Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
I was kind of procrastinating with this one to be sure as I finished this a week ago. I want to make this one short. I think first of all, it would be wrong to call this a love story (which some have called it) because it’s really more a combined story of love, loss, and the behavior or men in situations involving these. It’s drastically different in terms of style, themes, and plot to the other Murakami book I read, Hard Boiled Wonderland, which was wildly creative.
In Hard Boiled Wonderland, Murakami delves into a sort of mystery dreamworld in every other chapter, this cold place where he studies skulls and dreams. Then, in the remaining alternating chapters, he’s in a world underneath the Japanese subway underground where creatures called INKlings dwell.
Norwegian Wood isn’t as creative and it definitely has a different feel to it. I actually would not have been able to guess that the same author wrote both works, to tell you the truth. Norwegian Wood is firmly of this world and grounded in reality. It is driven more by dialogue and through the letters the main character writes. It’s set in 1969 and gives some insight into the mentality towards suicide in Japan. I kept feeling like there was more stigmatism towards the mentally ill there than here at that time but I can’t know for sure. In any case, I would imagine that if you were mentally ill and sought help and felt that you had brought tremendous shame to your family and would never have a future because of it, it would reduce your chances of feeling like you could begin a new life. There’s actually three pretty important characters that commit suicide in this book and one more character that is referenced, which the reader doesn’t meet. But the way suicide is addressed seems strange…more so as if it is almost an inevitable part of life. What is conveyed is the sense that if you live in Japan, you will have at least one or two people close to you choose to end their lives. And that’s just sort of the way it is.
It’s also a very erotic book, although it’s important to note that it doesn’t eroticize death or suicide. It delves into the loves this man goes through, mainly with two girls, quite a bit. It also shows some contrasting views on sex by both men and women and the complexity therein. Although I would say that the writing lacked the imagination present in Hard Boiled Wonderland, I would say that this is still an interesting read. The writing flows in a lyrical sense and is still rather poetic. It has valuable insights as well.
(Now Playing: Valvola & DJ Spectra: Venus 69)
October 8th, 2005 at 1:15 am
[...] But…you know how you sometimes read the back of a book for the review snippets and brief description of the story and you get all giddy because you get the references and you have this sort of literary epiphany of sorts, “I love both of those authors they are referring to so this is the book for me!” Well, if you want to read a book set in Japan that refers to the Beatles/Lennon, I suggest Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami instead. But maybe that’s just me. In the very first sentence on the back, both Dickens and Salinger are referenced. I’d say Number Nine Dream reads more like Pynchon writing a novel based on a plot William Gibson has pitched to him. It’s wildly creative and intriguing but at the same time incredibly disjointed and didn’t end up really reaching me on any sort of emotional level. [...]