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Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami is the Book Club's chosen book for the coming month

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past. I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me. She showed me her room, isn’t it good, norwegian wood? She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere, So I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair. I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine. We talked until two and then she said, 'it’s time for bed'. She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh. I told her I didn’t and crawled off to sleep in the bath. And when I awoke I was alone, this bird had flown. So I lit a fire, isn’t it good, norwegian wood. 'When I was in my first year of high school, I had to have an egg fryer - a long, narrow pan for making this dashimaki style of fried egg we're eating. I bought it with money I was supposed to use for a new bra. For three months I had to live with one bra. Can you believe it? I'd wash my bra at night, go crazy trying to dry it, and wear it the next day. And if it didn't dry right, I had a tragedy to deal with. The saddest thing in the world is wearing a damp bra. I'd walk around with tears pouring from my eyes. To think I was suffering this for an egg fryer!' 'I see what you mean,' I said with a laugh. 'I know I shouldn't say this, but actually it was kind of a relief to me when my mother died. I could run the family budget my way. I could buy what I liked. So now I've got a relatively complete set of cooking utensils. My father doesn't know a thing about the budget.' It has to be one of the most beautifully designed novels ever to be published, the crowning achievement of eminent book designer Chip Kidd's career and a package that displays an impressive commitment to deep quality on the part of much-maligned corporate publishers. on seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful april morning, a story by haruki murakami

- Norwegian Wood: The Complete Review

- murakami.ch is an unofficial site about Haruki Murakami - a treasure trove of all things Murakami.

- Birthday Honour - Haruki Murakami on discovering that he shares his birthday - January 12 - with Jack London and one of the Spice Girls. (An edited extract from the introduction to 'Birthday Stories,' a collection of stories by writers including Paul Theroux and William Trevor, edited by Haruki Murakami, published by Harvill.)

- the outsider, THE SALON INTERVIEW HARUKI MURAKAMI: Haruki Murakami on the darkness of the subconscious, the aum cult subway gas attack and being an individualist in Japan.

- Tunnel Vision - Guardian review of 'Norwegian Wood' and Murakami's first work of non-fiction 'Underground,' which consists of edited transcripts of interviews conducted with survivors or relatives of victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin nerve gas attack by Aum cult members.

- Chip Kidd - Novelist and Graphic Designer Extraordinaire talks with Robert Birnbaum (Robert Birnbaum's biography). Chip Kidd designed Alfred Knopf's hardback edition of Murakami's 'The Wind Up Bird Chronicle' pictured above.

- identitytheory.com - a literary website, sort of - featuring the narrative thread interviews and author portraits by Robert Birnbaum

Posted by Nick @ 13:58 GMT
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Boris Vian, L’Écome des Jours, 1947, Translated by Stanley Chapman as 'Froth on the Daydream'1967, 1970, 1988

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Herman Melvills's 'Moby Dick

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When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.

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Like its noteworthy ancestors (Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, the Ancient Mariner and Moby Dick) Life of Pi is a tale of disaster at sea. Both a boys' own adventure (for grown-ups) and a meditation on faith and the value of religious metaphor, it was one of the most extraordinary and original novels of 2002. The only survivor from the wreck of a cargo ship on the Pacific, 16 year old Pi spends 221 days on a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal Tiger called Richard Parker...

Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious Third Force. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch.

Patrick Bateman is Harvard-educated and intelligent. He works by day on Wall Street, earning a fortune to complement the one he was born with. His nights he spends in ways we cannot begin to fathom - doing impermissible things to women. He is living his own American Dream.

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