Murakami. At its core, it endeavors to reconcile the dichotomy of love and loss, perceived as binary states of being, diametrically opposed, into a stereoscopic perspective, in which the parallax generated between youthful passion and senescence reveals a more dynamic interplay of forces that often intersect in the exquisitely tragic ways that typify the essential absurdity of our condition as finite beings. The vehicle for these narrative explorations is a leaf in a tempest named Toru Watanabe, who experiences a kind of love that must have inspired tormented poets to capture the emotion in terms typically reserved for afflictions. An illness of absence. The nauseating certainty that, if not for this missing piece, life would regain its coherence. Pain would regain its sharpness, cease to be all-encompassing, and once again prove amenable to localization. Toru is, quite literally, lovesick. Naked apes, with our penchant for threes (and nines, but this book doesn't conform as neatly when presented with non-primes), will eagerly embrace a ménage à trois. And so, I invite you to consider the themes of sex/love/death, through the mythical points of our three main characters whose angles sum to 180 degrees, which neatly dovetails with our protagonist's vacillation between past and future, embodied by Naoko/Midori, respectively. Toru, our dearest Bildungsroman protagonist, having contorted himself into a Gordian knot of past commitments solidified by shared traumas with the enigmatic, terminally depressed Naoko, who seems just slightly off-kilter with the shared causality of ordinary individuals, out-of-phase, passing through events like a furtive specter. While the manic pixie Midori, an emerald cocktail of libidinous elixirs, gives him the vapors.

For all of us who have felt love transformed into pain. Who have strived to remain upright despite our precarious footing, only to succumb to the hammer blows of external forces. For those who are lost, dejected, confused, and alone. Books can offer a source of solidarity unrivaled by any other medium. Allowing us to inhabit characters whose trials mirror our own. Making the mechanisms of their grief explicit and the logic of their suffering accessible to our scrutiny. In turn, inviting us to approach our own tribulations with fresh insight. Armed with exotic conceptual tools that render previously inexplicable emotions comprehensible and more easily acceptable. Murakami is one such master of the craft, who, if you engage with him earnestly, can potentially change your life.

The winter may come, with its cold and rain. You flee from it under layers of covers in bed, yet you only feel the true warmth in your mother's womb. It may happen that you break down from hardships, sorrows, pressures of life, and loss of friends. You walk with an empty spirit, and as soon as you find someone who needs a heart to hold or someone to listen, you pour out your contents while you yourself need someone to hold you. It may happen that you take a means of transportation and sit beside someone with gentle features, which brings an endless peace and tranquility to your soul. You talk to him about your worries as you never have before, and he listens to you, and both of you are strangers to each other.

It may happen that you read a novel about a young man who has not yet reached twenty, standing in the gray area between adolescence and the beginnings of adulthood. You live his life with all its details, almost devoid of major events, not bored, but attracted by the hidden charm of the ordinary story. You spend with him a period of life full of psychological and emotional upheavals, with disappointments in love and the pain of loss, years full of confusion about everything, and there is no single fixed truth in it except death, the death that casts its dark shadow over all the pages. All this happens and you are not bored. You love it and consider it one of the best things you have read despite knowing that it will not please anyone but you, but you can only say that it is yours, it has hurt you, and it has exposed a part of yourself in front of you, and this alone is great.

It may happen that you read Murakami one after another, fluctuating between his insanity and rationality, and swimming in the sea of his painful narrative without wanting to get out of it. He takes you on a magical journey that is a mixture of love, hope, sex, insanity, death, and life. He mixes them skillfully. You read and enjoy, and you stand unable to express after each encounter, just like your inability to find the secret charm of many details of your life. You smile, sigh, enjoy the excitement of the encounter until the last drop, and then you are content with silence, content with saying: I love Murakami, and I love what he writes, and this is enough.

I straightened up and peered out of the plane window at the dark clouds that loomed over the North Sea. My mind wandered, thinking of all the things I had lost in the course of my life. Times that had slipped away forever, friends who had either passed away or vanished without a trace, and feelings that I knew I would never experience again.

