Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami Book Review

A wild book review appears.

I have been wanting to write a book review for a while, now I finally got to do it. It's going to be short. Not spoiler-free. If you plan to read this and you don't want to read any spoiler, I don't suggest you to continue reading this review.

296 pages, bought for Rp 96.000,- (around $8) at Periplus (can be bought online here).

Haruki Murakami is a popular author, known worldwide, not only in Japan. He is popular for one of his best-selling books, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (which I have not read). Many said that his writings are poetic. I picked this book because I simply craved for books that are poetic and not straight-forward. Rather than the actions of the characters, I could be more captivated by the feelings and situations described carefully by the author--which I failed to find in this book.

The melancholic story revolves around deaths, suicides, and mental illnesses. With lots of sex. In the story, Toru reminisced his memories of his teenage years.

Toru Watanabe, Kizuki, and Naoko were childhood friends. Kizuki and Naoko were also a couple. At age seventeen, Kizuki took his own life, leaving his girlfriend and best friend with deep, incurable wound. They had to keep on living, getting older, while their Kizuki would stay seventeen forever.

Toru and Naoko later developed romantic relationship. However, their relationship did not go like how other couples could be. Naoko moved to a sanatorium where she could recover from her illness, communicating with Toru only through letters. Toru filled his loneliness by hanging out with his so-called super charming womanizer buddy, Nagasawa, who helped Toru to hit on girls and get them onto bed.

(Wow my level of seriousness in writing the review is dropping here. But I'm still going to finish!)

Nagasawa also had a girlfriend who was truly kind and faithful to him. But through news Toru got few years later, after Nagasawa moved abroad, the girl, Hatsumi, could not hope for her love to be returned any longer and got married to someone else, then committed suicide.

Sometimes Toru visited Naoko, they spent time together in the sanatorium with Naoko's guardian, Reiko.

To me, Reiko is the character who stands out the most in the story and has important role in it. There is one thing in her background story that does not make sense though, the part where she got seduced by a thirteen-year-old girl, did sexy dirty things with the girl and later regretted it, because apparently the girl had a twisted evil mind who could victimize herself and turn people to make Reiko feel terrible with her life. Feeling like a burden, Reiko divorced her husband. Thus she came to the sanatorium and met Naoko.

As time passed, Toru fell in love with his colleague, Midori. Although he was not sure with his own feelings, he wanted to end everything with Naoko first (even when he already had promised to wait for Naoko to come back) before he could start another new relationship with Midori properly.

Naoko hanged herself.

Devastated Toru appeared.

Reiko visited Toru and slept with him.

(You probably have realized by now how I don't enjoy writing a review for this book.)

Story finished with Toru speaking with Midori on phone and questioning himself where he was after wandering to only-God-knows where, suffering from Naoko's death.

I wanted to like this book. I really wanted to. But I hardly could find any essential meaning that the book is trying to tell us. The protagonist's personality itself is hard to grasp. All characters failed to leave me with a deep impression. The writing style is way too straight-forward.

I thought that maybe it's because I read the English translation version. It's always better to read a book in its original language. But in the end, I concluded that Murakami's writing is just not my cup of tea.

The novel has been adapted to a movie too and it did not change my opinion towards the story.

If not for Kenichi Matsuyama (Toru Watanabe) and Kiko Mizuhara (Midori), I would not watch the movie until the very end.

Anyway, those who like 'erotic, twisted love story' might like this (I still don't think it's going to worth your time though).

Off continuing Artemis Fowl: Le Paradoxe du Temps now!