Time has never stayed for anyone, and the footprints we have left in the long river of time have slowly faded with the erosion of time, and even disappeared into the complicated memories, and only the memories of those loves in the youth years, like the pebbles on the beach, although washed, but more and more rounded, although it is flooded by a momentary wave, but when the sea recedes, it still lies peacefully on the beach.
The first time I read "Norwegian Forest", it was still a sophomore in high school, two or three years younger than Watanabe's age in the memories in the book, and I was still a little ignorant of love, and the intense study made people have no time to be distracted, but there would still be flames of love burning in the heart, while longing for it to grow, but at the same time enduring the pain to extinguish it.
After reading this book, I often fantasize about what kind of girl I will meet in the future, whether it is a long-haired girl who is pure and melancholy like Naoko, or a short-haired girl who is as lively and cute as a green child.
Haruki Murakami tells the whole story in the first person in "Norwegian Forest", just like the reader recalls his own past, which makes people immersed in it, and tells a love story that everyone will experience, and the sense of substitution is very strong.
This book recalls watanabe's thirty-seven-year-old relationships from the perspective of his high school and college years, one melancholy and dull, and the other passionate. Two girls with very different personalities appeared in succession in his life, like two helmsmen, controlling watanabe's course.
Naoko is watanabe's only friend Kizuki's girlfriend during high school, the two met through Kizuki, the three people often get together, Kizuki as the core of the three, taking into account the feelings of the two, every time he meets he will not snub, and when Kizuki is slightly absent, Watanabe and Naoko will fall into the cold field. When Kizuki suddenly committed suicide, Watanabe and Naoko had no contact for more than a year except for attending Kizuki's funeral.
Kizuki dies, Naoko loses her lover, Takema Aome, watanabe loses her only friend from high school, and the two are trapped in their respective swamps of youth at the same time.
A year later, Watanabe and Naoko met by chance on a train in Tokyo. Both chose to come to Tokyo to go to college to escape from the past, Watanabe broke up with his high school girlfriend in order to forget the past away from home, and Naoko chose a school that no high school classmate would choose, and both of them tried to make a separation from the past.
Although it was a long time since Mu Yue's death, the two of them still hadn't come out of it. Once embarrassed to be alone, they began to slowly try to communicate, hoping to help each other climb out of the swamp.
The topics they talk about are deliberately avoiding Mu Yue, but the two people do not have a common topic, before Mu Yue was a bond between two people, the two only listened or agreed, and now they have to find new topics in order to break the silence.
Watanabe told Naoko the story of the "death squad" of her college roommate, but Naoko smiled after hearing it. The "death squad" is an old-fashioned, self-disciplined and positive poor student, who is ridiculed and teased because of his own preferences and the personalities around him, Watanabe has no intention of telling his story, but it is rare to see Naoko happy, so he keeps telling it. Naoko, on the other hand, tells Watanabe about her previous events, but always jumps and breaks because she needs to selectively delete Mizuki's memories.
On Naoko's twentieth birthday, Watanabe carries a cake to the train to Naoko's dormitory to celebrate her birthday. Both were very happy and opened the wine, and although the cake had been destroyed by several turns, Naoko solemnly inserted twenty candles for it. Naoko opened the conversation box and talked to herself, but Watanabe had a hard time grasping the focus of Naoko's speech, he put up the record and drank wine to listen to Naoko's speech, Watanabe wanted to rush back in front of the dormitory, because he could not interrupt Naoko's nagging.
When Naoko suddenly realized something, she closed her mouth and stopped talking, but her emotions suddenly collapsed and she began to cry bitterly, and Watanabe put her arms around Naoko to soothe her emotions. The two had a relationship on Naoko's twentieth birthday, watanabe did not think that Naoko was actually a virgin, which surprised him greatly, and took the liberty of asking Naoko why she did not sleep with Mizuki, Naoko did not answer, but just sobbed again. When Watanabe got up at dawn, Naoko was still lying on the bed with her back to him, as if asleep or awake, and Watanabe had to leave a note to leave Naoko's dormitory and return to school.
Watanabe contacted Naoko again almost three months later, when Naoko wrote to tell Watanabe that he had taken a leave of absence from school and was admitted to a nursing home in Kyoto.
Naoko has always lived in the shadow of Kizuki's death, always trying to avoid the topic of Kizuki, suppressing herself everywhere, not knowing that the deeper the pressure, the greater the damage from the rebound.
