Last week I read Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Many friends and colleagues have recommended Murakami over the years; however, this is the first of his I've read. Though I had heard any good things about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore I decided to go with the more convential but less Murakami "Norwegian Wood" not for any literary reason but simply because that is what was available at the library and I love eponymous song by The Beatles.
The theme of "Norwegian Wood" is responsibility: how responsibility changes as we mature and our responsibility for the happiness of ourselves and others. Murakami pays little attention the era of the 1960s, it seems as though the only reason for the novel's timeplace is its relation to the author's own experience. But no matter, for at its heart "Norwegian Wood" is a timeless coming of age love story.
I love quotations. I usually fill my notebook with them while reading. I did not find a lot of quotations from "Norwegian Wood" but the one's I noted are magical
I like you a lot ... like a spring bear.
and this exchange betweet the narrator Watanabe and his counterpoint Midori:
How much do you love me?
Enough to melt all the tigers in the world to butter.
Murakami's power is in his figurative language, elegant dialog, and unique lived-in worlds. I will smell the rain of Reiko and Naoko's mountain retreat for months to come.