I almost stopped reading after this maudlin and downbeat opening passage. There are doors that I have kept closed for years, memories of my own that I thought were better left alone. Regrets and lost connections with people who were once the most important presences in my life. When I read about Toru Watanabe’s walk in the meadow, all I could picture was myself at 20, up above the treeline in the mountains with the girl I was in love with at the time. Drunk on summer sunshine and deafened by the song of the cicadas in the high grass. I put the book down and spent the next hour trying to remember all the details of that day. They are mostly gone. I wish now I had written it down, like Murakami tried to do here.

I’ve noticed that readers have had mixed reactions to this novel. Some complain that it is atypical, too conventional and lacking the daring, the weirdness and the depth of other works by him. Others, however, give it the highest rating. I find myself in the second category, mostly because of the way the experiences of Watanabe bring forward and shine a light on similar moments from a youth that was more focused on having fun than on trying to understand life and relationships.

Murakami makes it easy for the reader to identify with Watanabe. I was just an ordinary kid who liked to read books and listen to music and didn’t stand out in any way that would prompt someone like Kizuki to pay attention to me. I think it would be hard to find someone who doesn’t like to read books (at least here on Goodreads) or to listen to music. Or who didn’t walk for hours on the street of a big city without any other purpose than to soak in the sights, the smells, and the faces of the people around them. Or who doesn’t look back with nostalgia on their school days, when friendships came so easily and we could afford to be careless about the people around us. Anyway, I found Tore Watanabe easy to relate to, and this made it easier for me to overlook some of the less convincing aspects of his character, like his political apathy or his social success despite his self-confessed introvert nature, not to mention his slightly promiscuous sexual emancipation.

Watanabe is the central character, and the story revolves around his emotional growth, his learning to accept responsibility for his actions, and his ability to deal with loss and rejection. The first loss that marks Toru is the suicide of Kizuki – his best friend from high school. He copes with this mostly by moving away and bottling up his emotions. When he moves to Tokyo to continue his studies at a higher level, he seems both self-assured and rudderless. These two contradictory character traits illustrate his above-average intelligence and his lack of ambition or passion for any particular subject. He is content to drift along and let events happen to him.

Soon, though, he gets reunited with Kizuki’s emotionally fragile girlfriend, Naoko, and they start going out in a casual way. Toru also befriends another very intelligent boy from university, Nagasawa, who is his exact opposite in terms of ambition and motivation. They share a passion for books and for casual sex with girls they pick up in bars. Later additions to the cast include a non-conformist and exuberant girl in Toru’s drama class and an elderly lady musician with psychological issues, Reiko Ishida.

Since Toru Watanabe is kind of bland and generic as a main character, most of the charm, the tension, and the change in the novel are provided by these secondary characters and the impact they have on Toru’s emotional development.

Naoko is sensitive and vulnerable, clearly marked by the people around her who committed suicide. She is unable to adapt to the realities of the world. She lost both a sister and her boyfriend Kizuki, and now she is half eager, half afraid of starting a relationship with Toru. She knows she has psychological problems and checks herself into a mountain retreat. I may not find her morbid tendencies very appealing or easy to relate to, but her letters and her conversations are very convincing: Ordinary girls as young as I am are basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The central question for them is not whether something is fair but whether or not it’s beautiful or will make them happy. Fair is a man’s word, finally, but I can’t help feeling it’s also exactly the right word for me now. And because questions of beauty and happiness have become such difficult and convoluted propositions for me now, I suspect, I find myself clinging instead to other standards – like, whether or not something is fair or honest or universally true. Her influence on Toru is subtle yet powerful, as he tries to love her for who she is (“Why do you like weird people?” / “I don’t see you as weird!”), accepting that all of us are damaged to some degree and that we need someone beside us to “help us make it through the night”. Toru calls his daily struggle to keep living his “winding up the spring”, a reiteration of the theme from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, while Naoko uses the metaphor of the well at the bottom of the garden as an illustration of her fears, another theme used in TWUBC. Other recurring themes that I have come to recognize as Murakami’s signature touches are his love of music, of cooking, of books, and of time spent alone. I think there are also a couple of cats somewhere in the text.

