Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

In January I participated in the Norwegian Wood readalong hosted by Alice at Reading Rambo.  Before this, I had only read one book by Murakami: After the Quake, a collection of short stories.

Norwegian Wood is narrated by Toru Watanabe, a university student in 1960's Tokyo who befriends two extremely different young women: delicate, troubled Naoko and vivacious, fascinating Midori.  Naoko, haunted by the suicide of her boyfriend and struggling with her own debilitating depression, soon leaves Tokyo for an idyllic retreat in the mountains.

Besides a few awkward turns-of-phrase, which I assume are a result of translation, Murakami's writing is clear and observant.  Occasionally, I found myself underlining passages, like this one:

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking (31).

In fact, this one sentence pretty well sums up the way Toru wants to be seen by others.  He is the Original Hipster (O.H., if you will).  He reads American classics when apparently no one else in the entire country of Japan has even heard of them.  He thinks political movements are overrated, and would rather walk the streets of Tokyo with an angst-filled stride.  He makes fun of his kind-hearted roommate because that's the only way he can get people to laugh at his jokes.

In short, I was not a fan of Toru.  The characterization in Norwegian Wood is spotty in general; Naoko has the personality of a beautiful piece of cardboard, and several other main characters have only one or two defining personality traits.  The exception here is Midori, who holds the reader's interest from the start and acts like a living, breathing woman--inconsistent, lively, and witty.  The only unconvincing thing about her is that she likes Toru.

While the basis for Norwegian Wood is interesting and the scenes with Midori are full of great quotes and funny moments, the majority of the novel was a slow, depressing read.  Here's a paragraph that I feel sums up the general mood of the book:

Thinking back on the year 1969, all that comes to mind for me is a swamp--a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it's going to suck my shoe off every time I take a step.  I walk through the mud, exhausted.  In front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but an endless swampy darkness (236).  

Overall, I'm glad I read Norwegian Wood as part of a readalong, as reading it with others helped me to better pinpoint the few things I really liked about the novel, and consequently I was able to enjoy the reading experience much more than if it had been solitary.

Norwegian Wood © Haruki Murakami and Vintage International, 1987.  291 pages.

The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto

The Lake  is a short novel about the psychological effects of childhood trauma.  The book is narrated by Chihiro, a young woman working as a painter in Tokyo and dealing with the recent death of her mother.  The story's main focus is on Chihiro's relationship with Nakajima, her troubled neighbor.  Gradually their friendship becomes something more serious, and she discovers that he is living with a dark secret.

The novel starts slow, detailing Chihiro's day-to-day worries, like her new commission to paint a mural on the wall of an educational center that may or may not be torn down in the near future.  The foreshadowing of  Nakajima's Big Secret begins almost from page one, although "foreshadowing" might be too delicate of a description.  The reminders about Nakajima's mysterious past are frequent and contain the subtlety of blunt-force trauma to the head.  Here are a few vaguely ominous examples:

All I knew about his past was that he had been through something terrible (26).

At some point, as I was talking, it hit me how deeply concerned about Nakajima I was.  That I wanted to know, sort of, except at the same time I didn't (60).

I was slowly starting to figure it out.  It wasn't anything more than a guess, but I had a vague understanding, at least, of something.  It was so dark, though, I didn't even want to admit it could be part of the truth of life (98).

The story does pick up its pace when  Nakajima invites Chihiro to visit his old friends Mino and Chii, who live in a self-imposed state of exile on a beautiful lake.  From the moment Chihiro meets the brother and sister, it is clear that they are the link to Nakajima's past.  The descriptions of their strange ways, from Chii's psychic powers to their odd way of communicating, were some of the most interesting parts of the novel.

Yoshimoto's writing never entirely grabbed me, but perhaps this was a result of the translation.  Aside from a few select moments of emotional clarity, I didn't find the prose to be exceptional.  The most disappointing moment in the novel, for me, was the one that was meant as the pivotal scene: the revelation of Nakajima's past.  After the narrator speculated about it so much throughout the rest of the book, the reality could only be anticlimactic.

I've heard such good things about Banana Yoshimoto's novels from other bloggers whose opinions I trust, but this one just didn't do it for me.  If you've read other novels of hers, which one would you recommend I try next?

The Lake © Banana Yoshimoto and Melville House, 2005.

