Norwegian Wood
Vintage International · first published 1987 · 320 pages
A man in his late thirties hears an old song and is carried back to his student years in Tokyo and two very different young women.
Plain, unhurried sentences hold a great deal of grief and tenderness, and the late-1960s city feels close enough to walk through.
For a night when an old song plays.
About this book
Toru Watanabe, a quiet drama student in late-1960s Tokyo, spends his days between lectures, a dormitory, and long walks. He is bound to Naoko, a fragile young woman who shares a loss with him, while the bright, outspoken Midori pulls him toward the noisier world around him. The story is told years later, from memory, and moves slowly through letters, visits, and conversations. What stays is the sense of being young and unsure whom to hold on to.