Toru, Naoko, Midori, Reiko and Nagasawa are all brilliant in their own ways.

The characters are what makes Norwegian Wood great. As they all struggle to keep their individual monsters at bay, life moves on and the characters find themselves in a world which is scarred by passion, grief, casual sex, weird friendships and death. Midori falls in love with Toru but it’s not as easy as it seems. In between comes Midori, who is fun and vivacious but just like the others, she is broken too. She harbours a million secrets and is fighting her own demons. Toru is in love with Naoko but Naoko is broken. Naoko, the then girlfriend of his dead friend also comes to Tokyo for the same reason and a chance encounter one day brings them together. Toru moves to Tokyo for further studies because he wants to get away from his melancholic past – the suicide of his best friend Kizuki has him shattered and his only way forward is to move on. The story is told in the first-person voice of a guy called Toru Watanabe. The setting tells us a lot about the Japan of the 1960s and what it was like to be a grown adult (amidst the weak-willed hypocritical student revolution) in those days. It’s a coming-of-age dark romance and drama which is melancholic and strangely peaceful at the same time. It is one of the most popular books of Murakami and is set in the Japan of the 1960s during the period of student revolution. Norwegian Wood is a book which derives its name from a famous 1965 song by Beatles. I realize that I shouldn’t have done that but I had heard so much about him and his dark writing that it was difficult not to. This was my first Murakami and quite obviously, my expectations were too high. It really takes a lot of courage for me to state it here that I had never read a Murakami before this. That’s why Reiko never plays it unless I request it.” – Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood I’m all alone and it’s cold and dark, and nobody comes to save me. “I don’t know, I guess I imagine myself wandering in a deep wood. “That song can make me feel so sad,” said Naoko.

Norwegian wood by haruki murakami