You could either love Norwegian Wood or hate it, there’s no in between. I am pleased to say I’m one of those who absolutely loved this weird book.
So this book is about three friends, it starts off with one of the friends from the trio committing suicide without leaving a letter, followed by how his death impacted all his loved ones, how, his death forever left a scar in them. The dead guy’s girlfriend suffers from severe mental illness since his demise.
The other friend and the girl soon become close friends and ahem ahem things… change. And this is all based in the 1969’s Japan (making it all the more fascinating)
I love how marvelously the author described every detail of his environment with love, and loved the poetic way he wrote. I love how Watanabe (the main guy) gives everyone their space to talk; he’s someone you can talk about anything to and enjoy it. He proclaimed himself to be a good listener and portrayed that in the following chapters (apart from the parts where he was extremely depressed, we can forgive him there.) He seemed to listen and earn knowledge without arrogance and learn from his mistakes - the latter is so important in human behavior which many tend to ignore.
I liked Midori too, but maybe she should calm the hell down sometimes because there I was sitting and giggling like a baby at her questions (which we as women sometimes want to ask but never do out of sheer embarrassment) and I couldn’t even tell others why.
Norwegian Wood spoke to us about mental illness, depression and the path of grief in an unfiltered, heartbreaking way, and although this book is many years old - the way Murakami wrote it felt like a fresh breath of air in literature.
5/5 stars.
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