TBR, Bookshelves, and Vacation

Back in January, I said I wanted to avoid buying lots of books and keep my to-be-read pile small.  Well, that went out the window when there was a library book sale in my hometown on the same weekend I happened to be visiting my parents.  Fate!  So I bought eight books for ten dollars, plus the first season of Lost for five.  Score!

I was going to make a post about those eight beautiful new books, but since I recently moved all my TBR books onto one shelf and made them look so pretty, here's the whole lot:

[click images to enlarge]

A list, for those who don't want to get a crick in their necks trying to read the sideways titles:

The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe
Cuentos de Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
So Long a Letter by Miriama Bâ
I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson
Sixpence House by Paul Collins
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Last Supper by Rachel Cusk
Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Picking Bones from Ash by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers
A Thousand Bells at Noon by G. Franco Romagnoli
Camp Nine by Vivienne Schiffer
Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell

I know, eighteen TBR books is paltry compared to a lot of people, but for me it feels like a lot.  Oh, and here's a photo of the bookcase on which my TBR is now perched.  It was a gift from my father, who restores antique furniture and is all-around awesome:

Have you read any of these?  I'm going to visit my brother in Miami this week, and I'm not sure which ones to bring.  Bill Bryson's a must, but I'm unsure of the back-up books.  Help me choose!

The Physician by Noah Gordon

Noah Gordon's historical novel The Physician tells the story of Rob, a young boy in medieval England who discovers that he has the ability to sense when a person is close to death.  Apprenticed to a barber-surgeon at a young age, Rob's fascination with medicine grows as he travels the country, curing and performing.  His passion for healing eventually leads him to a famous medical school in Persia, where he must disguise himself as a Jew in order to attend.

The Physician is a long book, spanning more than a decade of Rob's life, and there are naturally several points in its 700 pages that drag.  Though the back-cover summary (and the one I gave above) provides Rob's attendance of the Persian medical school as the main event of the novel, it takes over 300 pages for Rob to reach its home city of Ispahan.  Of course, those 300 pages are scattered with many smaller conflicts and setbacks, not to mention a wealth of historical information about the eleventh century.  Though there were several parts in which the pace seemed too meandering, it was the historical detail that truly made the story breathe.

For instance, have you ever wondered about the medieval word for tumor?  It's the decidedly un-serious-sounding bubo.  Or have you always wanted to read about the precise ceremony that accompanies the slaughtering of a kosher ox?  Look no further!  The Physician will also give you valuable insight into the art of juggling and how to curry favor with a Persian king (hint: it involves board games).

While reading The Physician, I couldn't help but be reminded of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  Both are historical novels with medicinally- and supernaturally-gifted main characters.  Of course, Outlander's protagonist can time travel, which I think will always trump Rob's Death Sense.  I would recommend The Physician to fans of Outlander, though I would warn them that Gabaldon's greatest strength as a writer--creating main characters that the reader truly comes to love--is largely absent in The Physician.  Noah Gordon's characters are not at all flat, but they somehow lack that essential spark that makes a reader yearn to read sequel after sequel.

Several of the minor characters were both fascinating and endearing, but I found Rob to be a decidedly lackluster protagonist.  He has fits of hypocrisy and sometimes acts like a show-off, even in situations where it would be wise to keep quiet.  Though I know the portrayals of gender norms in the book are probably quite accurate to the Middle Ages, it was still disquieting to read passages like this, in which Rob and his wife play a Persian version of chess:

He didn't expect much, for it was a warrior's game and she was but a woman.  But she learned quickly and would capture one of his pieces with a whoop and battle cry that would have been credible in a Seljuk marauder (566).  

Even knowing that sexist attitudes were the norm in the eleventh century, an observation like this will not necessarily warm the reader toward a protagonist, who is supposed to be at least likeable enough to get said reader to continue on for several hundred more pages.

Aside from a few flaws, I found The Physician to be an engrossing, informative read.  Definitely recommended, especially if you want to learn about the history of medicine and religious conflict in the Middle Ages.

The Physician © Noah Gordon and Sphere/Little Brown Books, 1986.  695 pages.

