Haruki Murakami "Norwegian Wood"

Just finished reading last page of novel by, perhaps, most famous modern Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami "Norwegian Wood" (1987) in Saizeriya :)

Actually I read in Russian 5 years ago but completely didn't remember the story..In December there will be movie directed by Tran Anh Hung with Oscar-nominated actress Rinko Kikuchi and famous Japanese actor Ken`ichi Matsuyama. I watched trailer and thought it would be very beautiful movie (trailer video is really amazing - bright and colourful), so decided to reread in Japanese...

To tell the truth, although my major was literature (actually, modern Japanese literature) and I tried to read a lot of Japanese authors, I think this is very specific literature form..Its structure is completely different from one of Russian or Western literature...It is so "un-structured" novels, so pale heroes...It resembles Japanese wagashi - sweets which can be hardly called sweets in West...

Murakami novel is like ..how to say... long-long melancholic song... Author depicts not story or people, he depicts state of mind and impression....

Main hero -Watanabe-kun - occasionally met Naoko - a girlfriend of his closest friend who killed himself at 17..They dated first like old friends, then he slept with her and she disappeared...Only after then he got to know that she had serious problems with mental health after suicide of elder sister in her childhood and boyfriend, and that she is in special hospital for emotionally hurt people now...He writes her letters, visits her, but at the same time falls in love with his university classmate Midori - very lively girl, completely different type of girl than melancholic and ill Naoko...

Finally Naoko commits suicide..and Watanabe-kun decides to start his life from the beginning, continue to live and love Midori...

First volume of novel I liked - it ends at the moment when hero gets to know that Naoko is in the hospital, he goes to see her and he promises to protect and love her - very optimistic ending, but in second volume we got to know that mental health of Naoko keeps getting worse and worse, and hero more and more becomes closer with Midori..

I liked in novel depiction of Japan young people life in 70s - what they thought, how they felt..I liked brilliant language and style of author. And main hero - especially in first volume - is very alive....

I didnt like enormous detailed description of penetration (main hero sleeps almost with all female heroines of novel), sometimes strange dialogues and atmosphere of apathy and some endless melancholy through the whole story with too much melodramatic ending (really, pale taste of entire novel and too much sugar in the end) ..

So I don't know...

Just not to forget plot again, wrote this entry....