Books by author: Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood is more approachable — and more satisfying — than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Here, Murakami narrates a complex love story. It's more of a "pentangle" than a triangle, and it all revolves around Toru Watanabe, a lackadaisical college student in the late sixties, a hipster of sorts who reads F. Scott Fitzgerald and listens to Miles Davis. He's in love with his dead best-friend's girlfriend, Naoko, who has retreated to a remote sanatorium to recover from some psychological issues. At the same time, he tromps around Tokyo with his friend Nagasawa, having meaningless sexual flings with coeds and rationalizing them as mere physical release. He also has intense relationships with Midori (a classmate), and Reiko (Naoko's roommate). The novel is an exploration of Watanabe's morality as he negotiates (or, more typically, fails to negotiate) these various relationships with varying degrees of success.

Norwegian Wood is an interesting hybrid of Japanese and American culture. The pop culture references are uniformly American, but the setting is quite Japanese. The dialogue seems quite unnatural to me. Perhaps it's an artifact of the translation from Japanese to English, or perhaps it's intended, but the words seem stilted at times, almost like dubbed text in a bad kung foo movie. The novel ends in a very non-American (that is, non-Hollywood) manner, which is a very good thing. The conclusion is unexpected but feels just right. I enjoyed being immersed in Watanabe's world for a few days, but I'm not eager to revisit it.

This was highly recommended by Brian Whitman . It takes a long time to come together, but it's worth it for a reader who likes a puzzle.