Bad emotions are like floods, it is advisable to be loose and not to be blocked, if you hold it in your heart and do not let it vent, once you exceed the limit that individuals can bear, they will instantly crush people and cannot be collected.
Naoko tries to associate with Watanabe, she wants Watanabe to replace the location of Mizuki in her memory, Naoko never mentions Kizuki, but she never forgets Kizuki, and each time she deliberately avoids the memory of Kizuki, but it will strengthen her memory of Kizuki even more. Naoko's behavior also made Watanabe very painful, and the girl she liked had a dead person in her heart all the time, and no one could accept it.
Watanabe hasn't forgotten Mizuki, and he even remembers his only high school friend from time to time. Watanabe has also been saddened by the loss of his friend, but he will make new friends to take Kizuki's place, although Kizuki is irreplaceable.
Naoko became depressed and was admitted to a nursing home, and Watanabe drove herself to do a two-week hike. At the beginning of the new semester, the only roommate, the "Death Squad", also moved out of the dormitory.
Watanabe also met a good friend in college, Nagasawa. Nagasawa is a charismatic, personally capable rich kid who has a perfect girlfriend Hatsumi that Makes Watanabe envious, but he still hunts around tirelessly. Watanabe also hunted for Yan many times under Nagasawa's leadership, and although he was not interested in it, and even a little bored, he thought that this would reduce the pain caused by Naoko. Watanabe has repeatedly compared Nagasawa to Mizuki, arguing that Nagasawa has a stronger ability than Mizuki, but Mizuki is more realistic than Nagasawa.
The relationship between Watanabe, Nagasawa, and Hatsumi is the same as the relationship between Watanabe, Mizuki, and Naoko in high school, both times Watanabe and a couple. But Nagasawa is different from Mizuki, he has his own pursuit, and will not change because of anyone, Mizuki and Naoko's lover relationship they are equal, but Nagasawa and Hatsumi's relationship with Hatsumi hatsumi is humble, she even forgives Nagasawa countless times of hunting, Nagasawa in order to achieve his goals do not give Hatsumi any commitment, Hatsumi's hope is just his wishful thinking, and finally Hatsumi can only helplessly break up with Nagasawa. Yongze went to Germany two years later to marry Chumei, but two years after marrying, she committed suicide. Hatsumi is Watanabe's perfect lover, so she never contacts Nagasawa after receiving a letter from Nagasawa saying that Hatsumi has committed suicide. Hatsumi, like Naoko, is trapped in a swamp of lost love, and Watanabe deeply blames herself for not being able to pull her along.
Six months later, Watanabe saw Naoko again in a nursing home, and because the visiting staff could not meet the patient alone, Reiko was always accompanied by the hospital. Reiko lives with Naoko, she is almost forty years old, originally a patient in the nursing home, she has recovered, but because she does not dare to re-enter the society, and is accustomed to the life of the nursing home, she stayed and became a music teacher in the nursing home.
Naoko's condition is stable and looks no different from a normal person, but when Watanabe talks to Naoko about Mizuki, her emotions collapse again, and Mizuki is Naoko's heart demon. Naoko also felt very sorry for Watanabe for her state. Reiko was initially optimistic about Naoko's condition, but later said she couldn't see in what direction Naoko's condition would go. Naoko's illness has a long history, when she was a child, she saw her sister hanged in the house, followed by the suicide of Mizuki, Aome Takema's lover, Mizuki. Naoko's family conditions are very good, but she lacked psychological counseling for her since childhood, and was sent to a nursing home for non-professional spiritual recuperation until she had a complete mental breakdown.
After Watanabe left the nursing home, he would often write letters to Naoko, and Naoko's replies were intermittent, fast and slow, depending on whether Naoko's condition was stable.
During this time, Watanabe met Midoriko, who had come to eat at a small restaurant, and the two took a course at the same time. Watanabe was eating, Midoriko came forward to talk, she cut her hair short, wore sunglasses, Watanabe did not recognize her. Midoriko, on the other hand, called out Watanabe's name directly. Attracted by Watanabe's unique speaking style, Midoriko asks Watanabe to eat together while she borrows class notes.
