Norwegian Wood

THIS IS A BOOK REVIEW. NOT GONNA BE INTERESTING IF YOU HATE READING SERIOUS BOOKS OR HATE READING IN GENERAL. 

Reading this novel changed my life.

Okay, not to such dramatic extent but whoa, my whole perspective on who I am has turned upside down.

Simple synopsis to this book:

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before.


Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.


A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.


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This book stands out among the books I've read for one reason - I find myself drawn to the characters more than the storyline. But, before I bore you guys with a suicidal literature lecture, I'll give you a simple analysis on the novel's characters to understand why Norwegian Wood leaves me with such a huge emotional impact.


So, there's this guy, Toru Watanabe, the main character. He was twenty years old drama student who adopted quite a carefree attitude towards life. He cared for almost nothing but two girls, a few number of friends and his pocket money. He lived life in a way that makes me feel like a psychotic girl trying so hard for everything to be perfect. He did not give a damn about his future - not to say he was ignorant but he lived life as it went. He didn't like his studies but continued anyway since he had nothing to do. Not to say that his life was unexciting - his university life were filled with student revolutions and sexual excitement - but he simply chose not to be a part of it. Not his interest, I guess. 


So in the end, most of his actions - studying, hanging out with friends, weekly stroll with his dead friend's ex-girlfriend, part-time jobs, drinking and going to clubs, taking care of his new friend's dying dad, having sex with most of the female characters - stemmed from the dullness of life which had no passion since his best friend's death. He did all of that because he had nothing better to do, or he felt like there was an unexplainable need to do it. He worried of nothing. Why? Since our problems would be solved anyway. No money? Get a job. Bad grades? Go to class. Feeling lonely? Buy girls some drinks. 


Hail the almighty solutions to it all!


And here we are, worrying about our grades, parents, friends and future income... This Toru dude succeeds in giving a different view of life to me - something which real people fails to do every single day. Why worry when there's nothing to worry about?


Right. Ruby, look at yourself in the mirror!! *looking right now* 


Yet still, I find it hard to understand this dude. One major reason is the HUGE difference between the Malaysian youth society and those of Japan. If you're not familiar with the Japanese society and behavior, the book does come across as a sociological book to some extent. It discusses on suicides, depressions and sexual discovery - something we Malaysian youth can hardly relate to, in public at least. Four characters committed suicide in the story - one from a long-term depression, two for no apparent reason at all and one from a mixture of failed love, marriage and unhappy love life.


So many suicides that I find it almost... disconnecting. I kept wondering on whether the suicides were really that necessary. Seemed like they did not really fear death. But then, since I live in a predominantly Islamic society where suicide guarantees you hell and there has yet to be someone I know who died of suicide, the unrelated-ness is understandable. Still, it is interesting to dwell upon this new surrounding where suicide seems to be not-so forbidden.


But there's one thing this Toru dude had passion about - his dead friend's ex-girlfriend, Naoko. Naoko is basically the depressing element of the novel. Toru loved her. But she rarely made him happy. I mean, this girl was depressed and she gave out this weird 'depressing' vibe and talked about really sad stuffs like her dead boyfriend and how they did not get to do 'it' before he died. She had this mental problem of not able to express her feelings and she kept everything so bottled up inside that sometimes when she broke down and cried, it could get fucking intense. 


Yeah, I couldn't help to pity her sometimes. The relationship she used to have with that boyfriend - it was a clingy one. They had been together since they were three [WTF?] and she found herself unable to love anyone else after his death when they were seventeen. So yeah, the grief kind of paralyzed her emotionally and made it difficult for her to move on. Then, Toru appeared into her life a few years later, offering companionship and love. Our hero made it quite obvious - he loved her, willing to do anything for her but Naoko kept talking about the dead boyfriend. But she liked him, too. Just not as much as she loved the dead guy.


So she disappeared to a sanatorium to heal herself. Toru was left alone, only to find solace with her letters [which rarely arrived, anyway.] But then, still Toru was physically lonely. His days passed with emptiness - studies, work, sex - until he met Midori, who was the total opposite of Naoko. Of course Midori was, as per usual with adolescent girls, sad and had tons of frustrations with life yet she was a bit happier. She was friendly, talkative, bold and straightforward. Simply put, she's not one depressed chick. Being a guy whose life centred around deaths and depressions, I think Toru found that Midori's liveliness something fascinating and he grew attached to it. Finally, an interesting girl with a LIFE!


Lucky guy! Oh wait, Naoko didn't love him that much or not at all. It took him years to find that out. It took me almost at the end of the novel to find that out as well. She kept mentioning her dead boyfriend a lot. As if she was content to live with grief. So what if she got depressed of it? So long as the feeling of him still lingered. Honestly speaking, I suspect Naoko did not intend to heal herself at all.


Which was the exact reason she hanged herself at the end. Right after she fooled everyone that she was alright.


Damn. I wasn't expecting that.


Haih. Poor Toru. He had the extra room in his new flat for her. He was preparing for them to live together, to help her adapt to the normal life after the sanatorium episode. He did not particularly get so damn sad or whatever but her death did impacted him in such way that he ran away from the city for a month and lived as a homeless wandering aimlessly around Japan. Not to get over her but her memory and the side-effects she left him with.


The book centered not around the plot - indeed I think most of the sections had no function but to present Toru's view on life and his development from an innocent young man in love with a hopeless woman to a man trying to break free of his emotional confusion and grief. So, for me, I didn't feel the story was that interesting compared to the growth of Toru's character. Indeed, I think Toru's growth was basically the main storyline - not much on the love triangle and all.


But anyway, there's a film made based on this book sometime around last year. Just finished watching it last night. It has a very slow pace, most likely to get my friend, Palah asleep in less than ten minutes. But it fits my taste perfectly with its subtlety and mundaneness. BUT it can get pretty confusing if you decide to watch it before reading the novel. 

The poster looks sweet and all but man, 

don't be fooled! 

Toru. Yeah, the actor [Kenichi] did have a youthful confused look of a student and

I knew that he can act. He doesn't look that innocent but not that guyish-horny, either. 

Riko was cast as Naoko. I think it's perfect. She had this VERY fragile look and

hell yeah, can't you just feel the depression flowing from her sad sad eyes? And baby, 

Naoko in the film turned out to be five times more psychotic than Naoko in the book.

Not sure if it's good acting or good characterization but for me, I'll be glad

enough to not have to meet a Naoko in my life. Drains the energy out of you.

As for the actress for Midori - she's cute and all. And plays the character well.

But I somehow wished that she would look more fierce and bold like in the novel.

But then, the innocent looking girls are always the cheekiest one....

In conclusion, this novel makes me feel like living in Japan for a year. To place myself in Toru's shoes and see his perspective on his surrounding and society. Since I deem his emotional ride quite alien to a relatively normal Malaysian girl like me, I would like to explore such different, too. 

If you still consider yourself to be a young person, read this book. At least once. It will teach you lots of things. Some unhappy, perhaps but that's part of life. 

And yes, it contains lots of explicit scenes.

Not that I care, though. 

Ruby Jusoh is spending her holidays quite leisurely, her main activities being eating and putting on more weight, watching slow-paced melodrama movies, writing, painting, drawing and wondering of her own ambitions in life. Nothing much. Emptiness is hopelessness.