Norwegian Wood
This is a coming of age story and a love story. It is about a man torn between two women. It's also because it is written in the first person as an extended memory, about memory and loneliness and mental illness.I like all these themes (well not so much coming of age) but it did not really do it for me. The female characters are interesting but completely insane and there behaviour is treated naively. I was not interested in the main character.
The book does successfully invoke a feeling of wistfulness, but overall it did not seem particularly special to me, but there is nothing bad or disastrous about it either.
I have heard that it is not representative of Murakami's other novels, and there is certainly talent here, so I intend to keep reading him, but it did not blow me away and if it was just a little bit different it might have.
