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Norwegian Wood

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Norwegian Wood

By: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin
Narrated by: Adam Sims
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

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 20 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.

©2000 Haruki Murakami (P)2020 Penguin Audio 20th Century Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature
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This book is written lovely and flowed beautifully, I finished it within the first 2 days. It covered a lot of topics without creating a sense of judgement or shame. I didn’t do a lot of research for this book, and didn’t expect the trigger warnings of mental health and suicide within the novel. Again, these were covered with a vail and approached with respect.
Narration performance was great, smooth voice which was easy to listen to and was able to deliver a range of individual character voices well (didn’t make the females high pitched and squeaky).

A beautiful insight

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The atmosphere of the whole book and the how is it written can be amazing. On the other hand the book can be a bit cringe and the ending is kinda confusing

Amazing but mid

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Adam Sims has a pretentious tone to his voice that I don’t think fits the experience of Norwegian Wood.
Toru Watanabe wasn’t likeable sounding like he had a stick wedged up his backside throughout each line when I think he was just meant to come across aloof, uncertain & young.

Adam Sims voice for Midori was almost sexist, the way he portrayed her made her sound vapid & annoying which didn’t match how she was written in the book. I felt that discredited Midori’s character and what she contributed to the story.

Norwegian Wood overall is stunningly written, translated with so much care beautifully but I wouldn’t recommend this audiobook, Adam Sims and the spin he’s put on it doesn’t do it justice.
I think the lack of ratings on this book reflects on the bad voice casting when it is such a famous and loved book.

Skip the Audiobook & read the book for this one. Trust me.

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Absolutely magical story even though full of sadness and captivating storytelling by the voice actor. Thank you very much.

Magical

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So gentle and coaxing in its tone but incredibly powerful and elegant story telling directed like a laser right into the heart.

Elegant and powerful

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too much death and the protagonist is removed from participating in the story because of its resigned passive character

death

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The synopsis of this book interested me, but ultimately, it was a disappointment. I never leave bad reviews, but this book had an average story (at best), used every writing cliche imaginable and the narrator’s performance of female characters was creepy as hell. Also, the depiction of a late-thirty something year old woman as “old and wrinkled” was utterly absurd—the reader will think he’s in bed with a 90-year old, the way things are described! Ha, ha! I really wish I had more positive comments about this book, but it’s just incredibly boring and immature in every possible sense—sorry. :((

Disappointing…

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