Goddammit. I really wanted to hate this book. There's so much about it that I abhor, but I can't bring myself to give it less than three stars.Sometimes, I joke with my sister that she needs to expand her character repertoire. Usually, her stories feature a nerdy, lonely, odd teenage boy who's hopelessly in love with a girl, usually a manic pixie, who'll never have him. That boy spends most of his time staring at the girl, wondering if she likes another guy, complaining about how she treats him like a child, and writing voyeuristic stories on his computer about said girl.As I read Haruki Murakami's most popular work -- Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore -- I am forced to come to the conclusion that his stories are exactly like the stories that the nerdy, lonely, odd teenage boy would write whenever he wasn't staring at his manic pixie. Murakami's characters wish they could be Holden Caulfield, but for them, that's a hefty aspiration. No, Murakami's protagonists -- if you can even call them protagonists -- are borderline self-inserts, almost akin to the male leads in those horrid bro-comedies, written for nerdy, lonely, odd teenage boys -- and nerdy, lonely, odd men.Before you dismiss my criticisms, lets take a moment to think about this. What female characters can you relate to in his novels? They aren't actually characters. They're meant to force our so-called protagonist through his arc, often through eye-roll worthy sex-scenes that these nerdy, lonely, odd teenage boys wish they could have. And, mind you, these protagonists don't just have regular sex -- they have mind blowing sex. And they don't just have it with one girl -- they have it with multiple girls, who all praise his sexual prowess.These girls don't develop past their base stereotypes -- stereotypes typically found in any popular manga. Like Naruto. Or Clannad. Hinata, Sakura, Ino, Ryou, Nagisa, Naoko, Midori, Reiko, whatever.But these nerdy, lonely, odd teenage boys are too pretentious for manga. Therefor, they need their literary novels, strife with plotless melodrama, navel-gazing, and lots of sex with luke-warm females.Please don't tell me that I don't get the brilliance behind Murakami's words. I've read Salinger, Maugham, and Fitzgerald. They do it better. They don't write self-inserts for their audience. And while their female characters are occasionally woe-fully underdeveloped, they don't worship the protagonist of their respective novels. As a female, I wonder what these women see in Murakami's males. They're nothing more than the Japanese version of the manic pixie. But then I remember that these females are just kuunderes and tsunderes -- nothing I haven't seen in any slice of life manga filled with nerdy, lonely, odd teenage boys who stare wistfully into the sky while cherry blossoms fall upon their silvery, wispy hair.In fact, if you're a fan of this novel, I'd like to introduce you to Makoto Shinkai. He's a director with a style akin to Hayao Myazaki and a pen that lacks his talent. His characters stare at each other and wax emo poetry, akin to what you'd find on deviantart, in voiceover while pretty pictures float over the screen. That is how I felt while I was reading this novel. The prose is quite good, but the story, plot, and characterization fall short on every mark.What exactly was the purpose of this novel?Contrary to popular belief, The Catcher in the Rye has a purpose. I'm lost at the comparisons between Holden and Toru. Holden's little brother died from cancer a few years prior to the novel's opening. I think that's enough to justify his angst, considering that during that time period, his death was probably more painful than it would be in present day. If you've read the misery-porn that is My Sister's Keeper, you'll have an idea of how cancer effects fictional characters.Toru's best friend committed suicide. I'll give his depression a pass. That's about it. His countless sexploits honestly made me want to introduce him to Anita Blake. They'd have fun together.And yes, I know there are guys who attract multiple women and have various sexual relationships. Toru's sex life, however, was not presented in a realistic light. It was voyeuristic. I did not know why these women liked him and, more importantly, why they deemed him a sex god.If you're wondering why so much of this review is devoted to sex -- here's the answer -- the novel is equally devoted to sex. Sex, death, loneliness, depression, and extreme oddities that even James Joyce would raise an eyebrow to.The sheer pretentiousness of the protagonist and his friends is enough to elicit an exasperated sigh.The better I got to know Nagasawa, the stranger he seemed. I had met a lot of weird people in my day, but none as strange as Nagasawa. He was a far more voracious reader than me, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years."That's the only kind of book I can trust," he said."It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.""What kind of authors do you like?" I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior."Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens," he answered without hesitation."Not exactly fashionable.""That's why I read them. 