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

If you enjoy hearing about other people's reading experiences (and you must, otherwise what are you doing reading a book blog?), please immediately go out and find a copy of The Polysyllabic Spree.  The book is a collection of columns Hornby wrote for Believer magazine between September 2003 and November 2004.  His post-2004 columns fill two more books, Housekeeping vs. the Dirt and Shakespeare Wrote for Money.  I'm hoping to read them soon, as well.

Each month, Hornby reports to Believer readers on the books he's bought and the books he's read, providing handy lists at the beginning of every column.  He switches easily from fiction to non-fiction and from classics to contemporary literature.  One column is given over almost entirely to his experience reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.  Several books that he loves are given space for featured excerpts, which allow the reader to get an idea of the types of narration that really grab Hornby.

The real joy of The Polysyllabic Spree is the author's humor; this is one of the few books I've read that actually made me laugh aloud more than once.  Writing about the concerted effort made by some writers to be concise, Hornby says:

Why write at all?  Why not just jot the plot and a couple of themes down on the back of an envelope and leave it at that?  The truth is, there's nothing very utilitarian about fiction or its creation, and I suspect that people are desperate to make it sound like manly, back-breaking labor because it's such a wussy thing to do in the first place" (74).  

Here's another lovely bit, in which he laments the pull of the back-cover blurb:

Though I enjoyed the book, that conjunction set up an expectation that couldn't ever be fulfilled: sometimes blurbs can be too successful.  I was hoping for something bubbly and yet achingly world-weary, something diverting and yet full of lacerating and unforgettable insights about the human condition, something that was fun while being at the same time no fun at all, in a bracing sort of way, something that cheered me up while making me want to hang myself" (120).

Honestly, I could type up these snippets of snide joy all day long, but I wouldn't want to ruin all the laughs for you.  I'll just add that at one point Hornby instructs someone to have his "literacy surgically removed" (89).

I think that should explain why I absolutely adored this book.  It's short and to-the-point and an irreverent riff on the beautiful obsession born from too much reading.

The Polysyllabic Spree © Nick Hornby and Believer Books, 2004.  122 pages.

Norwegian Wood, Goodbye

[warning: spoilers ahead]

Going into the final chapters of Norwegian Wood, I was optimistic that Murakami would wrap things up well and leave me feeling fulfilled.

And then the first sentence of chapter eleven ruined that small, fleeting hope.  Why, Naoko, why?  Actually, I know why.  From the perspective of character arc, Toru would never have progressed past his irrational love for Naoko if she had been around to haunt him:

I still loved Naoko.  Bent and twisted as that love might be, I did love her.  Somewhere inside me, there was still preserved a broad, open space, untouched, for Naoko and no one else (267).  

Let's be honest here: Naoko never really took on her own personality as a character, but instead acted as a sounding board for Toru's desires and guilt.  She was doomed from the start.

Still, though, I was hoping for one of these:

Unfortunately, Naoko is gone and Toru is left to lament to anyone who will listen that her "beautiful flesh" is gone, too.  (Can't he mourn something else about her?  Sure, she was pretty to look at, but can't he find one other redeeming quality to miss about her?  No?  Okay then.)

Before Toru learns of Naoko's death, he has a few shining moments of happiness with Midori in Tokyo.  Murakami has succeeded in making Midori the only truly likeable character in Norwegian Wood, and I was glad to get another chance at levity before the rest of the novel came crashing down.  In fact, Midori's presence in a scene actually makes me like Toru more, perhaps because she has no problem making fun of him:

So now I see you coming back with our drinks--walking and thinking.  I was hoping you'd trip, but you didn't. [...] you're about as sensitive as a steel plate" (253).

Too soon, though, Midori has slipped away and Toru and the reader are left to wander beaches, drinking sake and weeping into the sand.  This is better, though, than what comes next.  Allow me to give you a play-by-play of my reaction as I read the last few pages of Norwegian Wood:

Aw, Reiko's back... cooking... singing... cute cat... wha-- No!  No!  My eyes!  My eyes!  

It's as if Murakami just knew that he had precious few pages to make this novel more twisted than it already was.  The word wrinkle will forever be seared on my brain.

In better news, Alice is going to host a readalong of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins soon!

I'm hopeful that a novel written in 1859 will not have quite so many disturbing sex scenes.

I do plan to gather my thoughts on Norwegian Wood as a whole into a semi-serious review sometime in the next few weeks, but I think for a bit I need a break from Murakami.