Dark thoughts and suicide were prominent throughout the novel. Going through his (author’s) psychology, I felt Naoko’s character has a great void inside her due to personal loss which is reflected in the latter part of the novel. It’s written in a different time and culture. So the book is big on music, music is one of the central themes in the book.

I loved reading about Tokyo in its old 1960’s. The author paints an amazing image in every sense. It’s a very emotional and evocative book. One can see the reflection of his own life in his work. Most of his novels feature themes like jazz music, clubs and alcohol. He is certainly one of the most commercially successful authors given that this book itself had sold millions and millions of copies. Haruki Murakami is considered by a lot of people to be a prolific author to come out of Japan. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place.” The last lines were absolutely enthralling “All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. The ending leaves us wondering about him choosing between his future and past in the middle of nowhere. The female characters get romanticized in different ways throughout the novel. Looking at female characters from the gaze of a male protagonist who is speaking in the first person. Toru meets different people from all sorts of backgrounds and learns from their life experiences. Later in this novel, the author talks about mental health issues at different levels. Toru falls in love with his best friend’s girlfriend and then everything goes downhill from there to a time when an impetuous young woman named Midori marches into his life. The idea is that people not only get physically but also mentally and emotionally sick as well. The book then explores mental illness, suicide (which is the massive theme in this novel). So you basically get a little bit of background and then it goes straight into the part when he was nineteen in the late 1960s.

The book opens as he’s 37 on an aeroplane and he hears the song Norwegian Wood, which is the title and he starts recalling his younger years and this particular woman (Naoko) who he was in love with. The story centres on Toru Watanabe who for most of the novel is nineteen, going on 20.

Midori norwegian wood