Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1454 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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

Synopsis
When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.

From the Publisher
One of the nine titles in the Vintage East promotion

Customer Reviews

I'M HOOKED!!!
The first of his novels I ever read. All I can say is it certainly left an impression. I am now a Murakami addict. A difficult novel to put into words, you'll just have to read it yourself.

Incredibly readable, brilliantly paced tragic love story
Incredibly readable coming-of age story about a loner student and the two very different women he falls in love with. The novel is filled with incredibly vivid characters, a brilliantly paced plot, wonderful observations about life, and some fantastic creative, somewhat outlandish stylistic metaphors. I think it was one of those novels that just perfectly succeeds in its aims of capturing a time and set of characters, even if - on the surface - it might seem to be a somewhat trivial topic. The only partial flaws for me were: the sheer frequency of suicidal people, which at times made it feel like a manipulative soap opera; and I also sometimes didn't fully believe in the narrator's character. I found his movement from tramp to normally jovial person at the end when Reiko comes to visit jarring and unbelievable. But tiny problems amidst a sparkling piece of writing. (Oh, and this "deluxe" 2 volume set fell apart rather easily due to shoddy binding - pretty annoying and not worth the extra money spent).

Great 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.