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 1960s 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.
Norwegian Wood Blurb
Spoiler-Free Thoughts
I really liked this book, and I thought it was a really interesting take on the coming-of-age story we’re all familiar with. I do have to say, I think it’s important to read this book with context in mind: it is translated from Japanese, and it’s set in 1960s Tokyo. When I first started reading this, I didn’t keep this in mind, and it did affect how I felt about the book. Once I took a moment to remind myself of the context, the book became ten times better.
The book does focus on some quite dark themes despite being a coming-of-age story, particularly mental health and loss. I would definitely place a content warning on this novel, so if you’re particularly sensitive to either of these themes then it might be better to give this a miss. It is these darker themes, however, that I think elevates it, and Murakami uses these low moments to make readers really invest in his characters. Although none of the characters are perfect, they are made all the more compelling because of their flaws and mistakes.
Not a lot happens in this book in terms of plot, but the characters’ experience a lot of life-changing experiences, both good and bad.It’s definitely not a boring read, and despite the different cultural context I think it depicts the feelings of a young person or student very well. I’m glad I read this book at this point in my life, because Murakami captures perfectly the strange in-between feeling that I think most young people face when they start to venture out into the world as an established adult. Negotiating your own identity, relationships with others, ambitions and direction in life and coming to terms with the harsh reality of the adult world; all the things that Toru faces were very relevant to my life currently.
So if you’re interested in reading a coming-of-age story that addresses the struggles of emerging as an adult out of childhood, then Norwegian Wood is for you.
If you want to avoid spoilers, scroll to the bottom of this review to see my rating and final thoughts!
Thoughts About the Plot and Characters (Spoilers!)
Onto the spoiler section of this review.
I read this book in one sitting, and I think this really enhanced my experience. Murakami created a world that was very absorbing and insular because that’s how it felt to Toru. He perfectly captured the coming-of-age feeling of being completely consumed by those around you and the journey to establish yourself as an adult outside of the childhood bubble.
I guess when you break it down, Norwegian Wood contains a love triangle, at least without considering the more peripheral characters. To me, this was the perfect example of how to write a love triangle without resorting to overdone fictional tropes. It felt very natural and realistic to watch Toru struggle between his childhood trauma bond to Naoko and this newfound adult desire for Midori. It wasn’t something thrown into the novel to add drama, but rather a manifestation of the struggle between past and future that is so familiar to us all, whether in a romantic sense or otherwise. We watch Toru try to maintain his loyalty to Naoko and finally be with his childhood crush, but as he emerges more as an adult he realises his priorities and wants have changed, and that Midori may match him better now.
I think that Murakami writes about trauma and mental illness very eloquently, especially considering these topics through the eyes of a young adult. Toru’s confusion over Naoko’s ilness and his experience of losing his best friend to mental illness feels honest and true to human expereince, and the stereotypical portrayals of these problems are not drawn upon. True, Naoko does potentially fall dangerously close to the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ trope with her mysterious sweetness and alluring distance from Toru, but I think Murakami is careful to never undermine her health problems or to fully label her as such. This side of her portrayal, I think, is more down to Toru’s childhood crush which has elevated her to a position that she just can’t achieve, whether struggling mentally or not.
I really liked Midori as a character, and I was hoping that Toru would realise he couldn’t be with Naoko and make it work with her instead. I liked the fact that she was a dimensional character with her own ambitions, problems and personality outside of being just a love rival. It’s also refreshing that she doesn’t let him walk all over her, but she is understanding about his trauma bond with Naoko and doesn’t immediately cut him off for struggling between the two relationships. The other main women in the story, Reiko, is another example of a well-written mental health sufferer. She becomes the font of wisdom for Toru, and uses her life experience to help him negotiate his current affairs. But she also has a tragic background, and for me she underpins the tragedy of the whole book. Reiko is there to remind us that we can struggle at any point during life, but that struggling doesn’t mean you can’t have a positive impact on others.
And of course, Murakami’s book is full of sex. Meaningful sex, casual sex, damaging sex and healing sex. It’s not written like erotic fiction, but it is infused with the eroticism that memories carry. That kind of lost-but-still-there desire that seems to be enhanced with nostalgia. I think that this portrayal is really important because it doesn’t demonise using sex as a way to figure yourself and relationships out, but instead focuses its disapproval on sex that has a lasting, negative impact. Most of the time, this kind of sex is seen as an unfortunate consequence of immaturity and inexperience (excluding the traumatic and outright wrong sexual encounters in the book of course).
The only negative I have about this book is that at times the phrasing felt slightly clunky and didn’t quite match the rest of the writing style. As this is a translated text, I think this probably has to do more with the struggle to match meaning and style in a different language that anything to do with the quality of Murakami’s writing.
Concluding Thoughts and Rating
Overall, this was a really enjoyable and relatable read, and I would recommend this to everyone who likes coming-of-age style stories, especially if they themselves are a student or young adult. The writing is exquisite and the characters are multi-dimensional and feel believable.
I’m giving Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood four stars.
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