This Bird Has Flown

I have just finished reading probably the best known Japanese-language book of the last fifty years, Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. It is a coming-of-age tale of sorts, told in Murakami's trademark flat, almost naive style. I don't know what I love so much about Murakami. Any attempt to describe why I find his work compelling sounds lame - but I could name the likeably flawed, cultured and fragile central characters, the accumulation of quotidian detail about coffee, cigarettes and so many bowls of miso and noodles, the obsession with jazz and hip sixties pop or the blossomings of explicit sex dotted innocently throughout the narrative.


Close reading of the book shows that the lyrics of Lennon & McCartney's classic song resonate throughout the plot which tells of a young boy whose life is blighted by the early suicide of a best friend who then finds himself tied emotionally, erotically and metaphysically to the friend's ethereal and brittle lover Naoko. His attempts to live in the world of the living and not just exist in the world of the dead form the main drive of the narrative. The most refreshing and loveable character for me is Midori (Japanese for green), a sexually adventurous and fun-loving girl who has her own share of pain but stands in the book for the pert, fickle, unquenchable flame of life.