Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

I once had a girl, Or should I say she once had me ...

About Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami: This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.

My two cents

I'm giving you fair warning: I'm a Murakami fan. Although I have to admit that this particular book is unlike what I've come to expect of Murakami. I was expecting a cat somewhere (and there is), something odd to happen (ok, odd but not with the magical realism touches), and maybe a romance with an older woman (not really). In other words, I didn't get any of the trademark Murakami from this read.

What I did get was a book that showcases Murakami's "younger" voice, a vulnerable side and an uncanny ability to tell a simple yet affecting story.

Now, open up the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, the obvious namesake of this novel, and revel in this love that's a throw back to the 1960s. Because at the heart of this sans cats and May-December romances, this is what it is: a love story between two young people. Their love is a strange one, however, borne out of the death of their best friend Kizuki.

This is what makes the story so poignant, so moving, and so unbearably sad. To be so young and to be touched and deeply affected by the hand of death, for me it's unthinkable or even blasphemous for twenty-somethings on the cusp of their lives to have to deal with death.

Toru and Naoko's teenage friendship pre-death seems typical enough. With Kizuki's death, loss and pain becoming their strange binding element, one can only expect a relationship wrought with pain. And so it was: Naoko is held back from truly living, becoming emotionally fragile and retreating from the world. Toru, too is held back, his budding friendship and potential love with the gregarious, sexually liberated Midori, is held at bay.

Throughout the book, we are constantly reminded of death, loss, illness, and the mental anguish that comes with these. All the characters that tromp through the book has been touched in some way. Naoko and Midori are polar opposites in their response to death - Naoko's retreat was brutal and complete; Midori, meanwhile, challenged herself to put herself out there. Toru was a strange one to me - nice but no-so-nice - but then I will let male readers read more into his actions. Reiko, Naoko's roomie-companion in the mountain retreat and later Toru's friend, was an interesting study of fragility and strength. Toru's friend Nagasawa and Nagasawa's girlfriend, both less significant characters, likewise reiterate Toru's constant struggle with loss.

Set in Japan in the 1960s, this book takes place during a time when the world was fired up with revolt and idealism. It is filled with descriptions of Tokyo City life and of Japan's beautiful mountainsides. Book lovers will enjoy references to Toru's reading fare (that too allude to death and loss) such as The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

And with this, I leave you the lyrics to Norwegian Wood. 

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me
She showed me her room, isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?

She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair

I sat on the rug, biding my time, drinking her wine
We talked until two and then she said, "It's time for bed"

She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh
I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bath

And when I awoke I was alone, this bird had flown
So I lit a fire, isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?

Verdict: This is a beautifully told story.  I've read this three times already and each time I am just struck by its simplicity, the naïveté in voice in which it is told, and how profoundly sad this is. When I hear the song Norwegian Wood, I remember the incongruity of youth and idealism ... and sadness. May Reiko continue playing her guitar to Toru and Naoko.

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Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto

Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto

What can I say, Banana does it again! In three short stories, she manages to capture three women's stories in the entanglement of the simple act of sleeping, love, and of death:

• a sleepwalker because of a death of lover
• one haunted by the ghost/memory of a former lover's other girlfriend
• one who does nothing but sleep because her lover's husband is in a coma. 

Each is written in sparse yet beautiful prose. Each story is a gem with Banana's trademark otherworldliness.

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N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto

 

About N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto: In N.P., Banana Yoshimoto’s enchanting novel of uncanny subtlety, style, magic, and mystery, a celebrated Japanese writer has committed suicide, leaving behind a collection of stories written in English. But the book, itself titled N.P., may never be published in his native Japan: each translator who takes up the ninety-eighth story chooses death too—including Kazami Kano’s boyfriend, Shoji. Haunted by Shoji’s death, Kazami is inexorably drawn to three young people whose lives are intimately bound to the late writer and his work. Over the course of an astonishing summer, she will discover the truth behind the ninety-eighth story—and she will come to believe that “everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy.”

My two cents

The book in one sentence: Kazami is unexplainably drawn into a web of death, mystery linked to the translation of a collection of stories written in English, N.P.

Who would you recommend it to: Fans of Haruki Murakami; those who actually enjoy getting the uncomfortable chill of someone possibly watching you.

OK bits: You just never know what to expect. Yoshimoto has the same eerie otherworldly quality as Murakami. The writing is minimalist. The entire story quite short. But it delves into so many themes – love, incest, lust, obsession, insanity – you’ll shake your head in disbelief.

Boring bits: I think this is too short to get remotely boring. You’ll want to find out what the heck this 98th story is all about, and keep asking why, why, why?

Verdict: My first Banana Yoshimoto. It didn’t disappoint. I will definitely be looking out for more of her work. You should try her too!

Random quote: 

Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful enough to make you crazy.

The Official Banana Yoshimoto Site: http://www.yoshimotobanana.com

A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro

Why is it that every time I read a Japanese author, I feel that the atmosphere they so adeptly evoke is just important as the story? Just a few pages into A Pale View of Hills, I was already creeped out. If you have watched The Ring, you'll know what I mean - there isn't anything especially disturbing, but why are you?