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. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that. Haven't you noticed, Watanabe? You and I are the only real ones in this dorm. The other guys are crap."This took me off guard. "How can you say that?""'Cause it's true. I know. I can see it. It's like we have marks on our foreheads. And besides, we've both read The Great Gatsby."Because of course, special snowflakes, literature is only good if you deem it worthy, and if someone doesn't like what you like they're a hick or a slob. Please, jump thirty years into the future and become acquainted with your indie-than-thou hipster counterparts. They enjoy sipping coffee at bistros while they twirl their thriftstore eco-friendly scarves and discus the plights of starving African children while they listen to The Smiths, watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and complain about the American adaptation of Open Your Eyes -- Vanilla Sky), while they read pretentious novels such as this to feel like they're superior to their peers. They probably jerk off to their liberal arts degrees at night while they fantasize about Charlie Kaufman.It doesn't surprise me that this novel was popular amongst teens and young adults. Here, they have a lackluster Holden Caulfield to look up to. One who never realizes that, he too, is a "phony". We get the occasional dismissal of Nagasawa's ways, but they come late and are rather pathetic. Our passive protagonist does nothing but watch his so-called friend destroy his girlfriend bit by bit. He comforts her, offers her advice, but never tells Nagasawa off.As I read through the scenes with Nagasawa, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. And, of course, this special Gary Stu -- who reads American literature, has a huge penis, can hook up with any girl, charm anyone, get anything he wants, who's rich, who's bound for success, who's one of the best students in their university, has a nice, intelligent, steady girlfriend, and claims to have slept with seventy girls -- chooses Toru as his friend. Wish fulfillment anyone?As for Toru's sexual relationship with Naoka? He took advantage of her. This could be considered rape. She was not emotionally sound. She could not give consent. Would Toru have had sex with her if she was drunk and he was sober? Knowing him, probably so. And he'd have some artistic, pretentious excuse. But here's Toru's take on it:I slept with Naoko that night. Was it the right thing to do? I can't tell. Even now, almost 20 years later, I can't be sure. I suppose I'll never know. But at the time, it was all I could do. She was in a heightened state of tension and confusion, and she made it clear she wanted me to give her release.Because, of course, when a girl is crying over her dead ex-boyfriend, you just have to have sex with her. It's the only thing that'll make her feel better. And, of course, she's a virgin. And, of course, she has an orgasm because Toru is just that good.What I don't understand is his hypocritical attitude towards sex. Doesn't he realize that he's just like the girls he has random one night stands with? He's no better than they are, but he describes them with such disdain, as if by being male, he's better than they are for wanting meaningless sex, but dirty for being with them. Later on in the novel, he regrets his attitude towards sex -- for two paragraphs. And that's only for his six month girlfriend. The other eight girls are "stupid" girls for whatever reason.I'm also lost at Murakami's portrayal of sex for females. It's like he thinks women don't enjoy sex or masturbation unless they're having sex with a man. The girls give Toru hand jobs and blow jobs, while he gives nothing in return. And if he is "giving" it's when he's having sex with a girl who needs "release". From his mouth:"It includes every man on the face of the earth," I explained. "Girls have periods and boys wank. Everybody."Midori is something of a nymphomaniac, but when she actually gets into bed with Toru, she ends up giving him a hand job. What does he do for her? If you guessed nothing, you're right. As hardly anything happens during the course of this novel. it would be pointless to comment on the pacing, but as I anticipated the introduction of Midori (who was nothing more than the standard manic pixie dream girl, down to an actual pixie cut, but still more entertaining than Toru and Naoko) I was rather disappointed to find that I had to slog through 60 pages before she made an appearance. This is why I hate passive protagonists (by the way, that's an oxymoron). They do nothing but sit on their pompous little asses and sip whiskey while they read John Updike, comment on their lost loves, gaze out their windows, write achingly emo love letters, and dream of dropping out of college because everything is just so beneath them.Now, what did I like about this novel? Toru's interactions with Midori. His conversations with her are what kept my interest. They were beautifully written and gave Toru a spark of personality. But even they didn't give this book meaning. A few romantic scenes with fireflies, beer, kissing, and conversations about death