'Norwegian Wood' Is Another Fiction Fail
Had a post mulling around in my head for a few days now, which is a half-assed review of Haruki Murakami's critically acclaimed novel, Norwegian Wood. It was one of the books sitting on my bookshelf since last year that I never got around to reading, so I picked it up once winter break started two weeks ago.
Norwegian Wood is a coming-of-age novel set in Japan during the '60s. It's about mental illness and sex and suicide and discovery.
It is also shite.
I know I'm very particular about writing styles that I like, especially when it comes to fiction, and this generally means that I hate a lot of fiction, but I try to always give a book/author a chance. I'd never read any Murakami before, and for years kept seeing the cover staring at me in every bookstore I walked through so finally I yielded. I got to page 189 until I could no longer go on. And I don't intend to finish it.
It started out alright. I laughed a couple of times, even while sitting in Au Bon Pain at 7am eating a spinach and cheese croissant with book in one hand. Storm Trooper, a minor character, yet the most fascinating, disappeared without any explanation part way throught the story. He was the only character that showed any promise. Even the characters in the novel acknowledged his disappearance as a loss, so what gives?
The novel went downhill from there.
All of the female characters in the novel are boring and unbelievably obnoxious.
Naoko, Midori, and that weird older lady, Reika - all are weak in their own ways. I can't relate to their dramatic woe-is-me crap. Why Murakami had to portray all three women that way is beyond me. And the fact that the narrator, Toru, is a magnet for the three women like he's a savior-type, philosophical good guy was a laugh. All the guy did was eat, and I found this information constant and unnecessary.
I don't know what it is, but some writers describe eating in a cringe-worthy way.
I remember attempting to read a Jodi Picoult novel some years ago, at the behest of a Jodi Picoult fan, and was on the second page or so where one of the characters was at a dinner party and was talking with her mouth full. And Picoult illustrated this with something along the lines of, "...she said, her mouth full of egg roll." And I wanted to set the book on fire. I think it has to do with my being a visual person, so images form in my head as I read, which correspond with the text. All I could see was some piggish lady talking with her mouth open and bits of Chinese food spraying out of it, while the people seated around her at the table didn't mind this grown woman showing no amount of decency. Unrealistic. Which is why I tossed the book then and there.
Murakami does the same with Toru. He comes off as gluttonous, and what can I say, it's unbecoming. Maybe it's odd that I pick up on such a trivial detail, but it was hard for me to ignore. I wouldn't be oblivious to something so pronounced in real life, so a book is not that much different.
References are made several times to Holden Caulfield and Catcher In the Rye, which critics have also compared to Norwegian Wood. People are split on Catcher In the Rye - you either hate it or you love it, or you didn't bother reading it. I personally know two people who couldn't get into it and didn't bother reading past the first chapter.
I read it at the right age, at a time when I felt hopelessly alone in the world and was rebelling. So that novel means something to me, even though I haven't read it since my teens. To compare it to Norwegian Wood though is a bit of a stretch. One of the worst things about this novel is that the dialogue between characters falls flat, being a bunch of repetitive "deep thoughts" that go on forever. To borrow from Tori Amos, who is appropriate, coincidentally for this genre, "what's so amazing about really deep thoughts?" Because really deep thoughts are meaningless without substance, or even the most minimally likeable characters from which those really deep thoughts emanate.
Some authors successfully portray their self-reflective characters as relatable and real, intelligent and authentic. Not so the case here. Those endless paragraphs in the novel seem incredibly unnatural, which is what makes the three women so unlikeable and childish. Add to that their sexual inadequacies and that's pretty much the entire novel. Or up to page 189. Don't know what happens after that.
I'm going to stop here before I am reminded of more reasons to hate this novel. Had I known it was another one of those stories about troubled youth and experimental phases I would've passed to begin with, because those books all say the same thing.
