Isn't it good, Norwegian Wood?



Woah! Everywhere I went today, this book cover image kept popping up! I saw it first on As The Crowe Flies And Reads which is where I learned it had been turned into a film and for quite awhile was waiting for a distributor in the U.S. And I hadn't even heard of it. Embarassing.

Here's the description of the book, by Haruki Murakami. I pulled it from B&N.com:

This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time.  It is sure to be a literary event.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before.  Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable.  As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.

IMDB says the film version was finally released on January 6th but I only find it at a couple of theatres in the big apple. If it's playing in a city near you, let me know. You would think it would be playing at one of the art houses here in L.A. but no.
I'm loving this poster though!
Anyway, there's also a Read-Along for the book at Reading Rambo if you're interested in that sort of thing. Sounds a bit too much like homework to me! Or maybe I'm just intimidated. I read some of As the Crowe Flies comments and they're pithy, sometimes snarky and illuminating!