won't save a novel. For me, this was like the anti-thesis of Looking for Alaska or The Catcher in the Rye. There was little humor, little focus, and few dynamic characters.Naoko and Reiko didn't feel like real character. They felt like what a male wanted a female to be like. I suppose my greatest disappointment was that I was expected something profound, because I loved the premise and few sections, but the rest fell flat. It felt unreal, like a fantasy a nerdy, lonely, odd teenage boy would've conjured up for himself. Especially Naoko's commitment to Kizuki. And Reiko, like almost every female in this novel, had to have a sexual relationship with Toru, though she's old enough to be his mother and acts like an older sister. And, of course, it's the greatest sex of her life. Best of all? Murakami describes it all in pornographic detail. Almost all of the sex scenes are ridiculously gratuitous, but Murakami would have us believe that they're for "release".The blurb tells readers that this is a novel about moving on from grief. The problem is that there are no attempts to move on. The characters languish in their grief, roaming blindly in their pretentiousness, and fizzle out towards the end. Outside forces act on them, but they do nothing.I want to know what the purpose of this novel was. While the description was nice, the dialog was rather on the nose. The characters say everything they feel at any given moment. I won't even start on Toru's thoughts. I like the premise. I like forbidden love. I like love triangles, depressed girls, and tsunderes. I do not like 350 pages of pointless angst, sex, weirdness, and quaint descriptive prose. For me, this was the equivalent of Twilight without the vampires and with a male narrator. It has its moments, but as a whole, it's an odd, painful experience. There's so much good in this novel, but it's buried underneath unnecessary prose and an odd chauvinistic tone. I'd only recommend this novel if you're ready to roll your eyes at various moments. Toru's moments with Midori and her father are sweet. They bring out an interesting side to his character. His moments with Reiko were interesting and his moments with Naoko held potential. In the end, he goes through a small change. But it's not enough for me to give this a full four stars.3.5 stars. I will, however, check out the movie. The poster is pretty beautiful as well as the trailer but, like the premise, it's probably a lie. If you want a modern coming of age story named after a classic rock song check out Into the Great Wide Open by Kevin Canty. It lacks a love triangle, but it's much, much better.
Twenty RevolutionsMy most feared birthday was my 20th.For people older than me, the most significant birthday was their 21st.But when the age of legal adulthood was reduced to 18, turning 21 no longer had the same significance it once had.Before then, you could be conscripted into the armed forces at 18, but you could not drink alcohol until you turned 21. So, if you were old enough to die for your country, surely you were old enough to have a drink?Either way, turning 20 for me meant that I had ceased to be a teenager, a group of people linked only by the fact that their age ended in the suffix “-teen”, but still it felt special not belonging to the grown up crowd.On the other side of 20, you emerge from university (if you’ve been lucky enough to go there) and dive straight into full-time employment, maturity, responsibility, expectations and adulthood.Suddenly, things are all a lot more serious, more permanent, less experimental, or this is how it seems.Japanese-StyleHaruki Murakami writes about the Japanese experience in “Norwegian Wood”.It’s set in the years 1968 to 1970, so it mightn’t be the same now.However, it seems that the transition into adulthood is more demanding, more stressful.It also seems that there are more casualties, more teenagers fail to make the transition and end up committing suicide.Murakami writes about the transition almost like it’s a game of snakes and ladders.You can climb into the future, success and normality, or you can slide into darkness, failure and death.Well, WellMurakami’s protagonist, Toru Watanabe, pictures the darkness as a well-like abyss early in the novel when he recounts the events of a day he spent with the girl he longs for, Naoko.“I can describe the well in minute detail. It lay precisely on the border where the meadow ended and the woods began – a dark opening in the earth a yard across, hidden by grass. Nothing marked its perimeter – no fence, no stone curb (at least not one that rose above ground level). It was nothing but a hole, a wide-open mouth…You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world’s darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density.”As a teenager, Toru’s life had been fairly innocuous, he had been playing in a meadow compared with the thicket that awaited him in the future.But first he had to avoid the well in making the transition.As his friend Reiko says in another context: “She and I were bound together at the border between life and death.”There is a sense in which we have to negotiate the boundaries as safely as we can, to cross the border and