I read a review of this book in The Guardian years ago (this one, I think). It sounded absolutely fantastic, and I’ve wanted to read it ever since. But I only got round to buying it recently.
I was aware, of course, of the danger of approaching a work with unreasonably-raised expectations, so I tried not to. You can’t make yourself think “This won’t be very good,” when you actually think, “This should be pretty good.” The trick, therefore, is to convince yourself to have a slight seed of doubt. I’m not totally sure how well that can ever work, though.
I did enjoy the book, however: it starts with a light, easy style, and has an endearing central character in Sumire. The unnamed (though referred to in the back-cover blurb as “K”) narrator is a slightly-annoying, madly-but-unrequitedly in love with Sumire figure. They met at university. Sumire dropped out to write; the narrator went on to become a schoolteacher.
Shortly after the start of the book, Sumire, who has until then seemed largely devoid of any sexual or romantic feelings, falls in love with an older, married, woman; who then gives her a job as her PA. Sumire’s love is also unrequited; indeed, unspoken.
It’s when they go on a business trip to Europe, which culminates in a holiday on a Greek island, that something strange happens.
It is a curious book. It’s hard to work out what is supposed to have happened to Sumire. It is, until then, so much a realist novel that it is hard to believe that the apparently-fantastic, dream world sequence that is all the explanation we get, is meant to be taken literally.
Then when the narrator, having gone to Greece to help find out what happened to Sumire, returns home to Japan, there is an apparently-unrelated section concerning one of his pupils. He has been having a sexual relationship with the pupil’s mother, so when the boy gets into trouble, she calls him to help. This section really appears to have no connection to the rest of the story,, and no bearing on what happened to Sumire.
So while I enjoyed reading it, on looking back over it, it seems that it is deeply flawed. Or maybe I’m flawed, because I failed to fully understand it.
I expected that it would inspire me to read more of his work, but it hasn’t: or not yet, at least.
3 Comments
Murakami unsettles me as an author. I find that I never know what is going to happen when I read a book. I either become completely enraptured (Norwegian Wood) satisfactorily bemused (Hard Boiled Wonderland and the edge of the world) or unable to finish the book (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle). I do love his descriptive style but sometimes it all gets a bit too odd for one.
That’s interesting. I read in one of the Guardian articles while I was looking for that review, that everyone who reades Norwegian Wood loves it. Your experience seems to agree. Maybe I should try that one next.
I love Murakami, and I enjoyed Sputnik Sweetheart but I wouldn’t say it was his best. The mesh of everyday and surreal sequences are common occurences in all his novels apart from Norwegian Wood which is a sweet book but not particuarly inspiring. A Wind up Bird Chronicle is my favourite but can be hard work,Hard-boiled Wonderland.. could be seen as an SF novel and is very beautiful and poignant at the end (it also has voracious librarians and who could resist that?).A Wild Sheep Chase is a noirish surreal tale but is one of his most accessible. I would say that Murakami was mostly (in that hackneyed term) “magic realism” because lazy critics aren’t sure what box to put him in and if they call him that then they don’t have be to concerned themselves by what his is actually doing. He’s mostly interested in indentity and when considering the structure of his books I find it helpful to remember he’s a jazz freak and it’s sometimes structured spiralling and sometimes free expression.