Hello Everyone, and welcome to our very first blog of my reading journey.
So, I started reading the book "Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami. I am not too sure if it is the right book for me to begin my reading journeys, however I decided to give it a try anyways. I have been informed that Murakami books are usually open ended which makes it the types that I usually do not prefer, however I still hope I enjoy this book. So far I have read the very first and second chapters of this book and this blog is to share my thoughts and understanding regarding it so far.
So let's get started.
Starting with the first chapter. The chapters in this book don't particularly have any title, so I had no idea what each chapter is about, are they related? are they independent stories? I had no idea. The first chapter begins with out narrator and who I believe is our protagonist, a 37 year old guy named "Toru" who is travelling in flight that had to take a break somewhere in Germany due to some storm. Toru starts reminiscing his past. Based on how the memories that Toru was narrating, it seemed (at first) like a love story of Toru and Naoko that probably didn't get a happy ending. As I was reading the first chapter, it didn't really feel that interesting to me. It seemed like sweet love story that I didn't mind but it didn't interest me that much either. However "the big reveal" followed by a cliffhanger at the end of the chapter is something that got me excited.
After such an exciting end of the first chapter, I was expecting the story to continue to explain the reasoning behind "the big reveal", at least a little bit of hint, however to my surprise, it took us to a time much earlier than what we got from the first chapter. It started with the story of back when Toru started to live in a dorm while pursuing his higher education. He described details regarding the dormitory, stuffs like the entrance, a 150 year old Zelkova Tree, the position of the buildings, the curtains, the lives of guys living there, the head of his building that they referred as "Nakano" (as it was said that he was a graduate of wartime Nakano Spy School), Nakano's assistant that was referred as "Uniform"(the guy literally always wore a navy-blue student uniform, hence the name), his roommate that was referred as "Storm Trooper" (the guy was pretty disciplined though). Just like the first chapter, so far the second chapter also didn't felt that interesting to me. It just felt like a bunch of facts (most of which seems pretty useless at that point, might turn out pretty useful in further chapters) just thrown at me. However after describing the regular exercises of Storm Trooper that disturbed Toru's sleep proved to be beginning of the interesting part. Till this point I was not sure about how this chapter relates to the first one, what exactly happened with Naoko, etc. But then, Toru somehow crossed path with her and the two of them spent some time with one another. This was just the beginning as we are taken to a time even before Toru even shifted from his hometown. A dark past that he tried to run away from. It turns out that back in high school, Naoko was dating Toru's one and only best friend "Kizuki". It is also revealed while Kizuki was pretty good in social skills, Toru was his one and only friend. The trio of Kizuki, Naoko and Toru loved hanging out with one another. Naoko and Toru didn't seemed much to have in common so in Kizuki's absence they didn't usually spoke much. The only thread that bind the two of them was Kizuki. At this point I was gaining more and more interest to know what happened next and then came a big reveal of this chapter that had me come up with a theory. One day, Toru and Kizuki bunked their class and played. When Toru won the first round, Kizuki didn't allow him to win the rest of the game. The words he used after his win is what made me nervous. Toru asked him why he looks so serious to which he responded something that made me nervous "I didn't wanted to lose today". If read casually it might look normal but if one has any idea of how fiction works, you know it's a red flag, the character using this word is in danger. It seemed like Kizuki sensed something that was about to happen, something that changed Toru's life forever. The same night, he committed suicide. Toru was the last one he spoke to and the words "I didn't wanted to lose today" turned out to be his last words. Toru was shook by his best friends death and Naoko seemed to feel hatred towards Toru for being the last one to see Kizuki. This incident must have caused Toru to get PTSD. It was so bad that at the end he decided to leave the town for further studies, just to forget as much of this dark past as possible. Toru eventually accepted that death and life are not opposite of one another, they are not separate, instead, death is a part of life. He used to think that life is here and death is there but after Kizuki's death he at the end accepted that death is always here, waiting to take us. His thoughts really touched me. The second chapter ends with really beautiful words, "In the midst of life, everything revolved around death".
Overall, the cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter got me excited while the end of the second chapter touched me. I did have a theory though based on what I have read so far. The first chapter ends with the reveal that Naoko never loved Toru and in second chapter it is revealed that she was dating Toru's best friend Kizuki who ended up committing suicide. My theory is that it is possible that Naoko thinks that Toru has something to do with Kizuki's death and therefore always hated him and may be she wanted revenge or something, or may be after losing Kizuki and recovering from the loss, she didn't wanted to lose another friend and that is why she didn't wanted Toru to never leave her(in the first chapter).
While the first part of both the chapters didn't interest me much, the ending of the first chapter made me excited and the second half of the second chapter really touched me. So in my opinion it seems to be a pretty decent book so far.
That bring us to the end of this blog. Thanks a lot everyone for checking our this blog. I will be posting more blogs as I read the book further.
Until then, have a wonderful life.
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