This feels like a spiritual successor, of sorts, to The Catcher in the Rye. While Catcher is most certainly a breezier read, taking place over a few days and 277 pages, as opposed to Norwegian Wood's year and 386 pages, it's hard to tell which has more emotional depth; Catcher's depressive crisis or Norwegian Wood's slow, mellow depression.
I'd heard a lot about Norwegian Wood before I started to read-this is the book that everyone in Japan has read, that it forced Murakami to move countries because of the media attention, that this book could change your life. Unfortunately, it seems I am not one of the people whose life will be changed because of it.
I liked it, don't get me wrong, but there just seemed to be something missing. Maybe it was the way suicides were brought up, and promptly brushed to the side. Maybe it was the way I read it-disjointed and as a footnote. Maybe it was the way Toru didn't do anything; yeah, he slept with some girls, yeah, he went to places, yeah, things happened to him-but he seemed passive whenever he did it. They were always at the prompting of some other character, be it Nagawasa, Midori or even Naoko.
I think that at the end of the day, it started out strong, but ended poorly (especially the way
). That just ruined the book's representation of relationships for me-especially hers, despite the fact that her story was one of the highlights of the story before.
Rating: Four stars
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