Murakami: Norwegian Wood

Well,it was...OK. I did not have to really force myself to finish it and as it progressed I did find myself slowly more drawn in to the world and the people it showed. But I had the feeling with much of the writing that it had a self-conscious 'creative writing school' element about it. There were many very well-written parts, particularly of descriptions of scenery and life in Japan (interesting to read after the last book set in Japan I read...People That Eat Darkness) but they had a rather self-conscious air about themselves as if they were saying to the reader' you really ought to notice the marvelous style and vocabulary of this section'. This contrasted much with the description in, say Rotherweird, where the gem-like passages of wonderful description just worked, glittering like jewels and providing a well-judged pause and moment of contarst to the heavily plot-and-character driven nature of the story.

Here the central characters were (sometimes painfully) introspective.

I've read one other by him - a more characteristic one with steampunk/gangster/sci-fi mixture - comments earlier on these pages but forgotten name at the moment. - and to be honest felt that I preferred those. But it was said that this one was rather uncharacteristic...