Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Norwegian Wood

Naoko❤️‍🩹 I truly loved her.
Actually I really liked all the female characters, though they all more or less were also used as vessels for fulfilling the author's sexual fantasies — especially Midori, her personality at times was so pick-me-girly for the sole purpose of getting Watanabe's sexual attention.

This one was a re-read, and I must say I felt it so much more now at 20 — the main characters' age — than when I first read it at 16 years old. I've read all Murakami's novels, and even though I kind of miss the magical realism that was almost nonexistent in this book, it didn't really need it either as it was deep enough just like this. I just wish the metaphor of the "well" Naoko talked about in the beginning had appeared later on in the story, it should have had a greater purpose. Overall a very melancholic yet great reading experience, but for your own good, do consider skipping this if things related to suicide trigger you.

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pedroelizabeth's review

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challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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samchase112's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Media — especially books and movies — about grief have hit me quite hard, affected me a lot, in the past year, and this novel is absolutely no exception. Intimate, nostalgic, it's a dreamy exploration of living and living with death. I'm not quite sure how exactly I feel about it, but I know that I do feel because of it. I've pasted some quotes below that I couldn't help dog-earing, but beyond that there's nothing more to say.

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life… Death exists — in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a billiard table — and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust.

Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit to forget that.

I miss you awful sometimes, but in general I go on living with all the energy I can muster.

And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay seventeen or eighteen if I could. But not anymore. I'm not a teenager anymore. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I'm not the same guy I was when we used to hang out together. I'm twenty now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.

By living our lives, we nurture death. True as this might be, it was only one of the truths we had to learn.
What I learned from Naoko's death was this:
No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.

And when I awoke I was alone, this bird had flown…

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