The conversations between Toru and Naoko capture perfectly the sudden enthusiasms of youth, followed by moody silences and retreats into the inner self, and sometimes by philosophical musings well beyond their age: “- So if you understand me better, what then?
-\\tYou don’t get it, do you? I said. It’s not a question of ‘what then’. Some people get a kick out of reading railroad timetables and that’s all they do all day. Some people make huge model boats out of matchsticks. So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?
-\\tKind of like a hobby? She said, amused.
-\\tSure, I guess you could call it a hobby. Most normal people would call it friendship or love or something, but if you want to call it a hobby, that’s OK, too.”

Up until now, the plot has developed into the romance of two young people trying to get together. Complications arise when Toru falls under the spell of Midori Kobayashi, the temperamental opposite of the introverted Naoko. Midori is outspoken and reckless, flouting conventions (“Midori said she wanted to climb a tree, but unfortunately there were no climbable trees in Shinjuku.”). The reader, and Toru, can’t help but be charmed by her vivacity and curiosity, and even the slight hint of danger she brings to every encounter. With the novel set in 1968, the year when students around the world demonstrated against the establishment, it was easy for me to see her as a flower power child, especially after she declares: “I’m not going to believe in any damned revolution. Love is all I’m going to believe in.” As we get to know her better, we learn that Midori has her own struggles with death in her family and shallow relationships. She sometimes lies to cover her vulnerabilities, but overall she is a brave soul who refuses to take the easy way out (that damn suicide fascination so many people in the novel exhibit). My favorite quote from her is an echo from the movie Forest Gump, another example of a story that some people find fascinating while others find corny and contrived, just like Norwegian Wood: You know how they’ve got these cookie assortments, and you like some but you don’t like others? And you eat up all the ones you like, and the only ones left are the ones you don’t like so much? I always think about that when something painful comes up. ‘Now I just have to polish these off, and everything will be OK’. Life is a box of cookies.

One of my issues with the novel is that I liked both of Toru’s love interests. Every time he went with Naoko, I felt sorry for Midori, and when he came back to Midori, I felt sorry for Naoko. The boy faces a difficult decision and Murakami made me quite angry when he chose to kill off one of the girls in order to free his protagonist for the other one. And speaking of spoilers, I thought the final sex scene with the older lady was totally gratuitous. Well written and argued, but unnecessary.

The most annoying character in the book is the smart but selfish Nagasawa. I might have disliked him the most because I felt guilty of some of the same attitudes in my youth: focused on keeping my freedom and my options open in relationships, arrogant about the books I’ve read and about good results in exams, careless of the feelings of others. Nagasawa is particularly cruel to his girlfriend Hatsumi, who puts up with all his infidelities and his lack of commitment. One quote from this boy illustrates his attitude best. It starts good, but then reveals his elitist and disdainful core: If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That’s the world of hicks and slobs. or, “Don’t be sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”

Until now, I’ve presented all the young actors in this character-driven drama. The exception is Reiko Ishida, a lady who is battling her own personal demons in the mountain sanatorium where she becomes the best friend of Naoko. Her own story arc is one of the best-rendered sections of the novel, probably because she has a better understanding of her feelings and her goals than the still-seeking youths. She gives me the closing quotes of my review, the kernels of wisdom that Toru gets to keep after all his emotional journey, and she also gives me the soundtrack list for the novel, always a major feature in a Murakami novel, setting the mood and anchoring the story in the pop culture of its period. So here’s what Midori has to say to urge us to embrace life in all its beauty and pain: “Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.” and, “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 our lines and angles with rulers and protractors.”

