REIKO - "...That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where
you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My
experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such
chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of
our lives..."
A lot has changed in my perception of the messages of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood since the time I first read
it as a teenager, cover to cover, in a day. This piece is a tribute to the journey leading up to my second read as
an adult, now with my own set of lived experiences.
The stories in the book are almost exclusively told through the long dialogues between characters. I see Toru as a
sounding board and processing mechanism for these stories, so I kept him apart. In contrast, each of the female
leads’ near-monologues produce large colourful patches on their wings, and you can clearly make out Reiko's detailed
backstory before her days at the sanatorium.
The more the characters share with each other, the more detailed and colourful the outward expression of their
inner workings become. Exchanging words is nothing but a dance. I hope you enjoy.
"People are strange when you're a stranger."