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iratyde_author 's review for:
Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
Read this after The Wind-up Bird Chronicles and now in need for another ambiguous review here.
What riles me the most about Murakami, I think, is that he imbues female voices with male fantasies, as if they have to step in for feelings the male protagonist is not allowed to have. The psychology of women, frankly, makes no sense. His male protagonists, in contrast, while vying to be ethically sound, end in repressed depression with a weird fascination of violent, ethically unsound men up to all sorts of dark deeds.
Having said that, even through the warped points of view, Murakami is one of the most truthful storytellers of our time. There is little pretentiousness in the way his first-person narrator, Toru, experiences the world. The sensitivity and vulnerability that is portrayed from that perspective is utterly believable and heart-wrenching in its fragility. That pain is real.
“In woods as dark as the depth of her own heart, she killed herself…” — Murakami, Norwegian Woods.
What riles me the most about Murakami, I think, is that he imbues female voices with male fantasies, as if they have to step in for feelings the male protagonist is not allowed to have. The psychology of women, frankly, makes no sense. His male protagonists, in contrast, while vying to be ethically sound, end in repressed depression with a weird fascination of violent, ethically unsound men up to all sorts of dark deeds.
Having said that, even through the warped points of view, Murakami is one of the most truthful storytellers of our time. There is little pretentiousness in the way his first-person narrator, Toru, experiences the world. The sensitivity and vulnerability that is portrayed from that perspective is utterly believable and heart-wrenching in its fragility. That pain is real.
“In woods as dark as the depth of her own heart, she killed herself…” — Murakami, Norwegian Woods.