Palak Agrawal

NORWEGIAN WOODS This was my first Murakami Novel and I had a very pleasant reading experience throughout. It was kind of a mainstream novel mainly focusing on friendship, relationships ,death, grief and sexual desires. It had a placid narrative style and and it felt strangely peaceful reading it. Thinking about Toru's life, how he had to deal with losing people, kizuki died, Storm trooper disappeared, Naoko the love of his life hung herself, he still had to gather himself up and go on with his life. Midori was pretty much my favorite character. She had this refreshing, playful character with wild fantasies and her presence helped Toru cope with his losses and distance between him and Naoko. The one thing I disliked about the book was the last part where Reiko and Toru had sex. I felt it was totally unnecessary, infact a lot of sexual content in the book was extra and unnecessary. Reiko was just like a mother, elder sister and advisor to both Toru and Naoko and even after she returned that scene was kinda unnecessary. Overall it was an evocative and emotional book and yeah I would definitely recommend to give it a read.