Rating: 
Summary: A cut above the best
Review: If you want to read a meaningful story of hope versus despair, past versus present, love versus lust, read Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. This is a cut above the normal love story - in fact it's more than just a love story (much more) - but you'll have to read it to find out why. Let's just put it this way... some books provide candyfloss entertainment and are easily forgotten, some books make an impression and keep jumping back at you. This belongs firmly in the second category.
Rating:
Summary: I once had a girl - or should I say, she once had me?
Review: Overwhelmingly beautiful. Breathtaking. I was taken to a wonderful place, and some part of me will always remain there. Haruki Murakami is a magical author, the kind that doesn't come along every generation. His stories and characters are so real and so alive that they become part of your consciousness. You remember them as though you had lived them yourself. When I'm 110 and in some nursing home, I'm going to think it was ME up on that rooftop with Midori, watching the fire and listening to her play her guitar! What more do you want from a book?
Rating:
Summary: Enchanting
Review: " 'Norwegian Wood' is still the one Murakami book that 'everyone' in Japan has read," says Jay Rubin in his Translator's Note of this simple, straightforward, semi-autobiographical story. Toru Watanabe as narrator of this 1960s period piece reminds me of Nick Carraway in Fitzgerald's "Gatsby"; Watanabe seems one step removed from the action even while he is part of it, and his commentary shapes a critique of contemporary Japanese society. So "Norwegian Wood" is a love story set against a larger theme of questioning the Establishment. Another theme is the characters' insouciance about lovemaking. Letterwriting and love letters are part of Murakami's (Watanabe's) narrative strategy, which lend this novel a heightened sense of intimacy. Near the end, Watanabe says, "Letters are just pieces of paper . . . Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them and what vanishes will vanish." Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" stays in the heart; it is his enchanting letter from the '60s, with love.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting and Beautiful
Review: I first discovered Norewgian Wood during a month long stay at Cambridge University. During that time, I became accustomed to reading books I had never heard of, in order to widen my literary horizons. On my first encouter with the book, I did not purchase it, because it came presented in a way that was very expensive. Also, I was unsure whether this book would be meaninful or not. It did seem to sound kind of like I run of the mill, well written romance novel. A few months after I had returned home, I saw a review in the New York Times. It gave rave reveiws to the book. Apparetnly, it had been a smash hit in Japan a few years earlier, and had just been authorized for translation and publication in the United States. This book was not only beautifully written and poignant. It also was a novel about Japan during the Sixties, and a novel about difficult maturation. The book chronicles the relationship of Toru to a mentally shattered young woman. During this chronicle, we learn so much about the life that he is living now, and the life that he has lived in the past. By the end of the book, you know Toru more than you know your self on certain levels. If there was one book that I could recommmend to anyone, it would be this. Reading it was a life changing experience. Go and buy this book. You won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I have read
Review: A chance snatch of Beatles muzak heard in an aeroplane throws Toru back two decades, to the time when he was a student torn between two very different women. One, Naoko, is the gentle, beautiful girlfriend of his best friend who previously committed suicide; and the other, Midori, is an impulsive, slightly eccentric classmate who enjoys cooking and talking about sex. Many opposite poles exert their power in this novel: the living and the dead; the past and the present; youth and maturity; resilience and disintegration; tender love and casual sex; swinging 1960's student Tokyo and the sequestered serenity of a health sanatorium in the mountains. By the end of the novel, the narrator has taken the reader to the point where, like himself, one can no longer keep these elements separate from one another - life revolves around death, love exists through loneliness, and the past constantly imbues the present with all its hues and shadows. This may smack of sombre profundity, but it is a novel that ultimately belongs to the optimistic resilience of the young and alive. The pathos is mixed with gentle humour. If you are already familiar with the work of Murakami, I can just tell you that this novel has the same staggering brilliance of his other works; and if you're new to his writing, well, I can't do justice to how good it is, so you'll just have to go and read it for yourself. I in fact give this book six stars: * * * * * * (F, 26)
Rating:
Summary: Delicate
Review: This is a delicate and measured account of the recollections of a young man's love life. We learn why he loves and why he's lost, all narrated brilliantly (as only Murakami can) to ensure that the story is both gripping and poised. Even though the story takes place in the late 60's in Japan, it is completely contemporaneous and mostly universal.
Rating: 
Summary: Moving, contemporary, but a little heavy handed
Review: I wanted to enjoy Norweigan Wood, and for the most part as I was reading it I really did get wrapped up in Toru Watanabe's romantic struggles with gloomy, flawed Naoko and the pretty, wild Midori. The setting was effective (a Tokyo university in the late 1960's), and the novel had a very real, contemporary feel that appealed equally well to Western audiences as well as Murakami's native Japan. However after finishing it I thought perhaps Murakami poured on the pathos a little too thickly for my liking, and so I am a little ambivalent about this book. The book is narrated years after the fact by Watanabe, an introspective college student without much ambition, who disdains the hypocritical college radicals of his time and who befriends a quirky roommate, nicknamed Storm Trooper, who is a social misfit (and the butt of jokes) but who keeps their dorm room meticulously clean. We learn at the outset of a great loss, as Toru's young friend Kizuki unexpectedly killed himself at age 17, leaving a huge void in the lives of both Toru and Naoko, Kizuki's longtime girlfriend. These two characters struggle with varying degrees of success to deal with the suicide, and develop a special kinship that seems doomed from the outset. At the same time, Toru has a series of one night stands with a new buddy, a wealthy over-achiever who makes everything look easy, until Toru meets Midori, a breath of fresh air who says whatever is on her mind (usually sexual in nature) and who looks for the undivided attention and affection Toru is reluctant to give. All of this is well and good, but I think about half way through the novel gloom factor goes off the charts. We learn that suicide has touched Naoko's family on top of her boyfriend's death, and if that wasn't enough Murakami makes another character's parents both either dead or in the process of dying of brain tumors. Come on, why not throw in some shocking car wrecks for good measure! And all through these travails, we learn virtually nothing of Watanabe's past, even though he is our introspective narrator. It just seemed a little overboard to me, trying too hard to move the reader and seemingly impress upon the narrator the fleeting nature of our existence. Overall I enjoyed the novel, and from the recent reviews posted, many of my fellow reviewers absolutely loved it. I just think sometimes the writer, a la John Irving, has a tendency to toss in too much tragedy for effect.
