Norwegian Wood

I finished my book club book yesterday. First time I'd done this in - oh, wait, I did read Ender's Game late last year. There's less incentive to read the book club book when I'm not in the same city as the other clubbers.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami is set in Japan in the late '60s and focuses on Toru Watanabe, who's just starting university in Tokyo. There's a love triangle element to the story, as Watanabe is interested in one girl who was his best friend's girl until his friend committed suicide. This girl - Haoko - also has her problems, so they can't be together.

While in Tokyo, Watanabe meets Midori, a girl in his History of Drama class who is distinctly different from Haoko. They befriend each other and move towards being more than friends, but Watanabe feels a commitment to Haoko.

There is quite a bit of sex in this book - not that that's bad thing, but it more than I've read in a book for, well, I'm not sure when I've read more of it in a book.

This reminds me of a translation tale about an English Canadian novel being translated into Japanese. The translator added a sex scene into the novel - completely superfluous to the story, because apparently the Japanese expect to read about sex in their novels. One often hears of how a translation goes wrong from the original author's intention - something being "lost in translation," as it were, but to add an entire scene or episode that wasn't in the original text - i.e., to find something in translation - seems a bit much to me.

However, if Norwegian Wood is any indication Japanese books have quite a bit of sex in them. All the more reason to read another Japanese novel.