A review by ellaroshea
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

2.0

I did enjoy the beautiful descriptions of scenery and landscapes in this book, but that was probably the extent of active enjoyment for me! I picked up this book because I saw so many people raving about it and Murakami and his aptitude for writing verisimilitude- maybe I just love purple prose and artistic literature that paints life in an eloquent way a bit too much, because I found this book a bit dry and very blunt. On the other hand, I think the development of character in this book was incredibly 2D, and I couldn't get into any of the characters' heads, especially the women. They all, to put it bluntly, sort of existed as things to have sex with for the protagonist Toru and other male characters- and maybe that is realistic to life, I wouldn't know! However, representing women in this way I feel is highly problematic- at the very least giving them interesting personalities and developing their characters would have been appreciated, instead of having them fit very bland stereotypes of ideas of women. They didn't seem real, and I therefore found it very difficult to enjoy and get into this book.