The Book of the month for October was Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. The Big Review is below.
***Big Reviews are written from the point of view that you have read the book. If this is not yet you, bookmark the page and come back once you have***
Norwegian Wood – the blurb
When he hears her favorite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire – to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.
The Beatles song
I feel like Norwegian Wood is one of those books that you feel you have to have read. If you’re worth your salt then of course you have read the last 5 years Booker Prize winners, Crime and Punishment twice, the second time just for fun and Murakami. I try to read at least one book by every ‘mainstream’ author and Murakami was one I hadn’t ticked off yet. Norwegian Wood is often described as an opener into his world so it seemed like a safe bet.
It’s named after the Beatles song (which of course I had to listen to) and was written over 30 years ago. The book is based in the 1960s however so didn’t feel dated. When first published it turned Murakami into a star beloved by his Japanese countrymen. The book is strongly Japanese describing the food, the locations and the culture and also briefly touching on the political unrest amongst students in that time. It’s more a coming of age novel however covering love, suicide, mental illness and grief.
Try as I could however I couldn’t get away with the lead character Watanabe. He often expressed how ordinary he was, how nothing interested him, how averagely rich he was and it this may be the reason why I found him bland. There seemed to be very little emotion coming from him despite the situations he found himself in. Now this could be the Murakami style (or even the Japanese style of writing as Before The Coffee was also quite exact in its descriptions and emotions) but it just left me cold.
I’d love to discuss it with someone who loved it, who could sell Watanabe to me but until that happens I won’t be rushing out to buy any more of the back catalog.
Get Involved
If you would like to get involved with the Book Of The Month choices try answering the Book Club questions published every month. Just search in the footnotes section for the ‘Get Involved’ articles. A new book is chosen every month so keep your eyes peeled for the Lowdown on November’s book of the month soon.