The musical score focuses extensively on the Beatles songbook, with the title song referring to the fleeting nature of young love and later songs to a sense of loss or solitude, like Eleanor Rigby or The Fool on the Hill, all sung by Reiko on her guitar. Other tracks include:

• Burt Bacharach – “Close to You” (with Karen Carpenter being my favorite version)


• “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” (remember Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid?)


• Jim Morrison “People are strange when you’re a stranger” (very appropriate in this context)


• “Walk On By” (this one was in Valley of the Dolls)


• Laura Nyro – “Wedding Bell Blues” (don’t know it, must check it out)


• Ravel, Debussy, several bossa novas, Rodgers and Hart, Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Carole King, The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder,


• Kyu Sakamoto – “Sukiyaki Song” (must check it out)


• “Blue Velvet” (this one I know from the David Lynch movie)


• “Green Fields” ( I think I prefer Loreena McKennitt version)


• Not in the book, but my own submission as a good choice for Midori theme songs: Melanie with her 25th Anniversary album.

Norwegian Wood is truly a remarkable book that stands out from any other I've read. It delves into the complex life of Toru, a reserved and unrefined college student. His heart is torn between two very different women - Naoko, a beautiful yet withdrawn soul, and Midori, a sexually passionate and fiercely independent individual. Their relationship is deeply affected by the death of their best friend, which occurred a few years before the start of the novel. This tragedy causes Naoko to distance herself further from Toru, leaving him in a state of confusion and longing. He finds some comfort in Midori, but he knows that his feelings for both women cannot be sustained indefinitely.

What makes this novel unique is its setting. It is the first work of fiction I've come across that features a protagonist studying at college. The college environment adds a layer of authenticity and relatability to the story. Additionally, there are several poignant themes that run throughout the novel, such as Toru's coming of age, the intricate romance/love triangle/sexuality, and the ever-present specter of suicide. These themes are explored in a thought-provoking and engaging manner, making the reader reflect on their own lives and relationships.
However, not everything about the book was to my liking. While the writing was beautiful, it didn't quite captivate me. I'm not sure if it was due to the translation or some other factor, but I didn't feel a strong emotional connection to the words. The plot, although intriguing, didn't draw me into the story and the characters as deeply as I would have liked. By the end, I didn't experience the intense emotional impact that I usually look for in a good book.
Overall, I would recommend Norwegian Wood to those who are looking for an abstract and abnormal coming of age story. It offers a unique perspective on love, loss, and self-discovery. Just be aware that there is a significant amount of sex in the book, which may not be suitable for all audiences. So, think twice before giving this to your nine-year-old niece as a birthday present!

This story awakened a constant inner questioning that increased as I delved deeper into the story and reached its peak after I finished the story.

Life disappoints us all in one way or another. We all face problems and difficulties. Some of us surrender and some of us resist.

What is the difference between them? Perhaps two personalities are exposed to the same problem, but one succeeds and the other surrenders. Why?

The humble personal view finds that there is a special gap: Is life the one that disappoints us or are we the ones who disappoint ourselves?

Perhaps we can resist or ignore the disappointments of life, but the problem is when we abandon ourselves, when our minds abandon us, when our feelings abandon us, when our souls collapse. Even if we seem strong on the outside, standing firmly on our feet, the end of our strength is the problem. In short, the end of our resistance and the breakdown of our ability to resist.

I used to think that perhaps the existence of love or special people close to us who love us in a special way could save us, but it became clear to me that this is not always true. For example, Virginia Woolf committed suicide even though in her suicide note she told her husband that if anyone could save her, it would be him.

And the characters in this story also could not be saved by love. Even if they were saved for a while, there comes a time when the person collapses. Perhaps he reaches suicide or perhaps he remains alive, but something inside him has died.

The power of our minds, our ability to endure and overcome, our psychological health, these are the things that save us, the power that is created within us from the beginning.

Greetings to everyone who resists and I ask God to help you in your resistance until the end and have mercy on those who could not resist.