I was also getting confused as more characters were slowly introduced; I was trying to get the jumble of characters sorted out and then there is a juxtaposition of imagery: Etsuko, the middle-aged mother grieving her daughter Keiko's suicide, with her younger daughter Niki. Shift to an earlier time where Etsuko recalls her friendship with the mysterious Sachiko who seems to be indifferent, even callous mother to her very disturbed young daughter, Mariko - who is left to her own devices, insists on having talked with imaginary people.

The story continues shifting between the two stories, present-day and past. We learn of the difficulties of Sachiko who seems well-bred, coming from a reputable family, yet falls into hard times and even desperate relationships with good-for-nothing men. Then there is the story of Etsuko and her Japanese husband, Jiro, who challenges many well-worn Japanese ideas about nationalism and education. But wait, isn't Etsuko now somewhere in Britain? Then you get an image of Etsuko with a rope entangled in her feet, and Mariko running from her, deathly afraid of ropes. Why, why, why?

I let questions like these go, figuring that the confusion would clear itself up soon enough. All the ambiguity was apparently a ploy, I was blindsided! What, what, what!?! WHO THE HECK WAS SPEAKING? Etsuko? Sachiko? Did I miss something? And I started furiously flipping back to previous pages, trying to figure it out.

But it isn't meant to be figured out, as there are so many ways to see it.

I initially found the characters rather one-dimensional. I was also put off with the rather cold manner of speaking which I figured was a problem with translation. But things aren't what they seem! Was Sachiko in fact Etsuko? Why such a startling parallelism in their lives? The chilling disconnect, or selective memory of Etsuko from the realities of her life and her daughter's suicide raises even more questions. Was she suffering from or even schizophrenic? Was she responsible for her daughter's condition? This novel explores the psychological coping mechanisms of how one deals with hurt, pain, and death, while leaving you and me, the reader to fill the gaps in.

I finished this book, absolutely in awe of Ishiguro's storytelling, and with so many questions in my mind. I want to re-read it to understand the nuances of the character shifts. And maybe I can even find an alternate interpretation too. A challenging read which I feel everyone should attempt.

More about this book:

• Wikipedia entry
• From here: Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel, won the Winifred Holtby Prize of the Royal Society of Literature, was hailed as "a first novel of uncommon delicacy..., an extremely quiet study of extreme emotional turbulence" by the Times Literary Supplement, and has been translated into 13 languages. Critic Cynthia F. Wong judges A Pale View of Hills, with a first person narrator who tells the story of the suicide of one of her daughters, as an excellent example of Maurice Blanchot's theory that narrators recall and relate past experiences to divest themselves of memories and their past. Like his next two novels, the protagonist of A Pale View of Hills, looks back on his or her life, trying to assess the events that have shaped it. The widow recalls her former life in Nagasaki, and while she never mentions the Bomb, it silently stands behind the events recounted in Ishiguro’s first novel.

{Originally here.}

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami

Synopsis of After the Quake by Haruki Murakami: The economy was booming. People had more money than they knew what to do with. And then, the earthquake struck. Komura's wife follows the TV reports from morning to night, without eating or sleeping. The same images appear again and again: flames, smoke, buildings turned to rubble, their inhabitants dead, cracks in the streets, derailments, crashes, collapsed expressways, crushed subways, fires everywhere. Pure hell. Suddenly, a city seems a fragile thing. And life too. Tomorrow anything could happen.

For the characters in Murakami's latest short story collection, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent 30 years hating one man: a lover who destroyed her chances of having children, and who now lives in Kobe. Did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Junpei's estranged parents also live in Kobe. Should he contact them? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. Four-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Eathquake man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. Katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save Tokyo from a massive worm burrowing under the Tokyo Security Trust Bank. "When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes" says Frog. "And right now he is very, very angry."

My thoughts

My second Murakami book after The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. His short stories prove that he doesn't have the same storylines and same themes. It was eerie reading Wind-up Bird then Kafka on the Shore one after the other ... there were so many parallels that I didn't enjoy Kafka on the Shore as much as I would have liked.

After the Quake made me feel empty, alone, isolated. It's a very lonely book. I don't recommend reading this if you are depressed; it'll only worsen your depression.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

From the back blurb of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search from his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.

As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder. Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world's great storytellers at the peak of their powers.

My take

Spoilers! It was unfortunate that I read this after Wind-up Bird Chronicle. But I found the storyline much much faster and much tighter, and enjoyed it. Although the many parallels to Wind-up Bird (in symbolisms and characters) can be a bit much. (I suggest you space reading Murakami, or you will get sick of hearing about cats and wells and mother-son tandems).

Anyway, I particularly liked how the story was set up - two seemingly separate characters who by some strange coincidences and events are connected. (And I was shocked to realize that it was someone close to Kafka who was killing all those cats that Nakata was talking to! Que horror!)

The talking cats, the falling fish, a man-woman ... all these are taken in stride and I tried not to be too surprised at how the strange are considered "normal." That is what is normal in Murakami's world, an ability to go beyond the expected and tie these into a coherent storyline.

Links:

• Wikipedia
• Bookbrowse review