Oh, Naoko! Murakami's Norwegian Wood

I finished this book a few days ago, and I've been trying to write about it, but I feel like I've only just stopped mourning the fact that I can't live in Haruki Murakami's Japan permanently.

In Norwegian Wood, Murakami spins a frightfully sympathetic and heart-rending coming-of-age tale set against the social tumult of 1960s. In the simplest terms, the novel strikes a perfect balance between unbearable sadness and dry humor that never lapses into the sentimental.

What I liked best about the novel's protagonist, Toru Watanabe, is the vain sincerity he displays in his struggle to find a foothold in a new world of compromise and hypocrisy: a quality that sets him apart from the usual bunch of mixed-up adolescents one tends to come across in the realm of post-modern literature, along with the likes of Holden Caulfield or Esther Greenwood.

To summarize the story briefly, Toru is a young college student from Kobe, putting up with the usual day-to-day jive while living a mostly solitary life in Japan's capital city, all the while suffering intensely (albeit often subconsciously) from the traumatic experience of his best friend Kizuki's suicide at seventeen. Adding to this is his passionate, yet weird and pseudo-vicarious relationship with Kizuki's beautiful, bereaved girlfriend Naoko. Naoko's mental illness further complicates the already messy situation. However, it's when Toru meets the seductively outlandish and temperamental Midori, that the novel really starts to pick up the scent of life in the real world, where our relationships so often seem to be forged in the most unlikely (not to mention unnatural) ways.

Anyway, it was a great read and I highly recommend it. On a side note, the prose can be a little strange at times, but I tend to chalk this up to the fact that it's a non-western text in translation. It's also a little heavy on the music and pop-culture references, but that's just a matter of taste I guess. At least Murakami seems to like good stuff.

Buy it here: Amazon

And here's a great interview with the author from just after Wind-up Bird Chronicle: Salon