Norwegian Wood

Now 37, Toru Watanabe arrives in Germany on business and as the plane touches down an orchestral version of the Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood’ plays from the speakers. As always he’s reminded of his beautiful, fragile friend Naoko and their time together in Tokyo 18 years earlier, when in the late 60’s he was a student, Norwegian Wood was her favourite song and they were both coming to terms with the death of their best friend, Kizuki.

This is an intimate book, a tight cast of characters surround Toru, as he negotiates the confusion of moving on with his life and the deep sorrow that he feels. Naoko is beautiful but emotionally fragile and spends much of the novel in a mountainside psychiatric hospital, where she becomes close friends with her room mate Reiko a talented musician. Nagasawa is a student friend who, despite having a long term girlfriend, has a habit of trailing bars for one night stands, a habit that starts to include Toru and then there’s Midori, Naoko’s complete opposite. She’s a free spirit, impetuous and alive to adventure and could be his future.

This is a book of intense friendships and conversations. Naoko and Midori might be opposites in temperament and it’s easy to see them as one signifying Toru’s past and the other his future but they both demand a level of his attention that I thought was quite exhausting. Their conversations are open and candid, at times explicitly so and that’s when the book didn’t sit comfortably with me, I just didn’t really believe it. It is a man remembering his youth so perhaps this is how he likes to think his girl friends spoke with him, but the memories are too poignant for that; unfortunately, I think it’s an unperceptive handling of female sexuality.

Japan is fantastic: the quietness of the mountains or pounding the pavements in Tokyo, the nightlife and the student uprisings which break in every now and then like a Greek chorus, are all full of life. And the food, which is everywhere, is never glossed over. If they sit down to eat, which is often, we always know what they’re eating. Fried fish with green salad, miso soup, boiled vegetables and rice, lots of curry and noodles, almost every page it seems has someone eating. My favourite was when Toru visited Midori’s father in hospital; feeling hungry but unable to leave his bedside he finds some mini cucumbers in the locker, wraps them in nori and dips them in a little soy sauce. Together, the young student and the dying old man consume cucumber after cucumber, which I thought was as delicious as it was companionable.

I think if I had read this as a teen I would have loved it. The characters are very well drawn and all could stand independently outside of the world of Norwegian Wood. Coming to terms with adulthood, which includes the mundane tasks, navigating our way around different relationships and facing the death of loved ones are all situations we can empathise with but I just didn’t care as much as I wanted too, perhaps I’m being cynical, but I couldn’t believe in their conversations and they seem pivotal to this whole memory of Toru Watanabe.

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