close the gap.If we are lucky, we can do it together.Unfortunately, not everybody is destined to make it into the forest and out the other side.Vanishing ActThe overwhelming feel of reading “Norwegian Wood” is one of being in a blank, dream-like, ethereal world.Although Murakami describes people, surroundings and objects with precision, it all seems other worldly, as if everybody lives and breathes in a world beyond this world.There is a sense that at any moment, it could all disappear, that it might all just be part of some cosmic vanishing act.Even if we make it through, we might turn around and discover that some of our friends haven’t been so lucky. Talking about My GenerationMost of the action in the novel is dialogue, the characters talking about themselves and their relationships.They are preoccupied with themselves, introspective and self-centred. They converse, they play folk songs on the guitar, they write letters that are later burned.Nobody makes anything that will last, other than perhaps themselves and the relationships that are able to survive into adulthood.They struggle for permanence, when everything else around them is ephemeral.Even their memories fade.In the “frightful silence” of the forest, Naoko asks Toru: “I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”Of course, he responds that he will, although 20 years later, he finds that his memory “has grown increasingly dim.”“What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?...the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow.”To which he adds, “Because Naoko never loved me.”“Norwegian Wood”The Beatles song features throughout the novel.It’s a favourite of Naoko’s and Reiko plays it frequently on her guitar.For much of the novel, the lyrics could describe Toru’s relationship with Naoko and his other love interest, Midori:“I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.”There is a sense of sadness in the sexual subject matter of this novel, almost as if it's been written in a minor key.Reiko sums up the Beatles pretty accurately, “Those guys sure knew something about the sadness of life,” she says, before adding, “and gentleness”, almost as an afterthought.She Never Loved MeI love all of this talk of love and longing and loss and loneliness and labyrinths (all the “L” words).Not everybody feels the same, though.You should have heard my wife, F.M. Sushi, when she noticed my tears and stole a look at what I was reading.“Why don’t these people just stop moaning and get a life. Can’t they just grow up, for chrissake. Everybody’s responsible for their own orgasm.”Then she flicked the book back at me across the room, adding defiantly (and defeating my prospects that night in one fell swoop), “Especially you.”I pick up the book, find my place and resume reading where I left off (page 10), equally defiantly, and aloud...“Because Naoko never loved me.”My wife turns her back on me as I snicker at her lack of understanding of my gentle side.Growing Up (How Strange the Change from Minor to Major)Still, a few hundred pages later, I am stunned by her prescience.Toru grows up in Murakami’s delicate hands.He has to stop dreaming, he has to live in the present, he has to embrace the now that is in front of him, he has to love the one he’s with. He has to distance himself from the past, so that it becomes just a lingering memory.Reiko tells him: “You’re all grown up now, so you have to take responsibility for your choices. Otherwise, you ruin everything.”Midori (who he has ummed and ahhed about) tells him:“...you, well, you’re special to me. When I’m with you I feel something is just right. I believe in you. I like you. I don’t want to let you go.”In the pouring rain, she reveals to Toru she has broken up with the boyfriend that has prevented her from committing to him.“Why?” he asks.“Are you crazy?” she screams. “You know the English subjunctive, you understand trigonometry, you can read Marx, and you don’t know the answer to something as simple as that?Then in a scene that could come straight out of "Casablanca", she says:“Drop the damn umbrella and wrap both your arms around me – hard!”How did F.M. Sushi know this would happen?That Toru would grow up and get a girl, not just any girl?That they would fall in love and not into a deep, dark well.Still I prefer Murakami’s way of telling the story.It always comes as a surprise the way he tells it, the change from minor to major.What would my wife know of these things?What I find mysterious, she finds obvious.When I find the harbour hard to fathom, she appears to walk on water.If you put her in a labyrinth, she would always find her way out.Whereas sometimes I prefer to hang around and enjoy the experience of being down in the rabbit hole. Mystified. Confused. Excited. At least for a little wile.Original Review: October 3, 2011Audio Recording of My ReviewBird Brian once initiated a Big Audio Project, where Good Readers record and publish their reviews. Unfortunately, BB deleted his page after the amazon acquisition of GR.My recording of this review was my first contribution. You can find it on SoundCloud here:http://soundcloud.com/inksterpop/soun...
What do You think about Norwegian Wood (2000)?
