My Ideas Of Words

Norwegian Wood was the first book by Murakami that I ever read. To thoroughly immerse myself in his world, I started with his most well-known book. This novel took me five days to finish, which was a personal best for me given that I had never read a book so quickly before given that it was about 400 pages long. The characters and writing style of the novel blew me away. This was the first book I had ever read that was written in the first person, which was unusual for me but, in my opinion, improved the book.

The story is set in 1960s Japan and follows a young man called Toru Watanabe, who is disturbed by the suicide of his best friend, Kizuki. He falls in love with Naoko, the girlfriend of Kizuki, as his death connects them. Toru, throughout the story, struggles with life’s biggest challenges such as love, death, and loneliness.

The characters are this book’s greatest asset, in my opinion. Murakami excels at making the reader feel a connection to the characters. You grow to care about the characters’ hardships and their plans for resolving certain issues they face. Toru struck me as being such a believable character. Reading this novel almost makes you experience his emotions. As you can understand how Toru’s attitude changes during the novel thanks to the first-person perspective he has in it, you can more easily relate to him.

This is a story that, while to some, may be called a sad love story because of the tragedies it contains, it also teaches us a few valuable truths about life. The primary lesson I took away from the book was how to deal with hardship. The main characters, especially Toru, experience various challenges during the novel  and you get to witness how they respond to them.

If I had to recommend one book to all book lovers, it would be this one. Once you’ve completed reading this book, it will likely impact you and leave you with lasting memories of the plot. This book is a great place to start reading Murakami if you need help figuring out where to begin. I urge you, everybody, to read this classic novel.