I am trying to challenge my mind and so stopped reading my staples: Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Camelot books etc. So I bought this book by a Japanese, Murakami, solely on the basis of the blurb on it's cover. Why not? The Guardian, Times Supplement, Scottish Herald... praised it sky high.
After reading Mishima's award winning book( The sailor who fell from grace with the sea.....may be some error here), I expected this book to be as powerful..... so disappointing. Not that I would read Mishima's book again, too upsetting, but it was powerful.
Norwegian Wood was a waste of my money. The characters were blah.. the protagonist was the writer ('I') who was definitely a bland character. They were talking sex or having sex for half of the book ( To a non-literary person like me, it was almost porno...OK soft porno). Half of the main characters committed suicide. And I wish someone would tell me what the ending is all about. Did he kill himself?