Norwegian Wood — Haruki Murakami
Once long ago when I was still young, when the memories were far more vivid than they are now, 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 will pour itself onto the page, but I could never make it happen. Everything was too sharp and clear, so that I could never tell where to start -the way a map that shows too much can be useless.
A world where Murakami’s magical realism doesn’t occupy reading tables and shelves would have been a deeply disturbing dystopian scenario for most books lovers. Considering such a naturally high expectation from a writer of his stature, who in his own capacity redefined the very craft of quality writing, Norwegian Wood can appear at first too unlike him, too answered, or straightforward, but a marvellous literary treat at that. There is a deliberate attempt at simplicity to serving the plot, a rarity to Murakami’s writing history, and a subtle euphoria in exploring themes of love, solitude, and licentiousness which watermark the novel throughout. Published in 1987, the book is filled with euphemisms of pop, college politics and western influences on the Japanese youth.
Toru Wannabe lives piecing together his broken heart post a suspenseful and tragically concluded love affair with his deceased friend’s girlfriend, Naoko. In his friend’s demise Toru shares with Naoko the void, the choking grief, yet it is soon clear to him that her silence is the only response he will get from her. Nevertheless, he plummets into the quick sand of love, trapped in an urge to blanket her in a future where they can abandon the dead.
As Toru finds himself as a college student in Tokyo, Naoko slips deeper into a web of guilt, fear and eventually into absolute derangement. Toru is unaware of the extent of Naoko’s mental condition, busied in the bustle of Tokyo, the eccentricities of his roommate, and the noble attentions of a pretty college girl, Midori. For him the ubiquity of unrequited afflictions seems a badge to wear on his sleeve, like a permanent melancholy that he must live in despite the world’s superfluous speeding to happiness.
Now though Midori is his immediate present, in a world where Naoko heaves heavily in his heart, he must live in a tilted duality until the dust settles. Perhaps he has lost Naoko long back. His words will pass by her, his assurances will be lost in hearing, and together they will hobble miles of depression and aloneness. But Toru will not give away the last of chances to revive her, bring her from the dead to the living.
Norwegian wood is a raw meditation on the nature of love, and the human flights in the power of its pinions. It’s a John Updike’s touch of dark humour, a Khalid Hosseini’s earnestness, a cry of mortality from Murdoch, and in all fairness a beautiful intricate journey in the magnificence of life. It is a healthy withdrawal from his writing, dancing in its own unique symphony.