Rating:
Summary: PERFECT(ive)
Review: does anyone here know anything about verbal aspect? well, maybe you do and you're just not sure about it. let me explain. see, in english (and in japanese) there exist two main aspects: perfective and imperfective. perfective aspect details a singular action that took place in the past and was carried out to completion or a single act that will take place in the future and carry out to completion. imperfective aspect details action, possibily repeated, that took place in the past (or that which will be potentially repeated in the future). imperfective actions, in all their repetition, lack a sense of definity that perfecitve actions have, and with good reason. anyway. example: (perfective) i ate dinner with her tuesday night / i will eat dinner with her tuesday night. (imperfective) i ate dinner with her every tuesday night / i will eat dinner with her every tuesday. that's putting it simply. obviously, there are many more complicated examples. haruki murakami, like raymond carver, is highly skilled in putting seemingly perfective fiction into imperfective aspect. see, read any one of the numerous stories in "the elephant vanishes," and you'll see: while his narrators often describe things that happened in the past, they do it in such a way as to suggest it WILL happen again, maybe to someone else. it puts a real eerie spin on everything, really, and helps along even the most worn-out motifs. norwegian wood, however, does none of this. many of murakami's critics bashed him for writing a book that so resembled every other work of autobiographical fiction that fluorished in the late eighties. many accused him of making a "departure" from his usual form. many more bought the book and loved it. murakami was horrified, perhaps not as much with the insane popularity as the bizarre mix of criticism, and fled the country. as i write this, i'm sure of one thing: the critics did not bash norwegian wood because of its use of verbal aspect, though they very well could have. it would have required a little creativity to do so, however. the narrator, toru okada, tells us a story of what happened to him in the past -- a series of perfective actions, a "memoir," so to speak. perhaps it is this perfective format that murakami found so "challenging" in writing the book. see, it's like this: when an author writes a story in perfective aspect, he is writing a story he or she knows well enough to write in perfective aspect. in this way, all those autobiographies that were circulating about in the japanese literary world of the 1980's -- the time when suddenly everyone's life story became worthy of telling in a novel -- were written in perfective aspect -- and the authors were able to write them in this way because they had lived the experiences. when you've lived an experience, you're able to shuffle the events of it around a bit, putting them in the most logical order; you're able to jump back and forth between the events of the past and your present life with relative ease. it's when authors are writing the stuff of fantasy and pure fiction that they use the imperfective aspect -- when they KNOW their characters are not real. so, what does it take for an author to write pure fiction in the perfective aspect? it takes a lot of concentration, skill, and quite a grasp on the characters. an author has to be quite comfortable with all his characters and situations in order to write a story this way. murakami wrote norwegian wood in this perfect aspect, and the book seems all the more realistic and convincing because of it. when most people make reference to aspect in a book, it's usually in the form of "something i can't quite put my finger on." wacky surrealism aside, there's just "something you can't put your finger on" that seperates murakami's "norwegian wood" from his more surreal works like "a wild sheep chase" or "the wind-up bird chronicle." yeah, it's also a deeply affecting book with memorable characters. there are also a lot of surprises. you can finish reading it in a day once you get absorbed. those are the kind of imperfect(ive) things just about everyone says about the book. i guess i couldn't help saying them, either. in the story "the kangaroo communique," murakami's narrator claims that he is attempting no more than to live imperfectly. the human struggle for imperfection seems to be a common theme in murakami's work, and i find it kind of funny that norwegian wood finds a way to make the perfect(ive) so wonderfully... imperfect.
Rating:
Summary: Murakami Revisited
Review: Toru is a student who cannot come to grips with his life. He loves Naoko, who is even more unbalanced than Toru. Naoko winds up in some obscure institution. Toru is ready to fall apart, but is rescued at the last moment by a real-life woman. No doubt the story is written beautifully and, standing on its own, should be recommended. But: If you ever read any of Mr. Murakami's other books, then you know the contents of this book without reading it. After a while, it gets to be monotonous.
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable
Review: For a story so simple and uncomplicated, I wonder why Norwegian wood continues to linger in my memory for so long. I read this book four months ago, amidst a book binge that covered about a dozen books. When all others have faded from my memory (it was a binge after all), Norwegian Wood still visits my thoughts once in a while. Maybe it is the most romantic book I have read in while. The writing and the translation are nothing short of elegant. Up until now, I am still in struggle to find the right words for it. Maybe it is so real, it enters my realm of reality, as if I know this people, this IS the story of someone I know. Norwegian Wood was a great song even before I read this novel. Now it is unforgettable. It is a simple concept, take the lyrics of a song and build a novel around it. And, yet the execution is flawless. So much so that I can't get it out of my mind. Both the song and the book.
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