Norwegian Wood

by Haruki Murakami

298 pages

English language

Published Sept. 12, 2000 by Vintage.

ISBN:: 978-0-375-70402-4

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

2 editions

🥒 reviewed Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

More like NOweigan Wood! Eh? Ehhh?

2 stars

Content warning spoiler in second half

Don't understand why people love this one so much. Main protagonist has zero personality except for the manic-pixie-dream-girl women around him. The women seem to have no real logic to their motives other than being a quirky surface for the protagonist to bounce off of.

---spoiler---

One of the aforementioned MPDGs takes her top off in front of her father's shrine and that's when I swore I would never try and read another Murakami book again. Not again!!! Yet another woman, this time several years the protagonist's senior, sleeps with him for no apparent reason out of nowhere and yet the characters both talk about it as if they were destined to sleep together? Why's everyone rushing to sleep with this personality-less baffoon?? It all just feels like such a random male fantasy where these women really don't exist outside our main character's (sex) life.