"When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetous woman called Madori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past."

This was my first read by Murakami, and I thought it was a strange book, well written, but slightly depressing!

Participants for this ray:

ronsar (Greece, EU shipping)
AgdaAgulina (Czech Rep., prefers EU shipping but can go int'l if need be)*asked to be skipped*
Tsjara (Netherlands, prefers EU shipping but will ship int'l if need be; prefers to be at end of ray)
dutchbooky (Netherland, prefers EU shipping but will go int'l if need be)
bearyfriend (Singapore, prefers shipping to countries "nearby" or surface mail if need be)<- the book is here
rebeccaljames (USA, prefers US shipping)
JenKazoo (USA, US shipping)
Bug2004 (USA, US shipping only)
ghostofarose (USA, international shipping)

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

sent to ronsar!

Madnad sent me this book which I received today. Thank you Madnad. I started it immediately and I have already read two chapters. I like the writing style of Murakami's and I believe I will finish it soon in order to pass it to the next reader.

I liked the book very much, that's why I read it in the course of 3 days. I liked the writing style and the atmosphere and the translation and the cover of this book. Sometimes I found that it reflected my own thoughts. As soon as I have the next BCers's adress, I'm going to send it to her. Thank you again madnad for starting this ray with me.

AgdaAgulina asked me to skip her as she now has another copy of Norwegian Wood in her hands. So I contacted Tsjara who is the next in line and am waiting for her adress.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Just sent it to Tsjara in the Netherlands.

The book has arrived safely. I have a few other rings before this one (strange how they often seem to arrive around the same time), and I'll start with this one as soon as I have finished the others.
Thanks ronsar for sending the book, and madnad for sharing it. I look forward to read this one :)

I finished the book last night and I enjoyed it very much. The ending was a bit confusing, I just didn't expect it to end like that because there were still a few pages left. It was nicely written and quite easy to read, I was hooked from the start. Hmm.. and also a bit sad, all those young people killing themselves (poor parents, all your children committing suicide and leaving you behind..)

This is the first book I have read of Murakami and I look forward to reading more of his books.

I have PMed the next participant, but am still waiting for a reply.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Sent to Dutchbooky today.
Enjoy!

Received in the mail yesterday. Will start reading right away, as I have no other ringbooks at the moment. This will be my first Murakami. Thanks for sharing madnad, and Tsjara thanks for mailing!

Edit June 17: Still reading this book, sorry for keeping it so long. I will try to finish it by the end of June and send it along!

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

I did not finish this book. Could not really get into it and I think it is time for it to move on. I might try it again in future, or maybe another Murakami novel. Hopefully the next participant likes it better.

Book received with thanks. I'm reading another ring book right now and will start this soonest I can. Hope I'll enjoy reading this, as I did not finish his "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle".

This is much easier read than the Wind-up Bird Chronicle, though the pace can be quite slow. I like the name Midori, which reminds me of a Japanese drama I enjoyed watching long ago with the protagonist having this same name, and even wanted to give myself this name, haha. But of course that Midori is so very different from the character in this book who is a bit crazy and funny the things that come out from her mouth. Not sure whether it's the author's weird sense of humour or it's the Japanese culture, but I know their suicide rate is pretty high. Have pm'd the next in line and waiting for an addy.

Update 24-Sep:- Pending for ghostofarose's address, the rest all asked to be skipped.

Update 01-Oct:- Off to ghostofarose (AZ) book travels...

Update 14-Jan:- Wonder did the book arrived? I sent it via air, with a return-to-sender sticker behind the package if undelivered. Hope book is not lost.

The book arrived safely in Arizona. I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to journal it, it has been waiting patiently in my "Things to Do" pile. Thank goodness I was last on the list so that nobody has been anxiously waiting for it. I'm making it my top priority.

Norwegian Wood is completely different from Murakami's other books. It is a straightforward story of a young man's coming-of-age and his relationships with two main women and two others who are secondary yet also important. There is nothing of Murakami's trademark surrealism and paranormal in this book. In an afterword from the author, he tells how there was an uproar in Japan when this book came out. People felt betrayed by it, accusing him of abandoning his unique personal style for commercialism. But Murakami says that he wrote the book as an challenge to himself, to prove that he could write in a realistic style as well.

And he does succeed at that, although I did miss the creativity of his usual style. As the title suggests, the story takes place in the 1960's when the Beatles were at the height of their popularity. Toru, the main character, is a university student in Tokyo. It was a time of unrest and student takeovers of campus buildings in Japan as well as in America (which surprised me - I had thought that the student rebellions of the 60's were due to the Vietnam War which Japan was not involved in.) Although student unrest is always included in descriptions of the book, I felt that it didn't really play a large part in it.

Toru is a quiet young man, mostly a loner. He is closely involved with two women - almost-girlfriends - and loves all four of the women in different ways. But with each of them, there are obstacles and he never really gets a true intimate partnership going with any of them. Two of the women are mentally ill (he meets one as the roommate of the other in their mental hospital.) The mental illness is an interesting aspect of the novel, but it is very vague. Except for the suicide attempts of one woman, they didn't come across as mentally ill to me. The suicidal one was somewhat detached and depressed, but within normal range, and her depression seemed to be a normal response to grief rather than clinical depression. Also, the mental institution was really more of a utopian community than a hospital or institution. I felt that these were women who preferred to withdraw from the world to live a serene life of contemplation, rather than patients suffering from mental illnesses. Perhaps in another place and time they would have been cloistered nuns.

I admired the respect, and even tenderness, that the author showed in his treatment of one the of women who was much older than Toru. She was portrayed as equally desirable and worthy of being loved by a young man, as the young girls. Beautiful . . . and something you never see in Western literature.

Norwegian Wood is a quietly wise and deep novel about the subtle nuances of relationships and how complicated - perhaps impossible - even the simplest and most fundamental relationship between a man and a woman can be.

(389 pages)

I will be making a wild release of this book tomorrow, Friday Oct. 15, 2010 at approximately noon. I will leave it in a seat pocket on a Continental Airlines aircraft on a flight between Phoenix AZ and Houston TX, USA.

I hope the book goes somewhere interesting!