by Cybil Orhan
Written by the adept Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood is about a man, named Toru Watanabe and his coming of age. He recalls his life from being seventeen years to twenty-one. He was shattered by the sudden suicide of his best friend Kizuki. His struggles to get back to normal life and how he tries hard to console Kizuki’s girlfriend Naoko and his love interest subsequently are aptly portrayed.
It is a tale of love lost and found, resilience and the turmoil that death of loved ones introduces in human lives. The author is adept at describing emotions and the presentation of emotional entropy strikes a chord with the reader. The tragedy lets loose by suicides and the emotional quagmires form the central theme juxtaposed with burgeoning sexuality. There is continuous settling and fleeting of hope. What author efficiently reverberates is ” Death exists, not as the opposite but a part of life.”
The central character loses his best friend to suicide. His coming to terms with this disaster is emotions evoking. He finds love and common distress and despair in his dead friend’s girlfriend who is grappling with pangs of heartache and depression and mental chaos. The author keeps reality intact throughout. The subject is dense but the narration is light and sinks deeply into the readers’ mind.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and loved the gravitas that exists in the author’s writing style.