Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life. 
 Every Murakami novel I've read to date has been splendidly rife with magical realism, woven so cleverly and skillfully into the bones of the novel that the supernatural seems, well, natural. Despite his strength with magical realism, Murakami can write a pretty terrific "regular" fictional novel. 
 Not without its share of problems, Norwegian Wood has some of the clearest prose I've read from Murakami. Simple and succinct, Murakami can jump from his usual descriptions of domesticity (doing laundry! eating meals! switching lovers with my douchebag friend...wait, what?) to profound statements on life and death without any sensation that one is being launched into a different novel. 
 Small but profound, Norwegian Wood is a bit of an oddball novel in that it's mostly dialogue. It does feature some Murakami characteristics that are not necessarily to my liking: average Joe character with illogical sexual prowess, sex scenes out of a bad porno, female characters who only serve as sexual objects for the average Joe character. Yeah, Murakami needs to write better female characters, and I could do without his take on sex. But it goes to show just how strong a writer he is that I can still mostly like this novel (featuring a manic-pixie-dream girl of the perverted variety) despite the aforementioned, due to his smooth prose and meaningful introspection on death and the living.