Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (Book Review)

Hello everyone and welcome some more life lessons gleaned from books.

Big thank you to those who kept recommending me Norwegian Wood. Finally, I bought myself a copy to have in my own Murakami collection.

This one was a doozy. Lots of major life themes about primarily, making the choice to "choose good - choose life" and all that it entails - the good and the bad; the great people and the worst people who enter our lives and make it better - or turn it upside down. Ultimately, it's how we choose to look at life that will help us go on our path. The women in this book have been scarred by the men in their lives: some can handle it, others can’t. But, women can also have their own dark sides.

There's strong themes here in this book, death, grief, mental illness, pedophilia, social isolation, depression, PTSD, trauma, sex. Ultimately, it's about life and how the main character who goes through his personal demons to transform into adulthood.

My lesson is that ultimately, everyone is grieving in some way. Everyone is suffering their own trauma in some way. Everyone is dealing with their demons in their own way. Others cannot move or grow from it - others can by using others for their gain, while others accept it as something that happened in their life but which does not define them.

This book reminded me of Anton Checkhov's short story, A Nervous Breakdown where I likened the highly empath character of Vasily in it to Murakami's Naoko. Both characters trying to make sense of the world but at the same time extricating themselves from it because it's too overwhelming for them to understand the actions of others towards females. It also has a heavy influence of my favourite book of all time, The Catcher in the Rye. Toru Watanabe is Vasiley who is Holden Caulfield.

But what’s the connection to The Great Gatsby?! You’ll have to find out because I’m now in the middle of reading that.

Over to you. Have you read this book?

What are some of the life lessons you got out of it?

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