‘Norwegion wood’ is the first and last murakami book I’ll ever read

If the title wasn't enough, I hated the book so much. I always though of Murakami to be a decent-ish author because of the popularity he has amassed but only recently actually read his work. The first book I picked out was Norwegion Wood and I got into it without any idea about the story and only chose it coz i love the beatles. Worst Book I've ever read. I refuse to believe Murakami has ever talked to a woman coz what in the actual hell was going on his mind when he wrote these characters.

Except for Watanabe, the narrator, all of the other 'important' characters are women and all of them are so annoying. At one point I was waiting for Naoko to die, Murakami tried so hard to bring her character depth but he forgot a tiny detail, he forgot to give her any real personality or human characteristics. He spent more time describing her "curves" than her as a person. Any sort of explanation from Naoko's side was cut by Watanabe's inner dialog because even Murakami doesnt know what kind of a person he wanted her to be.

When Murakami realised his book isn't sexual enough he made Midori's character, the textual defination of a cool girl pick me. Somehow she was the most bearable character and there was more to her than Naoko, but the 'more' only existed to please Murakami's male readers.

But obviously talking incessently about sex out of nowhere just isn't sexual and interesting enough for Murakami. So what does he do, write an entire scene of 31 yr old woman getting sexually gratified by a 13 year old girl. I have never read anything as distasteful as this. Maybe Murakami was trying out a Nabakov-Lolita style of writing but failed miserably. Reiko's past story made me hate her character so much, her giving advice was so ironically disgusting, put that woman in jail.

I'm not even gonna talk about how much I hate Watanabe, he's sociopathic at best. He has no thoughts, no opinions, no desire and no morality. He does things for the sake of doing and its VERY angering.

Needless to say I'm never reading another Murakami book ever again, the music references were honesty needless and made no difference to the plot he was just dropping song names for funsies and show off his music taste or somein. Easily the most overrated book/ author ever, the ending came out of nowhere and made no sense. Someone please explain to me why this man is so popular and celebrated?