And as for talking about heaven or hell here, I will not go down that path. I am speaking from a human, emotional, personal perspective.

What about the story? I cannot talk about it in a special way. The impact of the events and the ending still weakens and tears me apart. Also, there are many who have written summaries of the story, so there is nothing new to add. And the feelings cannot be shortened. To talk about them, one must live with the characters of the story to understand them.

But I find it in general about life, death, friendships, love, social relationships, suicide, the life of more than one personality, more than a story, more than a psychological problem.

The non-existent Haruki dream, as I returned to it when I distanced myself from it, so the line between reality and the dream. Haruki here is more real than usual, social, tragic, focusing on the misfortunes of his characters. I discovered another aspect of my love for Haruki from this story that I had not thought of before, and it is the characters of Haruki:

I was amazed by the characters of Haruki, I was amazed by their freedom, I was amazed by his interest in the characters who are excluded from society, and the lonely characters, the different characters, the introverted characters. His characters usually care about reading and music.

Here there are many different problems and psychological misfortunes that make one of the characters go to the hospital and her friend there does not want to leave the hospital and return to life outside the hospital again, the characters whose lives end.

Perhaps some people do not like the sadness and surrender in the story, but for me, this is one of the reasons that make it amazing to me, this type of reality, the characters who suffer psychologically more touch my heart in a special way.

The biggest thing that bothered me about the story is the swear words like "shit" and these expressions annoy and irritate me more than anything else.

More than the sexual relationships and conversations in the story, and I find them here more than I have read before from Haruki.

But in general, despite the sadness of the story, we ended it in 2019 and we enjoyed another story by Haruki in a way.

December 31, 2019

I wish a happy new year and all the best, happiness and strength to everyone.

"Norwegian Wood" is an amazing book! In my opinion, it represents a particularly powerful story about human relationships... Despite the heavy social themes and love dramas in it, it was extremely pleasant for me to read! The title comes from the song of the same name by "The Beatles", and Murakami, typically in his style, makes many strong literary and musical references through his work.

The action in "Norwegian Wood" takes place in the late 1960s in Japan, and the main hero is the student Toru Watanabe. Just 19 years old, he has to deal with life in Tokyo. Meanwhile, he is very sad because of the death of his close friend, and he is also tormented by love... His fate is intertwined in an incredibly interesting way, and later he is faced with difficult decisions... The other characters are also complex and interesting personalities... My favorite character is the beautiful Midori!
The book is much more than a love novel, as the author also examines the problems of the generation as a whole and realistically reproduces the atmosphere of those turbulent times... "Norwegian Wood" is much more realistic than other works of Murakami that I have read, but still captivating!

I touched a familiar book with my eyes closed and took a deep breath of its aroma. That was enough to make me feel happy.
I had met quite a few strange people in my life, but no one was as strange as Nagasawa. He was a much more passionate reader than I was, but he had a rule never to touch a book by an author who had been dead for less than thirty years. "I can only trust a book like that," he said.
No one likes to be completely alone. But I don't make any special efforts to make friends. That's all. It's just that I'm very uncomfortable when I'm disappointed.
I had no problem with their content, but the writing style was clumsy. I didn't find anything that inspired confidence or excited the passions. And the words of the chubby boy were also weak - the same old song with a new voice. The real enemy of this band was not the state power, but the lack of imagination.
And as long as you live with these feelings, you, the young, will age just like me, said Reiko with a smile. You think it's morning or night and the next thing you know, you're already old. But you like to age, said Naoko. Actually, I don't, said Reiko. But I definitely wouldn't want to be young again. Why not? I asked. Because it's so boring! she said.
The book was not without clichés, but as a novel it was not weak. I read it slowly, enjoying every line in the quiet bookstore in the middle of the night.
People were whispering that there would be revolutionary changes - which, it seemed, were always just around the corner. But the "changes" that came were only two-dimensional stage decorations, a background without value and meaning.
I wrote letters in the auditorium, I wrote letters at my desk at home, with the cat Chaika in my lap, I wrote letters at the empty tables in the Italian restaurant while I was resting. It was as if I was writing letters to stitch together the pieces of my falling-apart life.
Midori said with a long, long silence - the silence of all the quiet rains in the world falling on all the grassy meadows.

