Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (1987)

After a death, two friends become closer, and try to move on with life in a web of friendship, loss, love, and struggle.

Book Review:  While reading Norwegian Wood, I kept thinking that it was the Romeo and Juliet of our time, and although that isn't quite right, it isn't all wrong either. Set in the late Sixties, Haruki Murakami tells his story through the intertwined lives of seven people, all of whom become involved with one or more of the other characters, and provide parallels and counterpoint to the others. The two pillars of this novel are the emotion and insight Murakami creates though an accumulation of intense and minute detail, and the way he weaves the central actors together, their actions highlighting others' actions, comparing and contrasting them, one relationship putting another into sharp relief. The actions of one person affects others who never knew she or he existed, like the wings of the butterfly. As Murakami is quoted in the Translator's Note, Norwegian Wood, his fifth novel) is a change for him, just a "kind of straight, simple story." And without the fantastic, without magical realism, without flights of fancy, he does his simple story brilliantly. This is a sensual and physical story, adult even, but that is the least of what this is about. Yes Murakami captures the eroticism of youth and the sixties, but Norwegian Wood is about the opposite of that, and I'm surprised by those who get hung up on the sex and fail to see the much more important story Murakami is telling.

This book is being written by a character who finds he has "to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them." A loner, he falls in love with a girl who asks that he "promise never to forget" her. His favorite book is The Great Gatsby, and as in that book there's the question whether Gatsby and Daisy, or the other people in life, are the "twisted" ones, or the ones lost in a "cold, dark place." I think Norwegian Wood is a brilliant and open, but blindingly subtle book, the real emotions and lessons hidden beneath the surface, and told in immaculate detail. Wonderfully translated by Jay Rubin, this is a book to read and appreciate, and read again. [5 Stars]