Toru Watanabe, listening to a Beatles song on a plane landing in Hamburg, is swept back to Tokyo in the late 1960s, when he was a university student. He remembers Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki, who killed himself at seventeen, and how that loss left both of them adrift. Naoko enters a sanatorium in the mountains while Toru meets Midori, a lively, outspoken classmate. Murakami's most realistic novel traces the pull between a past that will not heal and a present that insists on being lived.
For readers curious about Murakami without the surreal elements, or for anyone who likes quiet, melancholy coming-of-age stories about first love, depression, and loss.
Deep, inward-looking, contemplative and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Mindful Reader. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2006
- Publisher
- Einaudi
- ISBN
- 9788806183158
- Language
- IT