Essentially, this book is Murakami's version of the early 20s coming-of-age novel.

It delves deep into the desperation and loneliness that often accompany youth. It also explores the existential crisis of being young and not having a clue about what life truly means or what one is supposed to do with it.

Toru, being a university student, is where the relatability really hits home for me. Murakami masterfully captures the monotony of university life, like going to lectures, doing assignments, and repeating the cycle. It makes you feel like you're just floating through your student years.

I was instantly drawn into the story within the first few pages, and this was definitely enhanced by the writing. It is beautiful and poetic, with a hint of melancholy interwoven throughout.

Life and death are the prominent themes running through the novel. However, Murakami doesn't present them as polar opposites. Instead, they are just parts of a broader process that marks all the experiences one has in between.

It is a rather bleak read, but it's a story that you can easily get lost in.

Nevertheless, as many have pointed out, Murakami unfortunately struggles with writing women. Most of the female characters seem to fit the mold of the'manic pixie dream girl'.

Although this phrase wasn't coined until 2005, that's essentially how they are all portrayed. We don't know Murakami's views towards women, but the protagonist here clearly sees women either as disposable or as pretty, broken dolls that he wants to fix.

I have to admit that I still enjoyed Midori as a character, mainly because of her witty dialogue.

I was debating taking a star off due to the portrayal of women in the novel, which was a bit distracting. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it because I loved the book so much overall.

I firmly believe that you can still love a book while also criticizing its more problematic aspects, and that's probably the best way to approach this book. Even so, I highly recommend it.

I have posted this, which seems to me to be the first book of his that I have read. Murakami cannot be judged well from just one page, but from at least one book, if not more. He is first and foremost in an atmosphere, which is repulsive to some, but not to me. I don't agree with those who compare him to a sentimental or easy writer, because although he is simple and accessible, he is no less profound and never banal. His dialogues are often very beautiful. Perhaps he selects his readers, among whom I count myself. When I read one of his books, I lend an ear to the noises of the day, as Kraus would say, as if they were the chords of eternity. What will enter your ears will resound: Murakami's art is that of transforming some noises into alchemical signals, strange vibrations. Always on the verge of dissolving the insoluble. It is no coincidence that he has an impact on adolescents, who are excellent at dissolution. If Murakami were to rewrite the Harry Potter books, they would become interesting books.

This is the first book of Murakami that has come into my hands, and I can undoubtedly say that I will continue to read this author. His style and his way of setting the rhythm have captivated me. The character of the entire work could be summarized in a couple of adjectives: intimate and exquisite.

The characters, the scenes, and the spaces are detailed with minimal effort. Everything is soft and slow, despite the harshness of some situations. The atmospheres acquire a three-dimensional nuance almost by chance through the thread that is the protagonist's thoughts.

Full review and my version of the cover on http://sidumbledorefueralibrero.com/2...

Murakami's writing has a unique charm that draws the reader in and keeps them engaged from beginning to end. His ability to create vivid and complex characters, as well as his skill in describing the most mundane of scenes in a way that makes them seem extraordinary, is truly remarkable.

I look forward to reading more of his works and exploring the wonderful worlds that he creates.

This is the kind of death that terrifies me. The shadow of death approaching slowly, gradually stealing the rest of your life, and before you know it, everything around you is dark, you can't see, and people think about you that you are more dead than alive. I hate this. I can't imagine it.

This is my third experience with Haruki Murakami, and I must admit, Haruki Murakami is an extremely crazy writer. His ideas, his way of storytelling, his words, and even the themes of his novels. For example, if this novel were written by any other writer, it would be very ordinary, perhaps a typical story. But it is that Murakami-like ability that has made this novel one of my favorites.

