Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood is a book about life, and death, about learning lessons, and living through the changes within us when things beyond ourselves happen. The story is full of well developed characters; we follow the life of Watanabe and the relationships he has with Naoko and Midori, the two main female characters. Naoko was the girlfriend of his best friend. When his best friend commits suicide, he falls in love with Naoko. But the suicide affects Naoko profoundly, and she checks in to a sanitorium. In the meantime, Watanabe finds himself going through the motions of living, and growing up, and meeting Midori -- a girl who falls in love with him, even when she knows he's in love with Naoko, and that things are complicated.

While startling, his approach to sex in general is refreshing. No strange combination of words to tell you "in code" what they're talking about. Convo's regarding sex are open and forthright, unlike some of the books these days that mask body parts with cutesy phrases. I also wrote down "Interesting ideals about how sex seems to work for me, contrasting with how it works for women." His insights are good about women, considering the author is a man.

Some of the passages that seem to speak volumes:

• "Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life."
• "When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up."
• "That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have for happiness where you can find it, and not worry too much about other people. My experience tells me we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."
  

When you love someone so deeply, so profoundly, their memory never fades away. Images and memories of Naoko came rushing back at Watanabe often as he learned to struggle through life with the living. "No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning."

Murakami pulls you in from the first pages, and its hard to put the book down. I read this with my best friend, and we compared notes all along the way. Thought provoking, and moving.