Compared with Naoko, Midoriko is more lively and cute. Midoriko's suffering is not worse than Naoko's, when she was more than ten years old, her mother died of a tumor, her mother's illness was not cured, but she spent all the family's savings, and her father bluntly said that she really wanted the Midoriko sisters to die for their mother, which hurt Midoriko's heart. Although there is not much money in the family, but the father still sent Midoriko to the noble school, outsiders look very glamorous to go to the aristocratic school, but midoriko hates this school, every time the school organizes fundraising, she is very embarrassed, and when she goes out to eat with her classmates, she is always worried, afraid that she can't afford to accidentally enter the restaurant. She hated school in a different way than anyone else, she was stubborn, and although she was sometimes very ill, she never was late for school once. During college, her father also fell ill and died, so she finished her father's funeral, sold her only family property, Kobayashi Bookstore, with her sister, and then returned to campus.
Watanabe went to visit Naoko at the nursing home during the winter vacation, and Naoko was more silent than the last time Watanabe went, and most of the time Watanabe talked with Reiko, and Naoko listened next to her.
After the year-end exam, Watanabe moved out of the apartment, and after almost two weeks, he found that he had not contacted Midoriko for a long time, and as a result, Midoriko was also angry with Watanabe, and later Midoriko also took the initiative to ignore Watanabe for two weeks, and then the two of them were evened. During the time when Midoriko ignored her, Watanabe felt a wave of loneliness and emptiness. Midoriko asked Watanabe to meet, Watanabe was worried because Reiko wrote to naoko that naoko's condition was aggravated, and did not look at Midoriko when they met, which hurt Midoriko's heart again, Midoriko made an excuse to say that she was thirsty and let Watanabe go to buy Coke, and at the stall where Watanabe left, Midoriko wrote a letter to Watanabe, complaining that Watanabe did not look at himself when he met him, and had been curled up in his own world thinking about things. For this reason, Midoriko did not pay attention to Watanabe for two months.
Watanabe, on the other hand, wrote letters to Naoko almost every week and occasionally wrote to Reiko, but he rarely received a reply because Naoko's condition fluctuated, and his mental state was so poor that he could not organize language to reply to Watanabe.
Two months later, Midoriko reconciles with Watanabe, and Midoriko is more relieved than Watanabe, and the two tell each other about the pain of lovesickness for two months.
Midoriko's love does not drag mud and water, before knowing Watanabe, Midoriko also has a lover, Midoriko also likes him very much, but with the in-depth understanding of Watanabe, she feels that she prefers Watanabe, so she immediately chose to break up with her boyfriend and turned into Watanabe's arms. Before Watanabe had confessed to Midoriko that he had a girlfriend who could not meet and was in a special situation, Midoriko expressed her willingness to wait for Watanabe to make a choice.
Watanabe tells Reiko about her current relationship with Midoriko through letters, and Reiko tells Watanabe to love naturally and not to have a psychological burden, but it is better not to let Naoko know about this matter for the time being. He also told Naoko Watanabe that after being transferred to a specialist hospital for treatment, the effect was very good, and it is estimated that he will return to the nursing home again soon.
Unexpectedly, Watanabe received a letter from Reiko again, and Naoko committed suicide, watanabe was very guilty about it, although he had always loved Naoko, but love had changed from previous love to love, turning love into responsibility.
After attending Naoko's funeral, Watanabe traveled alone for a month, but it did not relieve the blow of Naoko's death. Shortly after returning to his residence, Watanabe received a letter from Reiko, giving him a phone call and a time to ask him to call.
After Naoko's death, Reiko finally plucked up the courage to come out of the sanatorium, hoping to re-integrate into this society, hoping to adapt to Watanabe before entering the society.
Reiko told Watanabe about the day before Naoko's suicide, the dead person has gone, the living person still needs to live well, Reiko hopes that Watanabe will make a break with the past, and not fall into the quagmire because of Naoko's death. Rei played songs that both Naoko and Watanabe loved to hear, including Beatles' Norwegian Woods. In the end, Watanabe and Reiko have four relationships, as if to compensate Watanabe for Naoko, and as if to re-enter the social experience, it also proves that Reiko is not gay.
Naoko, Watanabe, and Midoriko are caught in the swamp of losing love, friendship, and family affection, Naoko is trapped and can't come out again, Watanabe shrinks in his shell and slowly forgets to go ashore, and Midoriko relies on her own optimism to step out easily.
In the years of youth, there are not only flowers, but also swamps, and the slightest carelessness will fall into it, and only by climbing out of the swamp can you hold the fragrant flowers in your hand.