The novel contains deep sorrows, it talks about love, death, and grief. Those profound ideas that Murakami has led us to, the meaninglessness and illogicality of life... Sometimes, but in an ordinary way, and perhaps it is boring... But it is an enjoyable boredom - is that the right expression? - With Murakami, of course it is. The immersion in the details of the relationships with Toru, Naoko, and Midori was attractive although it was boring, but it is the artistry of Haruki Murakami, what he added to those relationships in his storytelling and his words, that made it enjoyable.

And as usual, although there are usually few events, and perhaps they are not enjoyable at all, but you roll with the events and the story... You are stolen by the words, and the music inside them rocks you. Almost every line touches your heart. If this is a novel that talks about the human soul, and this is a crazy Japanese writer; he is very good at dissecting it.

"Perhaps I haven't come to terms with the world yet. I don't know. I feel as if this world is not the real world. People, the scenery: they don't seem real to me."

Perhaps it is strange that we discuss deep issues with a group of teenagers. They haven't even reached the age of twenty. Where do they get the experience? Where do they get the weight? And the pure gaze? Those signs through which you know that you have grown up... Your constant silence, the acidity of your spirit, and the extinguishing of every spark of passion that was in you. What have they lost in that early age? Where is their enthusiasm for life?

Is it conceivable that that burning ball in the chest has been extinguished in them?

Indeed, the characters in the novel are extremely unique, their ideas, their behaviors, their relationships, and that way they live as if they have understood the great truth of the universe, that all of this is meaningless, life is a kind of meaningless, so why burden myself with anything? And with a writer like Haruki Murakami, he makes the ambiguity around you in everything, you are lost in the events and ideas of the characters, until the end, ambiguity, not comfortable. But it completes the beauty of the novel.

One day, I had a girl
Or should I say, one day, she had me
She showed me her room
Isn't a green forest nice?

She asked me to stay
And said to me: Sit anywhere
So I looked around
But I noticed that there was no seat

I sat on a mat and waited for my time
I drank her wine
We talked until two o'clock and then she said:
It's time to sleep!

Even the song that Haruki Murakami chose to name his novel with is extremely uncomfortable, sad, and ambiguous... Like life.
Uncomfortable, ambiguous, and honest, it doesn't suit all of us.

Before I begin, it must be known that this was not my first encounter with Murakami's works. I had read "Kafka on the Shore" and was deeply in love with it. I also read "Wind-up Bird Chronicle" and adored that as well. So, I thought to myself that perhaps I should read the book that made him famous, the one that everyone in Japan is said to have read, the one that compelled Murakami to flee the country to escape the media attention. How disappointed I was when I finally finished it. Also, I wrote this on my iPad, so the punctuation and capitalization might be off. I tried to fix all the auto-correct mistakes, but I may have missed a few.

The characters in this book are all rather loathsome. Toru Watanabe, the main character, is a self-pitying man who looks back on his days at university in Tokyo during the student riots of 1969 - 1970 when he supposedly "fell in love". He attempts to paint himself as a "nice guy", deluded into believing himself to be honest and who claims to have "never lied in his life" (an idea that is refuted several times in the novel. For example, when Midori asks him whether he slept with Naoko since and he replies "we didn't do anything" - really, because people generally don't rub up naked against each other and give blow jobs to just anyone. You know, that's something. Also, look at the bottom of page 350. Yeah). This often comes off as whiny whenever he "feels bad" over the fact that he is not self-entitled to screwing people over and actually feels guilt (although this guilt only tends to manifest itself much later when he actually gets around to thinking about people other than himself). One of his many puzzling traits is his insistence on naming every single book and song that he is reading/listening to, despite most of them being easily interchangeable, replaceable, and irrelevant since they have no correlation whatsoever to the plot or character development (a few exceptions being the song 'Norwegian Wood' [obviously], "Das Kapital" in relation to the setting of the student riots and the time, and there was a part where Toru was comparing himself to "Jay Gatsby watching that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night" [although I cringed at the feeble attempt to relate this tacky soap-operatic tale of Toru's love for Naoko's body to a symbol signifying Gatsby's obsession to repossess and re-enact what has evolved into a doomed and glittering illusion and the idea that the dream has surpassed the real and is better experienced from a distance]). Seriously, the number of smug name-dropping probably extended the book by a few dozen pages, and you would think that someone who read so much would have at least developed even the tiniest amount of empathy, but, for all I know, Toru Watanabe spent all his time reading with his eyes glazed over, thinking and feeling sorry for himself that he has to feel guilt over using girls as a rebound.

