REVIEW: NORWEGIAN WOOD

My first encounter with one of Haruki Murakami's novels was when I happened to pop into Barnes and Noble to get something and saw the 1Q84 cover. The cover was the first to grab my attention and it was also at the time that I was taking an Introduction to Asian Literature course that piqued my interest since we were reading some contemporary writers like Ryunosuke Akutagawa and others. I'm also a tumblr junkie and I came across several excerpted quotes and pieces from Murakami's other works. Those alone were so beautifully written that I wanted to delve into the experience. What I got was well...

I probably hyped up the writing too much that my expectations became too high. I should have known that having a book also be adapted into a film meant nothing to the quality of the story--merely the popularity of it. So, I entered the world of Norwegian Wood and came out incredibly disappointed except for a few nice quotes here or there pulled out of context. I'd like to put in a brief disclaimer now that I finished this book a couple of months ago so the exact details are a bit fuzzy to me, but I will be addressing the larger issues of the story that have remained relatively clear even long after I have put it down. What does it say when I can't remember much about a novel except the bad parts of it?

My biggest issue with the novel were the characters themselves. As a writer, that's not a very good thing to have. Murakami's characters in Norwegian Wood are characteristically defined by their gender. The men in the book are very flat, very unsentimental, levelheaded, but nonetheless sexy and sex gods. The women on the other hand (both main, supporting and unnamed female characters) are mentally dysfunctional, needy and too emotional. They also cling onto the male characters without any outside identity of their own.

While there was supposed to be a plot, I never found it. Norwegian Wood came out to be a very long long tale about a guy reminiscing on this manic pixie dream girl that was his dead best friend's girlfriend and her mental decline and his sex stories along the way. 

I have another Murakami book on my shelf and I'm a bit more hesitant to read it, but I'l try it out and hope it's at least better than this.