Book Review: Norwegian wood by Haruki Murakami

I have a special corner for the books with the happy ending, or it seemed like one!

When I read Kafka on the Shore a few months back, I wasn't sure if I wanted to read more of Murakami. He weaves his special touch to the emotions that I knew reading his next work would be like embracing sadness and tears with open arms. Norwegian wood was a little different from his mystical Kafka but it was the most 'normal' touch I could have expected out of a writer like Murakami.

"I once had a girl or should I say she once had me"

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.”

I have yet to read a book which gives you such close view of after effects of loving someone. Book was like a love story with a beginning and a defined end but that end became a beginning of a new tale which eventually turned into love and then again the demise followed. It's like a train of tales of love and demises.

"Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that 18 years later I would recall it in such detail."

Book starts with the main protagonist Watnabe penning his thoughts of love for Naoko and can it get more beautiful than these lines

"Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."

These lines must have been underlined by most of introvert beings like me. Words don't come out the right way unless we pen it down.

"I often tried to write about her. But I couldn't produce a line. I knew that if that first line would come, the rest would pour itself onto the page, but I could never make it happen."

Beauty of the book is that all the characters are equally broken. The way they are dealing with the broken pieces of their life is completely different from each other. I always believed that one reads to warrant their beliefs. Atleast, I read to find someone else who thinks like me..People say love happens once, but heart which loved for the first time keeps on beating even when the person has left. A very strong pendulum exists between that heart and mind. A little imbalance can lead to forever disillusionment. One need to find the balance, and a reason to love another one to have normalcy back in life and that is why I liked this book. It very much conveyed in each and every love story that life goes on.

Leaving aside philosophy, Naoko, Watnabe's muse, is trying to unshackle herself from the memories of her past. Her uncomplete love holds her sanity, her future and her love for Watnabe.

Watnabe has been shown as an easy-going character cum narrator of the story. People like him are around us, nothing affects them or atleast nothing shows on their face. You don't know when they are happy and similarly you are clueless of their sorrows.

"No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be of no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning."

Midori - The reason of smile on your face. People like her are mostly misunderstood for they pretend that they share it all whereas it is only few who can understand the character as distorted as her.

"I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty five days a year, I was still in elementary school at the time - fifth or sixth grade - but I made up my mind once and for all.”

“Wow,” I said. “Did the search pay off?”

“That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”

“Waiting for the perfect love?”

“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.

“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”

“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”

“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?”

“So then what?”

“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”

“Sounds crazy to me.”

“Well, to me, that’s what love is…”

To me too that is what love is!!

Love is not serving what has been asked for, it is in giving what other person is looking for, without them having to ask for it!

It is looking past the silly innuendos for seeking your attention to the point where you notice the subtle hints of forever.

Murakami tricks you into believing what is written though most of the times it is for you to decipher the meanings that go so far.If you are picking a writer like Murakami, you are expected to read in between the lines.

I also liked the way Murakami plays with the characters other than the main protagonists. All the characters keep on coming and going out of the story leaving you to look for them in the next pages. Each character that you start of with comes to a mention later with a purpose.

"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment."

"What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal."

I can keep on gushing about it but let's just end it with another line from it which had me shed a tear.

"I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. ”

Ah, don't you cry reading this one :)

Happy reading!!