Purchased in Prague July 2010 and carried with me over six weeks in Europe and Israel. I meandered through this book as we traveled but the sights and the world around me were much more inviting than Norwegian Wood. Norwegian Wood is different from Murakami's other books in that it has very little magical realism and is a rather linear, sad and nostalgic love story. At 50 I began this book, a flash back in time by Toru Watanabe, as he landed in Germany, of the things he had lost, the times gone forever and friends who had died or disappeared. Perhaps this was too depressing for a vacation that was taken for the expressed purpose of not feeling 50. At 52, when I finally came to terms with being fortunate enough to turn fifty, and now fifty two, I finished this book.
The insecure relationships, finding oneself, and directionless nature of young adulthood haunt this novel but no longer haunted my soul. Perhaps that is why two years later I was able to finish this book. At fifty I wanted to feel the freedom of the future yet to come, loves yet to happen and dreams waiting to be fulfilled. Somewhere in between I realized the gifts I have been given and worked hard to cultivate over the years feel like a reward for making it through those uncertain days of adulthood. Or perhaps I was able to finish it because I just had to. It was Murakami after all!
This book is up for grabs. Not going to give it to my daughter to read because there are a few too many suicides in it.
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