From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore: A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, “a masterly novel” (The New York Times Book Review) blending the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love.
Now with a new introduction by the author.
Toru, a serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. As Naoko retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.
Stunning and elegiac, Norwegian Wood first propelled Haruki Murakami into the forefront of the literary scene.
Having read (and loved) Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and currently reading (and loving) 1Q84, both by Murakami, I was excited going into this almost completely blind. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed as Murakami's charming writing felt like it had disappeared and all I was given was a story about the main character's miserable life feat. women he had sex with in the most boring and dullest way possible.
If I want to read a japanese author's book about a man's misery, all the women and shitty people he met in his life told in first person ever again, I'd rather reread No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. At least that book evoked some kind of emotion in me.
I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by James Yaegashi, and I recommend it. I chose it because I don't like hearing names getting butchered, but his performance was very pleasant overall. If it weren't for him I might have not finished this book at all.
