Norwegian Wood - Softcover

Murakami, Haruki

4.01

600,448 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 030795062X ISBN 13: 9780307950628

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2012

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A special movie-tie in edition for the long-awaited film release based on this beloved novel by Haruki Murakami: the story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, a journey to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

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Review:

"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me" "Norwegian Wood" (Lennon/McCartney).

With Norwegian Wood Murakami, best known as the author of off-kilter classics such as the Wind Up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard Boiled Wonderland, finally achieved widespread acclaim in his native Japan. The novel sold upwards of 4 million copies and forced the author to retreat to Europe, fearful of the expectations accompanying his new-found cult status.

The novel is atypical for Murakami: seemingly autobiographical, in the tradition of many Japanese "I" novels, Norwegian Wood is a simple coming of age tale set, primarily, in 1969/70, the time of Murakami's own university years. The political upheavals and student strikes of the period form the backdrop of the novel but the focus here is the young Watanabe's love affairs and the pain (and pleasure) of growing up with all its attendant losses, (self-)obsessions and crises.

The novel is split into two volumes and beautifully presented here in a "gold" box containing both the green book and the red book. Young Japanese fans became so obsessed with the work that they would dress entirely in one or other colour denoting which volume they most identified with. And the novel is hugely affecting, reading like a cross between Plath's Bell Jar and Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women, if less complex and ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical, work. He captures the huge expectation of youth, and of this particular time in history, for the future and for the place of love in it. He also saturates the work with sadness, an emotion that can cripple a novel but which here underscores the poignancy of the work's rather thin subject matter. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

"A masterly novel. . . . Norwegian Wood bears the unmistakable marks of Murakami's hand."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Norwegian Wood not only points to but manifests the author's genius."
--Chicago Tribune

"A treat. . . . Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done."
--The Baltimore Sun

"Vintage Murakami [and] easily the most erotic of [his] novels."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

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