>>25218172
what do you like about it?
I liked Mieko Kawakami's Breast and Eggs, if you want something that captures the life of japanese person. Kawakami's Heaven has child characters if you want something about growing in life or moving on.
>I liked all the music references
fuck off

>>25218246
Thanks for your reply. I'm not particulary interested in Japan and it's not about the music references.

I really like the relationship Watanabe has with the 2 main girls, how Naoko is slowly withering and Midori is so full of life. Also how Watanabe goes around life confused, surrounded by all those other characters like Nagasawa, Storm Trooper, the suicide of his childhood friend...

I've read it 7 times. It's a book that really relaxes me.

>>25218292
>Also how Watanabe goes around life confused, surrounded by all those other characters
Hmmm, yeah you may like Kawakami, but I'd also recommend The Joke by Milan Kundera or Hemingway's Sun Also Rises. Look into them.
>Why The Joke?
It's about student in czechoslovakia and his fate, it takes place during multiple different places of his life as he has encounters with different people from different stages of his life. Also the titular joke is something akin to the friend's suicide from Norwegian wood, something that just happens out of nowhere and changes his life and the whole book is about the man having to cope/live with the effects of it. There are relationships with colorful female characters, especially one of them (with a girl in a yellow coat) is very similar to those two in Norwegian wood in tone.
>Why Sun Also Rises?
It's much more 'zoomed in', but it's about a character and his friends on holiday - each of the friends has different approach to life, different problem (is affected by WW1 in different way), except one. The book is master at conveying the feeling of going through life, just letting it pass, the feel that you are nowhere and are going nowhere. It also does not mesh with the Hemingway stereotype, it's not 'macho'. The ending is one of the best endings ever and will make you go 'That's life!"

>>25218292
check out in coin locker babies, it might have the relationship itch you are looking for.

more than human was pretty good. 253 is also good

>>25218172
The Unconsoled by Ishiguro

>>25218292
Absolutely hated this book personally but how you describe it you're probably better served by visual novels

>>25218311
>>25218636
Thank you, anons. I've made a list with all those books and will start reading them. I'm gonna begin with Coin Locker Babies, it sounds interesting.

>>25218639
Thank you, anon. I read Never Let Me Go and I didn't really enjoy it, but I wil check that one out.

>>25218650
Why did you hate it? I would like to read your opinion

>>25218690
I hope you enjoy The Unconsoled, anon. It’s a much more cathartic read compared with Never Let Me Go, but both remind me of Murakami with his love of music, nostalgia, and the surreal.

>>25218690
its been a few years since I read it, but it think on a structural level the pacing is whack: weeks and months pass between sections and then for no apparent reason he throws you this lame Magic Mountain trip up to the sanatorium. If we're safe to skip however long in the protagonists life im sure we'll be fine missing his totally uneventful bus ride. Gave me whiplash to the extent I started to wonder if he stitched together 2 half-baked novels.

The first of these, what I guess is a campus novel, is actually fine. I liked Storm Trooper, and the his chad friend reminded me a lot of a good friend I had in college. Before reading the novel I knew very little about Murakami's life, but after researching a bit I found out he married his college sweetheart and admitted to having a very banal young adulthood, which tracked up until that point in the novel. For me the wheel really came off with that quirked-up bitch who ran a corner shop for her ailing dad or something... Like so many characters she just appears/disappears for no reason (others like his dorm buddies just vanish half way through). There is point where he pulls the handbreak again and we have to follow along into the hospital where her dad is just so we can see how caring and pure hearted she actually is - which is cliched and contrived by itself etc... But then the very next time we see her again her dad has already passed away. Just wiped out immediately after having served his purpose. If that doesn't come off as the most amateurish on-the-spot narrative construction I don't know what to tell you.
Anyway from then on our protagonist is free to just mope about and indulge in whatever nonsensical sexual escapes a 40 year old monogamous man could conure up for his younger self.
I think that was my ultimate conclusion: a pervert middle aged man who never had the opportunity/nerve to fool around with girls, sitting with his tiny cock erect at his writers desk, mind full to the brim with surreptitiously watched J-porn, dreaming about the exciting, yet melancholic, youth he feels he missed out on. I wish he wrote books about how much he hates his wife instead.
ultimately I guess surreal is a good descriptor for his work, just like how it would be surreal for me to try to explain how to take apart a jet engine.

Incidentally, did you know the English translations of his work omit really not insignificant amounts of the original text? Apparently they felt the need to sanitise his books for American readers.

>>25218798
Sorry for the messy post, it's late and I just wrote this in one go without much thought. also ESL if you couldn't tell

>>25218172
wind up bird chronicle

anon u have to read it to understand

just read it

read this book

its really really really really reall worthwhile. do it now! do it. read this book. read . read that one. read. read . read readr read read read reead that book. i really liked it. i have to state this emphatically by filling the box with many words. so that you will read it. because its worth it. youre worth it. this post is like a mind virus that forces humans to read wind up bird chronicle byecause it is such a good book. it is just so nice. i have great taste in everything cultural. because of this, i can be confident in my recommendation.

>>25218842
I agree with this schizophrenic, Wind Up Bird kicks ass

>>25218798
you forgot to mention the pedo chapter