“If you don’t like someone’s story, you write your own.”
- Chinua Achebe
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For the record: No. We didn’t read it in Italian translation.
Or to put it another way: love, loss and pain struggle for supremacy with substantial helpings of (largely gratuitous) adolescent-style sex.
It turned out that we more or less all had expectations of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. There were those who had read Murakami before, those who had read Norwegian Wood before and, for those new to Murakami, word of mouth and Waterstones recommendations had played a part. For most of us the experience didn’t quite live up to the anticipation.
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If the death of Chinua Achebe, announced on Friday last (22nd March), received any coverage in mainstream news broadcasting, then I missed it. Perhaps it is only actors and singers who are routinely honoured with those kind of accolades. Happily, newspapers and internet sources have somewhat rectified the deficit, to which deeply deserved tribute this blog adds its own small voice.
If this novel has flaws then we missed them. The spectre of the unsympathetic character loomed ominously, but there was no suggestion that this in any way constituted a fault, and neither was the sympathy shortfall universal.
Curious facets of The Great Gatsby included the great amount packed into a slender plot and a smaller volume. A high incidence of symbolism at times expressed as highly effective empty symbolism. Named narrator Nick: a character in his own right and yet, curiously, we persisted in referring to him as “the narrator.” (Or was that just me? Still curious.)
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