Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami initially centers around the relationship between Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo and Naoko,  a beautiful and introspective young woman.  Their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

As Goodreads.com puts it, Norwegian Wood is the “poignant story of one college student’s romantic coming-of age and takes us to that distant place of a young man’s first, hopeless, and heroic love.”