Há histórias que são tão impossíveis de resistir que não conseguimos afastar-nos delas. Este romance simples à superfície e, no entanto, bastante complexo, só aumentou ainda mais a minha paixão pelo trabalho de Murakami.Norwegian Wood tem como personagem principal Toru Watanabe, um jovem estudante que vive em Tóquio onde pretende acabar o seu curso.No decorrer dos próximos anos da sua vida existem personagens constantes em torno das quais o enredo gira. Não existem muitos personagens secundários e a história foca-se na sua grande parte nas relações de Toru com três mulheres: Naoko, Midori e Reiko.Naoko foi a grande paixão que arrebatou Toru. O silêncio era algo que enchia o espaço entre eles e só eles compreendiam uma relação que, à partida, não fazia sentido nenhum. Toru partilhava uma espécie de triângulo amoro de Naoko com Mizuki, um amigo que acabou por se suicidar, deixando Naoko insegura, despedaçada e sem nada que a pudesse recuperar de volta ao mundo normal.Enquanto isso Watanabe partilha a sua vida com Nagasawa, um homem promíscuo que não se preocupa com emoções ou sentimentos e tem uma visão da vida que a maior parte das pessoas não consegue compreender. Na sua jornada com Nagasawa, Toru conhece muitas mulheres, mas nenhuma lhe deixa uma impressão tão grande quanto o silêncio que partilha com Naoko.Algures na história ele conhece Midori Kobayiashi, uma rapariga diferente que não liga a convenções sociais e segue somente a própria vontade. Fala abertamente de sexo e não tem medo de dizer o que pensa, algo que é bastante edgy no fim dos anos 60.A história segue com um desenvolvimento interessante que agarra o leitor até à última página.É raro encontrar um livro que me consiga pôr a ler durante tantas horas seguidas. No entanto, creio que é preciso uma certa abertura de espírito em relação à própria essência do ser humano, porque alguns acontecimentos no livro seriam bastante estranhos, não sei se são próprios da cultura japonesa ou se são estranhos em geral, mas é um livro que, provavelmente, não é tão bem aceite socialmente em culturas mais ocidentalizadas. Não quero com isto dizer que o livro não vale a pena. Sim, vale muito a pena. O estilo de escrita de Murakami é, como toda a gente sabe, americanizado. Na minha opinião não é o melhor que ele tem. O que mais aprecio nele é a forma como ele desenvolve os acontecimentos, como ele explica as acções de cada personagem e como tudo parece tão natural, por mais absurdo que soasse na vida real.Um livro ao qual gostaria de voltar daqui a alguns anos.Certa vez tive uma raparigaOu deveria eu dizerQue foi ela que me teve a mim?P.S.: Qual é a aversão dos personagens a água. Não entendo como nunca houve um personagem que fosse parar ao hospital com tanto álcool que bebiam.
—Íris Santos
I straightened up and looked out the plane window at the dark clouds hanging over the North Sea, thinking of what I had lost in the course of my life: times gone forever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again. I almost stopped reading after this maudlin and downbeat opening passage. There are doors that I have kept close for years, memories of my own I thought are better left alone there, regrets and lost connections with people that were at one time 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 spend 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. Where could we have disappeared to? How could such a thing have happened? Everything that seemed so important back then – Naoko, and the self I was then, and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? […] Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them. I’ve noticed mixed reactions from the readers regarding 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 give the highest rating. I am in the second category, mostly for the way the experiences of Watanabe bring forward and shine a light on similar moments from a youth more focused on having fun than on trying to understand life and relationships.Murakami makes it easier for the reader to recognize himself in 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 will be hard to find somebody 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 absorb the sights, the smells, the faces of the people around you. Or who doesn’t look back with nostalgia on his school days, where friendships came so easy to us, when 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 ignore 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 growing up, 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 highschool, an event he deals with 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. Two contradictory character traits that 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, 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, definitely marked by the people around her who committed suicide, 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 conversation 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 what she is (“Why do you like weird people?” / “I don’t see you as weird!”), accepting that all of us are damaged to one degree or another, and that we need somebody 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 the 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 a couple of cats also 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 ahead of 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 develops 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 and 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 being charmed by her vivacity and curiosity and even the slight hint of danger she confers on every encounter. With the novel being placed in 1968, the year students all 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 soldier who refuses to take the easy way out (that damn suicide fascination so many people in the novel manifest). My favourite 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, and every time he went with Naoko I was sorry for Midori, when he came back to Midori I felt sorry for Naoko. The boy faces a difficult decision (view spoiler)[ and Murakami made 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 for totally gratuitous. Well written and argued, but unnecessary. (hide spoiler)]
—Algernon
UGH!!!This book bugged the hell out of me for a few reasons:#1. There is a somewhat extended passage devoted to a lesbian encounter that wouldn't be so terrible in and of itself, as sex in general is a major topic BUT the novel as a whole leaned towards describing the physiological experience the woman were having and would brush over the mens again and again. There would be like 5 paragraphs on the woman and then 1 sentence were it would say something along the lines of, "she took me in her hand and I came".GIVE ME A BREAK!!!It seemed like an exercise in writing (hmmmm, what would it be like to write from the females perspective) more than a contributor factor to the story.#2. The girls in this book were all needy, dysfunctional, emotional or detached but sexy as all get out while the male was unsentimental, level headed and also sexy.#3. the main male character had sex with 3 of the girl main characters (as well as countless unnamed characters) and apparently he was FABULOUS at it because 2 of the characters decided that they would never have sex again. that it could never measure up.OH BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTHER!!!!!!!!!!!
—Malbadeen
