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A review by ida03a
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
3.75
Around halfway through this book I felt fairly positive about it, I enjoyed the storyline, the simple but smooth writing style and wanted to learn more about these characters. I understand the book as a description about a young boy who hasn't fully found himself yet, and is on top of that dealing with a lot of grief and I really enjoyed the descriptions of the simpler life of a student, and my favorite scene is probably his journey to the Ami institute to visit Naoko, with very enjoyable descriptions of nature, scenery and just simply calmness. I also enjoyed the interweaving of pop culture and music
But, as we got farther into the plot line things just fell a bit flat for me and some of the scenes made me truly uncomfortable. Especially the scene where Reiko is supposedly sexually assaulted by a 13 year old girl and her describing this girl as "evil", I feel like a 13 year old raping a 30 year old woman is just plainly unrealistic and to me it made me doubt if Reiko was telling the truth or if the author was just suggestion this scene as plausible? The scene also went on for way too long and in way too much detail for my taste. I think there is a fine line between writing between the lines and just writing unrealistic characters a scenes. I also didn't enjoy Midori as a character at all and found her quite annoying, she gave me very much "I'm not like other girls"- vibes. Lastly I really hated the ending and found it extremely unnecessary, I really wanted this book to end with some personal growth for Watanabe, but I don't feel like we got that at all.
Still I very much liked the pace of the book, and never felt bored while reading it, which brings up the rating for me. I also understand that this book is supposed to show the perspective of a 17-20 year old boy who is dealing with a lot of unresolved trauma, I feel like a lot of his actions are defense mechanisms and he is supposed to be a flawed characters, but some points are still a bit too far fetched. Still, I have to admit that this, dare I say, surrealistic portrayal of young people were very fascinating to read about; yes, people like Watanabe, Midori and Naoko may not be a totally real reflection of young people in the real world, but in some ways they're kind of like a caricature, exaggerated into extreme and now unrealistic characters.
This one was hard to rate as I really liked it through the first half, but then it all just got a bit too much for me, the unrealistic plot and lastly the ending was what ruined the book for me (in additions to the many unnecessary sex scenes), and I really wish it would have gone a different way. Still, I feel like the rating of a book depends a lot on how you choose to look at it and interpret it, and therefor I cannot say it is a bad book at all.
But, as we got farther into the plot line things just fell a bit flat for me and some of the scenes made me truly uncomfortable. Especially the scene where
Still I very much liked the pace of the book, and never felt bored while reading it, which brings up the rating for me. I also understand that this book is supposed to show the perspective of a 17-20 year old boy who is dealing with a lot of unresolved trauma, I feel like a lot of his actions are defense mechanisms and he is supposed to be a flawed characters, but some points are still a bit too far fetched. Still, I have to admit that this, dare I say, surrealistic portrayal of young people were very fascinating to read about; yes, people like Watanabe, Midori and Naoko may not be a totally real reflection of young people in the real world, but in some ways they're kind of like a caricature, exaggerated into extreme and now unrealistic characters.
This one was hard to rate as I really liked it through the first half, but then it all just got a bit too much for me, the unrealistic plot and lastly the ending was what ruined the book for me (in additions to the many unnecessary sex scenes), and I really wish it would have gone a different way. Still, I feel like the rating of a book depends a lot on how you choose to look at it and interpret it, and therefor I cannot say it is a bad book at all.