Norwegian wood, one of the infamous books by the author Haruki Murakami, I never heard of it until my friend mentioned this and how she got the book from her former acquaintance who ghosted her, which is an interesting backstory on how she got it then how I got it from her, of course I have to return the book to her.
This book was originally published in 1987, and it tells about a young man recalling his youth life back in the 80s as a high school student and as a college student mostly, showed how wild his life was but also lots of troubles that lurked him slowly until he's all grown up. What interest me at first was to be honest, the explicit description of the sexual acts, it was even more specific and surprising by the end.
I have to differentiate what an essay and book review, and not to do an essay accidentally on this. Note that this book review will always be biased because it came from a normal book reader, not an expert in such literature.
I have told you the first thing that interest me at first about this book, but it was not the stuff that I found later on reading it, I was slightly disappointed, I despise the relationship that happened in the book, and the lack of sexual acts' description. It tells about this guy named Toru Watanabe, who had a very complicated love story with this one specific "good girl" but she has troubles within herself, overcoming a death, or their sudden relationship as a way to mend it, I think. Then he found this "manic pixie dream girl" who is completely a 180 degrees version of the first girl.
What I would like to comment about is the specific description of everything, the weather, and the switching back to forth to back again type of time background, it is so specific, yet for me it's just too specific, too detailed, some stuff are not too essential for the upcoming chapters but are being added anyway, I had a hard time finishing it because of the super detailed non essential description.
However, some details are rather important, how he pictures his friendship with his friends, and the continuation of his friend of friend's future, with a surprising twist in the end, a rather.. tragic twist. What I feel like pretty wasted was the lack of fun stuff being described, instead, the boring stuff are being too detailed in description (e.g. weather, places, problems in head).
I was not disappointed by the ending however, I love how it gives such an interesting story, another twist that I finally found, very detailed about the intercourse between Toru and the other character that I had no idea would happen, at all, it was surprising, exciting, but morally disappointed.
Again, why I despise one thing in this book because of its relatable connection with my real life, and how it's being super realistic, maybe because I'm the type of reader who wants to actually get away from the real life, instead, I found that realism in a book again. This book could be entertaining for other readers, but for me, it's super gloomy, not dark, but gloomy, and also confusing. I love how Murakami wrote it so well that I despise it, if I feel ordinary after I read a book, that means it's not too good, but this gives me that feeling of hatred, disappointment, excited, confused.
After reading this book, would I watch the movie adaptation? no, not because I already know how it goes and how it ends, it's only because I simply doesn't like how things happened in it, Toru is not a perfect human of course I understand.
Beware, the next lines are spoilers because this is me trying to recall what the story is about and how it ends to help my memory so I don't have to read the book again.
Toru Watanabe, best friends with this one guy and his girlfriend, this one guy died due to suicide and his girlfriend became friends with Toru to overcome their shared grief, but instead, they had sex and slowly developing their confusing relationship.
Toru goes to college and had a wild life with his dorm friend who is even wilder, how they do casual sex every other nights (not to each others), then swap the girls they were having sex with, but then Toru met this manic pixie dream girl with short hair, Toru sort of ghosted her few times but they started to have odd relationship because this girl had a boyfriend already apparently.
The first girl, she ends up in a mental facilitation with other older girl that acts as a therapist for both Toru and the first girl. Fast forward, this first girl died, Toru was devastated, and he ends up having sex with that older girl, then starting over the relationship with the manic pixie dream girl. Gosh, how bad it was being the manic pixie dream girl being a third or maybe second option.
Toru's wild friend also had a girlfriend who ends up marrying someone else but died, I forgot how and why, the concept of relationship in Japan is confusing, how could you still with someone who has been sleeping around in front of your eyes, that's like a pardoned cheating, it doesn't make sense.
Overall, I still understand how this book becomes very famous, I like the sexually explicit description in it, how detailed it was, and it takes skills to go back and forth in a story, confuses the reader but it's very good, the climaxes are odd, I feel like there's no climax except the death news in the story, and sex acts. Murakami gives such a deep introduction to all of us as readers, he gave pretty good backstory on how it starts, but out of nowhere suddenly the past being described into the present story and it was really confusing. I personally don't like the writing of the timing, but the whole story is alright, unless you are also a reader like me who despise pardoned cheating, then I guess we would have the same biased opinion.
Thank you for reading
Comments
Post a Comment