Naoko

Notes on Naoko.

Naoko exists at a certain remove for the entire length of Norwegian Wood, even in the scenes where she's standing right in front of Toru. Murakami keeps her half in the present and half somewhere else, first in Tokyo, later in a sanatorium deep enough in the mountains that snow becomes the book's dominant weather. She writes long, careful letters instead of speaking. When she does speak, it's often to describe a field with a well hidden somewhere in it, a hole a person could fall into and never be found, which is as close as the novel comes to explaining her directly. Murakami never explains her the rest of the way. He just keeps the reader listening at the same careful distance Toru does.