Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood is a novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, published in 1987. The story is told from the first-person perspective of Toru Watanabe, a college student living in Tokyo during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Toru is struggling to cope with the suicide of his best friend Kizuki and finds himself drawn to Kizuki’s girlfriend, Naoko. As Toru navigates his complicated relationships with Naoko and another girl named Midori, he grapples with themes of love, loss, grief, and existentialism.

The main themes of Norwegian Wood include memory, nostalgia, regret, sex and love, death, suicide, grief, existentialism, truth, lies, communication, and education. The novel explores these themes through the struggles of its three main characters and their various coping mechanisms to deal with the losses in their lives.

What I Liked

I really don’t know – I’ve read every book that Murakami has written and I still can’t put my finger on why. There’s something – it’s a weird mix of setting, character, and something that draws me to read all of his books. Same with this one. It’s brilliant, but strange.

What I Did Not Like

Ok. Murakami is weird. Like really, really weird. I don’t think I can recommend any of his books to anyone. So, I don’t like that. But I also don’t think he can be any less weird without losing some of his books’ magic (they do a lot of magical realism anyway).