Rating: 
Summary: a slightly odd love tale
Review: I found Norwegian Wood to be a pleasant little love story of sorts, though I doubt it would qualify as a romance per se. It certainly was written in Haruki Murakami's style, at least based on having also read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Norwegian Wood, however, has none of the downright bizarre imagery and plot twists found in that other work. In that sense, this is a more human book, and although the characters can sometimes behave a bit oddly, we can be sure that things will stay firmly grounded in reality.Beyond that, I'm not sure what else to say. The basic plot is that a young man loves a young woman, but also falls in love with another young woman, one who could not be more different from the first. The only major point I can mention is that if you liked the characters in Wind-Up Bird, you'll like them again here. Not that either is a sequel to the other. It's simply that they are so similar, enough so that it's worth mentioning. The narrator, Toru, has the same first name in both books, and is virtually the same character, aged ten years further in one than in the other. May Kasahara in Wind-Up Bird is Midori in Norwegian Wood. Kumiko in Wind-Up Bird is to some extent Naoko in Norwegian Wood. One can consider this a flaw or not, but based on the copyright, if this is a flaw, it's in Wind-Up Bird. I simply read them out of order. Having said now what I kept thinking throughout the reading, I've concluded that this is still a great book, and well worth the time to read it through.
Rating: 
Summary: Very convincing characters,deeply insightful perspective
Review: 37-year-old businessman Watanabe recalls his days as an 'ordinary' University student in the 70s and Norwegian Wood is his story.Through his narrating,the reader knows very convincing characters like Naoko (his beloved,ethereal gal whose importance I believe is pivotal as a deceptively simple romance for readers looking for a poignant 'love story'),very charming Reiko(who also has her strange,tantalising story to tell) and fickle,sensitive and frank Midori who, genuinely loves Watanabe. Norwegian Wood surely deserves more than three stars for the author's deeply insightful perspective for all characters,including the lonely,young one-night-stander Watanabe.Obviously,the characters are so true-to-life that they could be strangers standing beside you,young adults reading Thomas Mann at a cafe or chatting in the pub with jazz buzzing around,or somebody playing piano in the restaurant you are sitting in. Yet,from the author's pen,every character is bestowed a kind of tenderness ,sympathy and helplessness with their plights.Trust your intuition,the characters have no way out although they've tried their best like you and I. The reason why I give it a three-star is the book doesn't give me what some reviewers have felt upon finishing.While admiring the author's sharp portraits of the characters(in fact,its so good that it doesn't feel you are reading Fiction at all!),as a reader I would have expected a louder,more engaging if not all- fair voice in a novel,instead of a blander,quieter piece like Norwegian Wood that reads deceptively like some popular pulps.
Rating:
Summary: I can only shake my head over this great book
Review: What a book. My advice is to start early in the day, and preferably not on a work night. The book just can't be put down; I read it in one sitting! Murakami is a gifted story teller, even now I feel like I read it just yesterday. Like the other reviewers I am sure I will revisit this again in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Turning into an adult
Review: Very nice book. It tells, in a very delicate and sensitive way, the story of a Young japanese boy getting out of his teens and going into adulthood. Life is hard, it is very tough to assume responsibilities and to measure one's reach towards other people. Although there is not very uncommon about this boy's life, it is also very unique in the sense that all his emotions and experiences are his own and no one else's. Not very different from ourselves, anywhere in the world. This book is full of common life day to day poetry. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Deceptively simple
Review: I found that this book was hard to get into at first. I read about a chapter and a half and needed a break. Once I picked it up again, I was hooked. Although on the surface this novel appears to be a simple coming of age tale, it goes much deeper than that. I found myself getting caught up in the creative way that Murakami uses setting to create tone and atmosphere in the story. The things going on in the background - the campus riots, dorm life, the sanitarium, etc., aren't just there to fill up space. They're integral to creating the mood the author needs to get across his themes. And his themes are very complex - issues to do with the nature of love, life, and loss in modern society. This is a very disturbing book, with some imagery (the sex scenes aren't thrown in here just to be titillating. In fact, the sex is some of the most disturbing I've read in serious fiction in a long time. But that's part of the point - he's showing how sex can actually be a means of creating distance rather closeness between people) although there is an element of hope in the end. I didn't like the use of the flashback technique in this book. The novel starts with Toru, the main character, as an adult reflecting back on his life at age 20ish. Other authors (notably Wolff in Patterns of Childhood) have used memory as a device to better effect than Murakami did here. He could just as easily have started the novel with Toru at 19 and skipped the first chapter. The book doesn't particularly deal well with mental illness or suicide, in that I didn't particularly gain a whole lot more insight into either of those two issues than I had prior to reading the book. Having said that, the reason this book is so gripping and kept me reading to the end is that Murakami created characters I could invest in and relate to. I cared about these people, and I wanted to know what happened to them. Naoko wasn't quite as fully fleshed out as Toru, or even Midori, but I think that fit; so much of she was was an image in Toru's mind. This novel is one where the use of the first person narrative was an brilliant choice on behalf of the author. It's vital to the story that everything is told from Toru's point of view. The dialogue is very good, too. I can't compare this novel to any of the author's other work, as I haven't read any of it. I don't expect to rush out and read his other books, given how different they are purported to be compared to Norwegian Wood. I will say that if you are looking for a coming of age novel that still has appeal to those over the age of 25, this book is a good choice.
Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding
Review: It is one of those books that comes along and sneaks up on you. By the time you put it down you realized that it has moved you. When Watanabe read Midori's letter I felt an emptiness in my stomach as if she had written the letter to me. The whole book is like this. You can't help but fall in love with the characters.
Rating:
Summary: Some choose to live...
Review: I bought this book a long time ago, thinking it looked interesting, but it was probably two years before I actually got around to reading it. When I did, I just about devoured it, not because it is the best book in the world, but because it captures a particular time so well, and the choices one comes to in building a life philosophy. Set in Japan in 1969 and 1970, it's the story of a young college student, Toru, and his "relationship" with a girl, Naoko, who was the girlfriend of his best friend, who killed himself a couple of years before. Toru's life isn't charmed, but he's making it through, despite his shortcomings and mistakes. Naoko has a harder time dealing with life itself, with her own and others' imperfections, and this inability to cope with the everyday eventually leads her down her own path. Toru attempts to understand her, be there for her, and love her as best he can. Being only 19 himself (at the beginning of the book), he's got a lot of growing up to do and decisions to make himself. In the end, he probably makes the only decision he can make without going crazy himself, but this is also not without a great deal of sadness. The one gripe I have about this book is that there is quite a few sex scenes... This is played off, in part, to Toru's "craziness", but still was kind of weird. What I did enjoy, though, was the description of the few people closest to Toru, his roommate, whom Toru has nicknamed "Stormtrooper", Toru's only "friend" in the dorms, this guy's girlfriend, Midori, Naoko, and Naoko's roommate. Each is a different type of "crazy". Some have even realized as much, and it's interesting to see how each character deals with that in themselves, and as it pertains to living with the rest of this crazy world. And no, not everybody makes it.
Rating: 
Summary: Murakami tried too hard to impress
Review: Haruki Murakami seemed to have little faith in his reader¡¦s ability to get his point¡XHe practically left nothing to the reader¡¦s imagination. Reading this book gives you the feeling that you were constantly hit on the head by a hammer. In short, he tried too hard to make himself understood. In an exchange among Naoko, Reiko, and Toru in the first meeting at the sanatorium, Reiko said, ¡§If you feel like raping anybody in the middle of the night, don¡¦t get the wrong one. The unwrinkled body in the left bed is Naoko¡¦s.¡¨ Then Naoko responded, ¡§Liar. Mine is the right bed.¡¨ A more skilful writer would have done more scene setting to convey what went through the characters¡¦ minds, instead of relying on one character to point out that the other character lied. Murakami also seemed to be too eager to see the reader compare his book to ¡§A Catcher in the Rye¡¨ and ¡§The Great Gatsby.¡¨ A confident writer would have been more subtle, letting his reader discover the similarity through writing style. The conversations throughout the book were neither witty nor romantic. When Murakami tried too hard, the conversations turned contrived or childish, as shown in so many conversations that centered around bodily fluids and women¡¦s underwear. Midori¡¦s dirty talk probably appealed to young adolescent boys, and I emphasize ¡§young,¡¨ because some of the supposedly funny dialogues about bodily functions could bore even people in their late teens. My other complaint was that the author got carried away when it came to sex scenes. It¡¦s not clear to me what the intention was behind the overly explicit descriptions. Was the author more interested in exciting the senses? Among the numerous sex scenes, the one involving an adult and a child was the most off-putting. The characters in general didn¡¦t evoke sympathy. Instead, they came across as crybabies. Midori¡¦s complaints about her parents not loving her enough were laughable.
In other coming-of-age stories that revolve around love and lust, after all was said and done, the characters invariably remain innocent as a rose, and their plight breaks your heart. On the contrary, this book makes you want to yell, ¡§Get a life!¡¨ and to take a shower afterward. So, my recommendation is that because this book is in easy English (it¡¦s no James Joyce), you probably can breeze through a third of it in no time. If you like it, keep reading to the end. Otherwise, quit right there¡XYou don¡¦t have to give the novel the benefit of the doubt; the rest of it does not get any better.
Rating:
Summary: Quiet Beauty
Review: It's amazing how a novel which is so fundamentally sad could somehow also be so redemptive. Sitting in an airplane and hearing an orchestra cover of a Beatles'song, Toru Watanabe remembers clearly the first girl he ever loved. _Norwegian Wood_ is a book about suicide-- about a young man who has to choose between one girl longing to be with the dead and another girl who's trying to come back to life. There's plenty of humor in the book, Midori is one of the most charming characters to be found in the modern novel. For all its sadness in its characters, the book is never really sad. Going on my list to be given out as a gift for Christmas.
Rating:
Summary: Murakami's Great Love Story Novel
Review: Fans of Haruki Murakami's earlier work, most notably "A Wild Sheep Chase", among others, will be pleasantly be surprised with this novel, the one that made him into Japan's most popular contemporary novelist. "Norwegian Wood" is a splendid elegy to love and loss, replete with memorable characters that are far removed from Murakami's quintessential emotionally detached protagonists. Truly it is a splendid look at young adulthood in Japan during the late 1960's, told through an engaging, still mesmerizing prose, that only needs the Beatles' music as its musical soundtrack. But best of all, it is a spellbinding love story that will leave you breathless and amazed by the book's all too sudden end. Without question, this is one of Murakami's greatest works of fiction.
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