I actually had written a review of it in pen and paper just after finishing the read cuz I was afraid if my emotions get foggy after a while or I forget to finally write a detailed review on it (I am too lazy haha!!). So yeah I'm using that as the primary backbone to write this final review too!!
How to begin…? I think just after I finished the novel my mind traced back the moments when I had read the reviews on Goodreads, reddit and some other sites absolutely degrading this book of any kinda credit and calling Murakami some type of creep who creates his female characters with nothing but sick fantasies in his head that he wanna come true. Well, this is a habit of mine… to read the 'one star' reviews of any famous book that I'm gonna read and then think why and how a book didn't touch some peoples heart in the way it was supposed to be!!
Now that I've finished the book the conclusion I've reached is that, it's a book that has character traits talked in such profound detail and confidence that it makes certain people super anxious or disturbed to some extent! I think they see themselves in Toru, in Nagasawa, in Midori, in Reiko… and yeah even in Naoko and that makes them terrified, the thought that their darkest and deepest self would be exposed with its entirety to everyone and that'd be so SO shameful. Another thing I noticed girls complaining about the book more than boys tbh! Don't wanna elaborate on that but yeah it's a fact, cuz I had checked nearly hundred reviews of it on several sites (especially reddit).
Are you afraid of this kinda books too…? Well then shame on YOU! When you read a book let your heart get bare open to it and pour it in.. it's written by a human being and you're a human too! He didn't back away from publishing them and you are backing away from just appreciating them! Damn! Why such hateful thoughts?
Anyway, I'm the same age as our narrator Toru you know i.e. 19+ and although I may have lived only 19 and some years on this planet of ours, I've seen my fare share of people roam around me with their little dreams, happiness, success, ambitions, short comings, failures, heartbreaks, depressions and I can assure that all of them has some Naoko, Midori, Reiko and Hatsumi in them!
Especially Hatsumi and Midori!
I found myself falling for Midori over and again as the novel progressed with one of the beautifully prose I've ever read (Hah, here goes my secret obsession with girls that looks like are need to be fixed but end up looking at us and whisper… 'You look lonely… I can fix that!'). Then there is Hatsumi, a character who appeared for such a short while in the novel yet left me in such profound emptiness with her conclusion. I swear, when it read, '…she had cut her wrist with a razon blade'… Just like that, no poetic or mystic beauty attached to the phrase… THAT left me staring at the wall for much more than when it read, '…in forests as dark as the depths of her heart where she had hung herself.' You know why…? Because somewhere deep in my head it was screaming Hatsumi deserved to live much, MUCH more than Naoko!
Naoko never loved me…
What an irony huh Toru…? The one person whose loved you craved for from the very first page of the novel never was yours to begin with!! Don't all of us have stories like these in our life too? Although I admit none of them sleepwalk to us in the dead of nights to throws away their night dress and show their bare body in the bluish moonlight of loneliness and stare at us with the eyes of 'I'm not looking at you.' Toru was right! She never was his… she was Kizuki's from the very start and she went back to him in the end. Toru was just a remedy, just a breakthrough, just a rescuer she thought would be able to help her… then again deep in her heart did she ever wish for rescuing…? Toru once said about Nagasawa, 'He lived in his own special hell.' Don't all of the characters of this heartbreaking book have their own beautiful, lonely, autumn afternoon type of hell named 'solitude'…? In my interpretation all of them do! 'Cause all them just suffers, suffers and suffers… not physically but in an intoxicating mental dilemma!
Midori and Naoko, the most messed up female characters I've come across in a novel and yet Ohh how completely contrasting they are to each other's persona…! Like the sky and the sea and day and the night! The way to put it in Reiko's words,
'It's okey to go on sailing and fall in love with the sky and the sea.'
I wonder who was the sky and who the sea was in Reiko's heart! Who had the burden of void forever rotting in the color of blue and who had the salted sea of tears to fill in all the cracks of their heart!
Ever thought why Naoko's death never struck us even though she is the main female character…?
Because from the very start it was made clear she never had the desire too belong in this mortal world of ours! So serene, so perfect, so hurt, so fresh like a forest flower… se was meant to wither away in the end. Ever wondered what Naoko had lost in her life. In childhood she found her sister, dead hanging in her room… then her soulmate Kizuki. Two people about whom one thing was certain, they were never hated by anyone, they were beautiful, charming, good in studies, happy (apparently), laughing… and they chose to leave without a single line of explanation! I think that's what snapped something in Naoko… how both of the almost perfect persons in her life chose suicide over the happiness of life! She never found an answer to her 'Why'!
On the other hand look at Midori… a girl who saw her mother die day by day, bit by bit… like a rotting wound… then her followed the same lead and that, THAT made her detest the lifelessness of death.
She saw the reason why people fear death so much and she started thriving on life… she started searching for the person who would accept her in any way and every way she wanted to live! She searched a man who could explain English Subjunctive to her and she found that person in Toru… and she fell in love. With Toru… with life… with being alive!
Then there is Reiko… a character who never experienced death (except Naoko's but that doesn't count) yet had coped with the hardest of ruthlessness life had to offer. She lost her talent, her social reputation, her husband, her child… her castle of dreams and prosperity… to think deeply she was the one with the most reasons to count to choose suicide over the messed up life of hers! Yet she didn't! SHE CHOSE TO LIVE! I'm still confused what made her look for the happiness in this mundane world that took everything away from her…!
'Don't ever feel sorry for yourself, only arseholes do that.'
Thanks Nagasawa, the much I hate you… you made me respect your persona with this single line! So, true in its entirety, so impactful to myself… to my generation of shaming ourselves to hell! I also admire you like Toru and I also think you didn't deserve Hatsumi… I'm sorry! The only, ONLY person I'm heartfully sorry is Hatsumi. She deserved so much better and actually everyone knew that!
My favorite parts of the novel…
The two times Toru was hugged…
When Naoko hugged him in the sofa of Ami hostel and when Midori hugged him on the roof soaked in rain. The simple act of hugging and just pressing to human bodies to each other… two girls with real blood flowing through their veins.. they opened up to Watanabe… one said 'Goodbye.' after the moment ended and one said, 'I fell in love with you.'
Oh my heart!
Read the novel… oh and I recommend to listen all the songs mentioned in the novel! They are just as much beautiful and profoundly relevant as each and every chapter of the novel… 'cause after all,
'I once had a girl or should I say she once had me…?
Highly recommended!!
by Friendly_Honey7772