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A review by yujeong
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
2.0
All I have to say is I'm sad.
I read "Underground" at the beginning of the year of 2022 and was super excited to read more of Murakami. I thought that his fiction stories would be as interesting and well executed as his non fiction stories.
In the end, I ended up wondering... what was even the point of what I read? What was the point of anything that happened in "Norwegian Wood"? I get that it's a coming of age story about the protagonist (who has some similarities to Murakami himself which made me wonder if I was reading an autobiography at times) who is introverted and in love and stuck in the past etc. I get all that. The thing is, though, his story was very underwhelming.
The first half of the book was kind of uninteresting and bland and the second half made me feel either very weirdly or wondering what the hell I was reading. Even though I didn't feel like the women were written badly - as many people point out - I still didn't like their behaviour. Naoko was behaving in a strange way that is attributed to her mental illness, Reiko's story was very disturbing and made me internally scream and Midori at first was super likeable but ended up being the weirdest of them all. The male characters were forgettable mostly, including the main character of the story unfortunately. Also, the way sex is portrayed is very awkward and uncomfortable. I don't know how to explain it properly but it feels like Murakami didn't know how to include it and kept bringing it up in random moments, the reason being the age of the characters and nothing else.
I wanted to like "Norwegian Wood", a lot. "Underground" made me love Murakami's writing and approach to life. This novel wasn't touching or thought-provoking. At best, it made me feel bored, at worst it made me feel uncomfortable and baffled. I liked the writing style but that's about it. I hope that the next Murakami novels I read will be better than this one.
I read "Underground" at the beginning of the year of 2022 and was super excited to read more of Murakami. I thought that his fiction stories would be as interesting and well executed as his non fiction stories.
In the end, I ended up wondering... what was even the point of what I read? What was the point of anything that happened in "Norwegian Wood"? I get that it's a coming of age story about the protagonist (who has some similarities to Murakami himself which made me wonder if I was reading an autobiography at times) who is introverted and in love and stuck in the past etc. I get all that. The thing is, though, his story was very underwhelming.
The first half of the book was kind of uninteresting and bland and the second half made me feel either very weirdly or wondering what the hell I was reading. Even though I didn't feel like the women were written badly - as many people point out - I still didn't like their behaviour. Naoko was behaving in a strange way that is attributed to her mental illness, Reiko's story was very disturbing and made me internally scream and Midori at first was super likeable but ended up being the weirdest of them all. The male characters were forgettable mostly, including the main character of the story unfortunately. Also, the way sex is portrayed is very awkward and uncomfortable. I don't know how to explain it properly but it feels like Murakami didn't know how to include it and kept bringing it up in random moments, the reason being the age of the characters and nothing else.
I wanted to like "Norwegian Wood", a lot. "Underground" made me love Murakami's writing and approach to life. This novel wasn't touching or thought-provoking. At best, it made me feel bored, at worst it made me feel uncomfortable and baffled. I liked the writing style but that's about it. I hope that the next Murakami novels I read will be better than this one.