What was even more depressing about this book was that every single female character was weak and dependent. From Midori, who is pretending to do the tough-girl act but in a cute subservient way, needy and whiny (she has reasons for being moody and throwing tantrums, but there are absolutely no excuses for being cruel and manipulative, which is what she does to win Toru's heart), to Naoko, who says she doesn't love Toru but can't say no to him when he wants sex and blowjobs, to Reiko, who claims to be so independent and empowering but has a "small stomach" and can't eat much - *cough I'm insecure about myself cough*. Midori, however, is the character who ticks the generic box of 'being different', a thin veil attempting to hide the fact that she is actually the fantasy girlfriend of a lot of insecure men. She is cute, she is kinky, desperate to sexually please men, is interested in "fucking like crazy", she is friendly and social with a lot of people, she cooks good food, cleans, and is a hard worker, showing that she can slavishly take care of men - ie, a domestic goddess. "I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortbread. And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortbread out to me. And I say I don't want it anymore and throw it out the window. That's what I'm looking for." Are we supposed to find this endearing? Are we supposed to read this in wonder and awe and repeat to ourselves what Toru says afterward: "I've never met a girl like you"?
The thing is, it is in Murakami's style to present a lot of truisms, and while in his other works, they are intertwined with the surreal in such a way that it doesn't matter whether they are huge generalizations or just really cheesy because they come from dreamlike layers echoing the absurd and the interior monologue of the character, and so it isn't preachy, just something to think about. In "Norwegian Wood", they are brash and blunt. The characters make sweeping and often blindly hypocritical and prejudiced assumptions disguised in the appearance of truth, mostly about how they are so 'different' and everyone else are such boring sheep (in a predictable hipster style: "liek omigod, i'm, liek, sooo unique and different?!?! Liek omigod, my tiny brain never thought of that!!!!"), such as "never again would she have that self-centred beauty that seems to take its own independent course in adolescent girls and no one else". So ALL adolescent girls are all self-centred (sorry, self-centred beauty - like totally a compliment!!! *eyeroll*), huh, and Toru here wants US to think that HE is so exceptional when he manages to group half the population into (at one point) possessing a particular trait? There are a lot of "I don't know, I'm just a girl" moments, but I really don't want to have to open the book again and go look for them.
I could go on and on about how odious Naoko and Reiko were, but this review is getting really long, and all I've been talking about are the characters.
The plot, in all its boring and barely existing glory: Toru Watanabe runs into Naoko, the girlfriend of Kizuki, his high school best friend (who had suicided a couple of years previous), and realizes she has a hot body. On her birthday, he rapes (sorry, "makes love" to) her while she's distraught over Kizuki, and she runs away to a mental asylum to get better. Toru whinges about loneliness. He meets Midori. Everything gets dragged out about how they are both sad and lonely. Toru visits Naoko at the asylum and meets her roommate, Reiko. Toru chooses Midori over Naoko because she is a "real, live girl". Naoko commits suicide. Toru and Reiko have sex in her memory.
Half the book is filled with whinging and whining, and the other half objectifies women.
Positives:
1. Murakami writes beautifully. It's as simple as that. "Norwegian Wood" is what you would get if you stamped a picture of the ceiling of the Sistine chapel onto a pair of Crocs.
2. My mum likes the Beatles song, and I've also had the song stuck in my head since reading this book.
3. It's over.