Review of Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood"

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 stars.

How to write a novel like Murakami:

1. Add one young male protagonist with Caulfield'esque detachment (and ability to divide readers) with little to no description and absolutely no redeeming or even definable traits.

2. Add one young female character with a name after a colour (or vegetable or something else uncommon or unique) and a completely unexplainable attraction to the main male protagonist.

3. Do not mix well.

4. Add two female supporting characters who are also, inexplicably, attracted to the main male protagonist. Make sure they have no defining traits that aren't inextricably linked to femininity or being a good wife. Also make sure they have reached Amy Dunne levels of 'Cool Girl' but with absolutely no irony.

5. Add lots of weird and uncomfortable sex scenes and make sure there is not even the slightest chance of homosexuality. In fact, even if the scene has homoerotic elements, make sure it's all about how strange and fucked up that is.

6. End the novel the same way you'd end any of your papers that you were trying to up the word count in in seventh grade, by summarising the whole point of the novel and making sure that you add some extra philosophical and universal bullshit to really feel like you're saying something deep.

I wish I could say I read this book so fast because it was compelling and impossible to put down; in reality, I was bored at work for 7 hours and it was raining.

I really loved Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, and so was excited to keep reading his work. What I'm starting to understand is that Murakami has a formula he follows (which is fine), and that sometimes it works, and sometimes (in this novel, for example), it really, really doesn't.

The whole novel had so many insensitive moments to mental health, complete with the whole 'mentally fragile woman who needs to be saved', and the 'hardened mental patient with a soft spot for the mentally fragile woman' tropes. It's irritating to read, because his prose is so gorgeous that you feel like its being wasted on such insipid and downright irritating characters.

Not to mention, I understand there is a cultural difference, but if I can go the rest of my life without reading a sex scene between a 13 year old girl and a 31 year old, I will be extremely fucking happy. The amount of infantilization in this novel made me supremely uncomfortable, and you can explain it away with a cultural difference, but male authors DO THAT SHIT HERE, TOO.

All in all, the novel was forgettable, and really one of his weaker works. It actually makes me want to stop reading his writing, now that I've seen so starkly exactly what formula he follows when writing. It would be refreshing to read his beautiful prose with a female character that wasn't magic and ethereal and had some substance, but I guess that won't be happening too soon.

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