Maybe not their names – I forget names easy enough – but the personalities will stay with me. Some of the characters are unforgettable. Unable to cope, Naoko eventually ends up in a sanatorium, doing her finest to piece herself back together. Years later, Naoko and Watanabe reconnect and fall for each other but Kizuki’s shadow never fully clears between the two. Another, Kizuki’s girlfriend, Naoko, is as affected by his suicide as Watanabe perhaps more. Kizuki kills himself on his 17th birthday and this marks Watanabe for life - as it would most of us. Toru Watanabe, the protagonist from whose PoV the novel is told, loses his best friend Kizuki. Say one thing about that, say it was funny. You know, these are the moments when you’re not quite certain whether you should be grinning or blushing or pressing ‘Pause’. Bittersweet but hopeful – that’s how I’d describe it in three words, were I forced to do so.Īs a side-note, I would ride on the bus, listening to the audiobook more than once, when a ridiculous, steamy sex scene started up. Let’s look at it as a love story first, shall we? It’s sweet and sexy and tragic enough that you might just tear up by the end of it. It’s easy to lose yourself - something that main character Watanabe manages at one point in this novel. Norwegian Wood is a love story and it’s about overcoming grief, and it’s about those first coming of age years after you leave home, quite uncertain about what comes next, the direction you’re supposed to take as the world begins to mold and pressure you in ways outside of your control. It also happens to be the work that really shot Haruki Murakami to fame first in Japan and later internationally. The last is freshest in my mind but I’ll contain myself and instead turn to Norwegian Wood, the title inspired by the Beatles song of the same name. Kafka on the Shore in May, Norwegian Wood in September and just this last week, What I Talk About when I talk About Running. I’m happy with the progress I’ve made with Haruki Murakami’s books over these last few months.

Murakami haruki norwegian wood