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A review by mehraveh_reads
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
2.0
"Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life."
I read this line in the first chapter hoping for this to become one of my favorite books, and how wrong I was.
Oh boy, (as Watanabe would say), where to begin?
Let's start with Toru Watanabe, this wet blanket of a character with zero personality other than being horny all the time. How I wish the story was told from literally anyone else's perspective...
Don't get me wrong, Murakami writes beautifully and has a way with everyday words. However, as much as I enjoy his writing style, I hated reading it from Toru's perspective.
This book being Murakami's realistic novel, had shockingly unrealistic characters. Of course we can't ignore the elephant in the room, being how misogynistic was the portrayal of female characters here, and I won't go into much depth about that as you can see other reviews about it everywhere.
So we were talking about Toru. He checks the box for being the "nice guy" who is very "sincere" (as he calls himself in the last chapter), and who "understands" women. He is so "nice" in fact that he sleeps with his dead best friend's girlfriend when she is in a terrible mental state. And no, that's not the only time he takes advantage of vulnerable women. In later chapters he does the same thing with a girl he met in a cafe who was still in shock that his boyfriend had cheated on her. And later on each time he says "that's all I could do". (Excuse me?!)
He is so sincere that he slept with most women in the story whether he liked them or not and after Naoko's death he fucks her roommate in her memory.
He understood women alright. This is how he understood his "beloved" after her suicide: "The image of her was still too vivid in my memory. I could still see her enclosing my penis in her mouth, her hair falling across my belly..."
There is also a chance that I "just don't understand a man's sexual needs" as Nagasawa said. As much as I loathed his character, Nagasawa was right about something:
"Watanabe's practically the same as me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he's incapable of loving anybody. There's always some part of him somewhere that's detached."
This seemed to me an accurate description.
I won't bore you with how manipulative and loathsome Midori was, she even confessed to her own selfishness. But oh boy, she is NOT a representation of a "lively-looking girl". What the hell was that all about? Just because she's kinky, needy and curious about how guys masturbate? I read so many reviews that praised how she is a metaphor for life and how poor Naoko is death. And indeed poor Naoko. She was the only character I had a bit of empathy for. If I were to rewrite this story I would've written it from her perspective and it would end right when Toru took her virginity. Because that's when she actually died:
Naoko="I don't want anybody going inside me again. I just don't want to be violated like that again-by nobody"
About Reiko's character who seemed like the wiser one apparently, I tried seeing past that unnecessary horrible backstory with the 13 year old girl, and I tried to like her. And then, the last few pages ruined that for me. Why the hell did she sleep with Toru?! It was so uncalled for!!! And don't tell me it's all a metaphor for life and death because it doesn't make any sense unless you picture the meaning of life as being horny and having sex all the time.
In the end I finished this novel feeling empty. Nothing in particular in the plot resonated with me except for this part, hence 2 stars instead of 1:
"Thinking back on the year 1969, all that comes to mind for me is a
swamp - a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it's going to suck off my
shoe each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In
front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but the endless darkness of a
swamp.
Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The
people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I
hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on
the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John
Coltrane who was joined now by so many others. People screamed
there'd be revolutionary changes - which always seemed to be just
ahead, at the curve in the road. But the "changes" that came were just
two-dimensional stage sets, backdrops without substance or meaning.
I trudged along through each day in its turn, rarely looking up, eyes
locked on the never-ending swamp that lay before me, planting my
right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right,
never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction,
knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time. "
I read this line in the first chapter hoping for this to become one of my favorite books, and how wrong I was.
Oh boy, (as Watanabe would say), where to begin?
Let's start with Toru Watanabe, this wet blanket of a character with zero personality other than being horny all the time. How I wish the story was told from literally anyone else's perspective...
Don't get me wrong, Murakami writes beautifully and has a way with everyday words. However, as much as I enjoy his writing style, I hated reading it from Toru's perspective.
This book being Murakami's realistic novel, had shockingly unrealistic characters. Of course we can't ignore the elephant in the room, being how misogynistic was the portrayal of female characters here, and I won't go into much depth about that as you can see other reviews about it everywhere.
So we were talking about Toru. He checks the box for being the "nice guy" who is very "sincere" (as he calls himself in the last chapter), and who "understands" women. He is so "nice" in fact that he sleeps with his dead best friend's girlfriend when she is in a terrible mental state. And no, that's not the only time he takes advantage of vulnerable women. In later chapters he does the same thing with a girl he met in a cafe who was still in shock that his boyfriend had cheated on her. And later on each time he says "that's all I could do". (Excuse me?!)
He is so sincere that he slept with most women in the story whether he liked them or not and after Naoko's death he fucks her roommate in her memory.
He understood women alright. This is how he understood his "beloved" after her suicide: "The image of her was still too vivid in my memory. I could still see her enclosing my penis in her mouth, her hair falling across my belly..."
There is also a chance that I "just don't understand a man's sexual needs" as Nagasawa said. As much as I loathed his character, Nagasawa was right about something:
"Watanabe's practically the same as me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he's incapable of loving anybody. There's always some part of him somewhere that's detached."
This seemed to me an accurate description.
I won't bore you with how manipulative and loathsome Midori was, she even confessed to her own selfishness. But oh boy, she is NOT a representation of a "lively-looking girl". What the hell was that all about? Just because she's kinky, needy and curious about how guys masturbate? I read so many reviews that praised how she is a metaphor for life and how poor Naoko is death. And indeed poor Naoko. She was the only character I had a bit of empathy for. If I were to rewrite this story I would've written it from her perspective and it would end right when Toru took her virginity. Because that's when she actually died:
Naoko="I don't want anybody going inside me again. I just don't want to be violated like that again-by nobody"
About Reiko's character who seemed like the wiser one apparently, I tried seeing past that unnecessary horrible backstory with the 13 year old girl, and I tried to like her. And then, the last few pages ruined that for me. Why the hell did she sleep with Toru?! It was so uncalled for!!! And don't tell me it's all a metaphor for life and death because it doesn't make any sense unless you picture the meaning of life as being horny and having sex all the time.
In the end I finished this novel feeling empty. Nothing in particular in the plot resonated with me except for this part, hence 2 stars instead of 1:
"Thinking back on the year 1969, all that comes to mind for me is a
swamp - a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it's going to suck off my
shoe each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In
front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but the endless darkness of a
swamp.
Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The
people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I
hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on
the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John
Coltrane who was joined now by so many others. People screamed
there'd be revolutionary changes - which always seemed to be just
ahead, at the curve in the road. But the "changes" that came were just
two-dimensional stage sets, backdrops without substance or meaning.
I trudged along through each day in its turn, rarely looking up, eyes
locked on the never-ending swamp that lay before me, planting my
right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right,
never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction,
knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time. "