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Title: Norwegian Wood
ISBN: 0375704027
Author:
Haruki Murakami
Publicate Date: 2000-09-12
Publish: 2000-09-12
List Price: $13.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.55
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $7.49
Amazon Merchant Price: $11.16
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A haunting story
Murakami is internationally known for a body of work that encompasses a surreal, dreamy, time-sequence-challenged form of fiction (as well as a number of non-fiction pieces). This novel -- said to be somewhat autobiographical -- is a mesmerizing piece of fiction. Narrated by an adult looking back on an adolescence of confusion and uncertainty, it will certainly trigger knowing nods from its readers. The book is more dramatic than my life (and I suspect more than yours as well), but the deep uncertainty of life in the transition between living at home and making one's way in the world should be familiar to most. Characters in Murakami's books tend to talk a lot and even write letters (how dated!). But they also tell intriguing and believable stories that both anchor them in a specific time and place but also express the universal. A lot in this book is not as it seems. On a superficial level, life is treated as a chore or a bad joke. But what good would it be to have a story that never scratched deeper than an American television prime-time drama into the lives of college students?
Murakami teases us by setting up story lines that never get fully resolved. By this, I don't mean that you have to fill in small details. I mean that people veer off like rockets and you never hear from them again. Or, at best, they are like comets that make recurrent entries into your orbit before being destroyed or escaping forever. People like this are intriguing and stories that include them are somewhat addictive. Suicide makes its way through this book as a reasonable alternative to life. But Murakami craftily asserts again and again that death is part of life and not its opposite. What's hard in life is not avoiding death, but rather living true to your "creed" or belief system. One of the most effective moments in this moving novel is the scene where the narrator spends a considerable amount of time in a hospital talking to (talking at?) a dying man. This scene is not maudlin, nor is any scene in this book manipulative. The book is an exploration of growth, challenge, stumbling and realignment. If you like this book, you have a lot more Murakami to explore. And if you like this book, you might also like the books of David Mitchell, an English novelist with a strong attraction to Japan and Japanese themes.
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2: proof that i have a soul.
one of the few written works that have solicited tears, even days after finishing the novel. i speak for myself when i say this: norwegian wood was depressing as hell, but it was the greatest and most eloquently expressed account of young love that i've ever come across.
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3: My First Murakami Book
It was kind of autobiographic, I guess. The characters are so lonesome, weird, emotional cripples and so needy.
Is not the story that it's so great about this book, is the way he is guiding the reader through an awkward journey of emotions and feelings.
You will not have a way out and you'll feel absolutely close to all of the characters
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4: Not just a love story
It is always a hard task for me to review a novel by Murakami because of the sheer complexity of his work. This particular novel christened 'Norwegian Wood' after the famous Beatles' song has been looked at as one of Murakami's simplest novels where he was accused of succumbing to the story lines that he has prided himself on avoiding. After reading 'Norwegian Wood' I must say with absolute conviction that these accusations are indeed invalid and have been based on the apparent plot of the novel that at first might seem simple, it is true that there were no signs of any sheep or disappearing elephants in this novel, but it is far from being simple.
I think Murakami has taken a great risk with this novel in the sense that he had the courage to step out of what is natural to him and attempt to write a story in a different style yet he succeeded in making it his own. 'Norwegian Wood' is simply a love story but by saying that we have not even scratched the surface on the intensity of this novel. By the time Murakami was finished with it, this love story has sucked you in its nostalgic era of the 60's and enveloped you in the smells and sounds of every season from January through to December. This isn't just a love story, it is a coming-of-age story, and it is a story within a story. The characters have the definite Murakami style, selfless, sweet some even lovable yet all are intriguingly twisted such is the real world we live in.
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5: Good book by Murakami
This is the third book by Haruki Murakami I read (after Sputnik and South of the Border) and the best so far. Originally written in 1987, the book begins in an airport in Germany, as the titular song by the Beatles playing in the sound system makes middle age Toru Watanabe remember his life as a college student in the late 1960s. As a drama student living in a pension in Tokyo he has to chose between the love of the unstable Naoko (a friend from high school, girlfriend of a friend of Watanabe that commited suicide, and who now lives in a sort of asylum in rural Japan) and the increasing approaches of his college classmate Midori. Meanwhile, he makes two friends: the nerdy, cleanliness obsessed, geography student nicknamed "Storm Trooper" and the ladies man Nagasawa, an amoral student who plans to enter Japan's diplomatic corps. A great book about remembrances, love and the joy and occasional sadness of young life. Perhaps not for the prurrient, since, as in other books by Murakami, explicit sex often punctuates the story.
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