u003cpu003eWhen he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.u003c/pu003e u003cpu003e'Evocative, entertaining, sexy and funny; but then Murakami is one of the best writers around' u003ciu003eTime Outu003c/iu003eu003cbru003e u003cbru003e 'Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility' u003ciu003eGuardianu003c/iu003eu003cbru003e u003cbru003e 'This book is undeniably hip, full of student uprisings, free love, booze and 1960s pop, it's also genuinely emotionally engaging, and describes the highs of adolescence as well as the lows' u003ciu003eIndependent on Sundayu003c/iu003eu003cbru003e u003cbru003e 'Catches the absorption and giddy rush of adolescent love... It is also, for all the tragic momentum and the apparently kamikaze consciousness of many of its characters, often funny and quirkily observed' u003ciu003eTimes Literary Supplementu003c/iu003eu003c/pu003e u003cpu003e'A heart-stoppingly moving story... Murakami is, without a doubt, one of the world's finest novelists' u003ciu003eGlasgow Heraldu003c/iu003eu003cbru003eu003c/pu003e
