Friday, May 19, 2006
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Marakami
Like most books on my shelf, this too has been langusihing for a while. I expected it to be another surreal read (thats the problem - expectation kills almost all anticipation) but the book was was tidy read.
Interesting, engaging and unpredictable to some extent. The book kept me going till the last page, at which point, I felt that while it was not the expected end (I still prefer good happy ends where the boy gets the girl), my mind had galloped ahead expecting many more letters from Naoko to Toru and many more conversations with Midori.
A story about Toru Watanabe remembering life when he was just beginning to discover a life of ending adolescences and losing important in your life and how it is a way of life - pleasant or not. The various people he meets and how each teaches him something (a lot like life eh) and its finally a story. Some drama and some mundane-ities and its all over.
Some parts are really sad.. like Midori getting used to funerals or how sex and love can be so skillfully detached and that its so incredibly common. Its like these things happen but you dont want to actually accept that they do.
One part I really liked was the unusual settings Toru gets to know the women in his life - on a terrace with a fire on, in a sanatorium, in trams. This too mirrors life. I mean, it so happens with me that while driving back home, nearing my destination and I am bang in the midst of a superb conversation that I remember for years to come. Oh I always have them in unusual settings - in temples, by the shores of a river while waiting to go rafting, waiting for the soup to arrive at a road side stall or waiting for the movie to begin... such conversations always stay with u...
I did not get understand why this is such a revolutionary book because it is not like his typical writing, where I always most certainly have to go back and read the lines again.. but yes the language is so fluid and delicious that you want to cherish phrases as you read them.
Here are some interesting reviews of the book.
Interesting, engaging and unpredictable to some extent. The book kept me going till the last page, at which point, I felt that while it was not the expected end (I still prefer good happy ends where the boy gets the girl), my mind had galloped ahead expecting many more letters from Naoko to Toru and many more conversations with Midori.
A story about Toru Watanabe remembering life when he was just beginning to discover a life of ending adolescences and losing important in your life and how it is a way of life - pleasant or not. The various people he meets and how each teaches him something (a lot like life eh) and its finally a story. Some drama and some mundane-ities and its all over.
Some parts are really sad.. like Midori getting used to funerals or how sex and love can be so skillfully detached and that its so incredibly common. Its like these things happen but you dont want to actually accept that they do.
One part I really liked was the unusual settings Toru gets to know the women in his life - on a terrace with a fire on, in a sanatorium, in trams. This too mirrors life. I mean, it so happens with me that while driving back home, nearing my destination and I am bang in the midst of a superb conversation that I remember for years to come. Oh I always have them in unusual settings - in temples, by the shores of a river while waiting to go rafting, waiting for the soup to arrive at a road side stall or waiting for the movie to begin... such conversations always stay with u...
I did not get understand why this is such a revolutionary book because it is not like his typical writing, where I always most certainly have to go back and read the lines again.. but yes the language is so fluid and delicious that you want to cherish phrases as you read them.
Here are some interesting reviews of the book.
# posted by Janaki @ 12:31 pm 
