Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami, 1987
Romance Young adultContemporary fiction
A Tokyo student is pulled between a fragile girl from his past and a loud, alive girl in his present. Memory, desire, and grief, set to Beatles songs. A quiet Tokyo story of memory, longing and grief, told in a lyrical, unhurried voice that lingers on songs, rooms and absence.
Feels like melancholy, longing and tenderness. About memory, love and death.
Who it’s for
You may like this if you are drawn to reflective coming-of-age romance and friendships shaped by loss. Its melancholy mood and slow, memory-heavy stretch around grief can be heavy going if you want a lighter read.
Why read it
It offers an intimate look at first love, grief and the way memory reshapes both, with Murakami's plain, song-filled atmosphere.
A page from the book
The face you love takes longer to summon every year.
The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute-like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand-ever more distant from the spot where my old self used to stand. And nothing but scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a movie. Each time it appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. “Wake up,” it says. “I’m still here. Wake up and think about it. Think about why I’m still here.” Haruki Murakami.Before writing full-time, Murakami ran a Tokyo jazz bar called Peter Cat for seven years, working until the early hours and writing at his kitchen table.
Books that feel like this
More by Haruki Murakami
1Q84
Haruki Murakami, 2009
A Tokyo woman with a hidden trade, a maths teacher and a cult's story converge under two moons in a parallel 1984.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami, 1994
An unemployed Tokyo househusband answers a stranger's phone call and finds his ordinary life starting to come apart.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Norwegian Wood for me?
- You may like this if you are drawn to reflective coming-of-age romance and friendships shaped by loss. Its melancholy mood and slow, memory-heavy stretch around grief can be heavy going if you want a lighter read.
- What is Norwegian Wood like?
- A quiet Tokyo story of memory, longing and grief, told in a lyrical, unhurried voice that lingers on songs, rooms and absence. Feels like melancholy, longing and tenderness. About memory, love and death.
- What should I read after Norwegian Wood?
- If you liked Norwegian Wood, try Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert), Dear John (Nicholas Sparks) and The Midnight Library (Matt Haig).
A taste of the feed
Some love stories are made mostly of the time in between.
I fell in love with her when we were together, then fell deeper in love with her in the years we were apart. Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can’t believe that ours didn’t go on forever.
Dear John · Nicholas Sparks
The gap between a mother's corrections and a stranger's kindness.
It was hard not to compare Mrs Elm to her mother, who treated Nora like a mistake in need of correction. For instance, when she was a baby her mother had been so worried Nora’s left ear stuck out more than her right that she’d used sticky tape to address the situation, then disguised it beneath a woollen bonnet.
The Midnight Library · Matt Haig
What a house becomes when no one has been living in it.
“It was raining when Rahel came back to Ayemenem. Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire. The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat. The walls, streaked with moss, had grown soft, and bulged a little with dampness that seeped up from the ground. The wild, overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives. In the undergrowth a rat snake rubbed itself against a glistening stone. Hopeful yellow bullfrogs cruised the scummy pond for mates. A drenched mongoose flashed across the leaf strewn driveway.
The God of Small Things · Arundhati Roy
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