Saturday, June 23, 2007

Norwegian Wood

Written by Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite writers, Norwegian Wood tells us the story of a Japanese college student, Watanabe, who's drifting along amidst the rebellion of 1960's Japan. He sees the flaws in their ideology and their activism and keeps his distance from this movement.

He gets involved with his now deceased best friend's girlfriend Naoko and with Midori, a college student he meets at a restuarant. Like all Murakami's novels, this reads smooth and jazzy. The characters all stand outside the mainstream and observe, comment and try to live in a different, better, rather lyrical or perhaps listless way. None of the relationships are clear cut or easily defined.

The New Yorker often prints his short stories and this link has a few which will give you a taste of his style: Murakami's Short Stories

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