Customer Reviews

After Dark (Coleccion Andanzas) (Spanish Edition)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Writing about one's favorite author is a hard thing to do. Like many other Murakami fans, I have been anxiously waiting for the release of After Dark after the short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman whetted my appetite. However, after having been a fan of Murakami's fiction for almost six years now, I am well aware that in all likelihood that After Dark would be a lighter work after the considerably larger volume of Kafka on the Shore. Also, having read bits of the Japanese edition, I was aware that After Dark was written in a different style than Murakami's previous novels. Most readers are familiar with Murakami's deadpan, first-person narrator and not with some of his latter third person work and some critics wonder if Murakami's style is truly suited for third person writing. Yet, in this slim volume, Murakami takes things even further. Our omniscient narrator continually uses the pronoun "We" throughout the book thereby smashing the fourth wall and bringing the reader into the mix, but he continually reminds us that we are a powerless spectator that out personal actions have no bearing on what occurs in the book itself, but the personal involvement within the book and Murakami's use of cinematic style in framing scenes, including detailed lists of montage, adds considerably to the book. The reader might notice that this book is Murakami at his most descriptive. Never have I seen him detail the setting as much as he does within this book.

As for the story itself, in some ways it is not quite as interesting as the mechanics of writing that Murakami uses in this book's fewer than 200 pages. The story centers around a nineteen-year old girl named Mari who one night decides that she wants to spend the night reading within the confines of a Denny's instead of going home. While there she encounters a young man named Takahashi who invites himself to sit at her table to order a chicken salad. During their conversation we soon learn that Mari has an older sister named Eri who is strikingly beautiful and Mari is considerably less than happy at home. Also, we learn that, although she is Japanese, Mari is quite fluent in Chinese and in fact speaks it more than her native language. Takahashi soon leaves, but soon a large woman, pure muscle not fat, named Kaoru comes to seek Mari in order to gain her help. It seems that a young Chinese prostitute was beaten severely by a patron and she does not speak a word of Japanese. We also learn that the name of the love hotel is Alphaville and for those who are fans of Godard's film of the same name will have many levers switched.

Like in many of his other novels, the conscious and the unconscious states of mind play large parts within this book, but unlike many of the earlier ones, Murakami writes directly on the subject and many of his common themes are tied together within this book. Also, it is quite interesting to read Murakami's take on urban life in Japan and making the city itself a living, breathing creature and how it thrives off its denizens. While not one of his best books, After Dark displays Murakami's evolution as a writer and shows him breaking away from some of the plot devices that are common in his novels, no missing women in this one!, some might find this change to be a bit much, but it shows growth within the being of a writer in his late fifties, and makes one wonder what is to come in the future.

As much as it pains me to say this, After Dark is by far my least favorite Murakami novel. Murakami had already begun to experiment with his style in Kafka on the Shore, but After Dark is clearly a large leap in a new direction. Unfortunately, I can't say this first effort is successful. The story is cryptic as expected but for a Murakami novel the pace and writing is oddly flat. Unlike works like Wind-Up Bird and Hard-boiled Wonderland, I just was not able to care enough to fully immerse myself in this book. In some ways this story just felt like a bit of a private experiment of sorts, where Murakami spent more time focusing on technical issues (perspective in particular) rather than developing the story. In the end, as an old Murakami hand, I can't give this story more than 3 stars based on the high quality of his other works.

Where Murakami will go next is a bit of a mystery. The final five stories in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman were written after After Dark and bear more of a similarity to his earlier style than they do to this novel. Will he return to a brand of the mystic realism that has made him popular both in Japan and abroad, or will he continue the difficult process of reinventing himself? I hope Murakami has not run out of steam, but if After Dark is a sign of things to come then I'm afraid the period from the mid-80s through the mid-90s will be remembered as Murakami's halcyon days. His next work will be the key--as a fan of his work, I hope that my pessimism is unfounded and his next novel is a return to the greatness he is capable of. Personally, I look forward to reading other reviews of this book (as well as feedback on my own) to see what other readers think ... I have a feeling opinions will be divided.

After Dark, by Haruki Murakami (a new to me author) provided for me, what I would have to call a surreal reading experience.

Totally bizarre, but addictive, I listened to this audio book for the last 5 evenings, well into the night. The reader, Janet Song, was amazing, and did an excellent job describing what the reader was seeing as the story unfolded in what I would have to describe as a "book without a plot".

Curious....well the story starts out pretty much at a Denny's in Tokyo, and the entire story takes place in one night, beginning at just minutes before midnight. It is here at Dennys that we meet Mari Asi, an insomniac who seems to never sleep, and Takahashi a trombone player, and an old aquaintance. The two strike up a conversation about whether to order chicken at this restaurant. Mari seems to spend her nights at Denny's with a large book she carries around. Mari and Takahashi continue to meet at night and they become friends. It is through some profound conversations by the two, that we learn more about the other characters. There is Mari's sister Eri, who seems to do nothing but sleep as she suffers from some sort of social withdrawal, along with (2) other equally troubled souls, who have a story to tell: a prostitute and a software manager. Though the course of this story these people will find their lives intersecting.

This story is so different, so strange, yet so vivid, descriptive and haunting. I am really at a loss for what else to say about this unique book, except that although this is my first book by this author, it will not be my last. I plan to explore more books by this author, as I get the feeling I could be on to something new and pretty great with this author.

Although the audio book was excellent, in the future I plan to read the print version by this author if possible, as there were parts I would have wanted to reread and ponder (not so easy with a audio book). RECOMMENDED.

The latest from Haruki Murakami, "After Dark" is more meditation than novel. And yet that floating sensation I got when I read the best of Murakami, "Windup Bird Chronicle", "Kafka on the Shore," didn't happen for me with "After Dark."

One character never awakes and her sister never sleeps. The plot, such as there is one, revolves around a brutal midnight attack on a girl by a john at a love motel.

One of the characters says, "It used to be after the sun set, people would just crawl in their caves and protect themselves. Our internal clocks are still set for us to sleep after the sun goes down." "After Dark" is about how we resist this biological imperative and how that resistance messes with our heads.

I'm a huge Murakami fan and I admire what he does here. Yes, it has some of the usual touches; alienated youth, the pop culture references and weird points of view. But there is very little of his trademark magical realism or narrative development in "After Dark." So while I liked "After Dark" and respect Murakami's willingness to venture into new territory, I can't recommend a newcomer to his work to start here.

Let's just be honest here and not mince words with our darling author Mr. Murakami. Yes, we all love his earlier work. Hard Boiled Wonderland, Wind Up Bird, Kafka on the Shore are deep bright wells of metaphysical insight and terror. After Dark is just terrible. It's boring, and intellectually light to say the very least. The characters are flat and the plot refuses to budge. I applaud Murakami for his bravery in breaking with his traditional style and his takes on the Japanese I novel and trying something different with his narrative structure, but that alone does not make it an interesting or well written novel, just unique in his oeuvre. Let's not let our love of his previous work cloud our reception of his current novel.

Thus goes Takahashi's motto in life. In "After Dark", spanning a single night in people's lives, Takahashi and others form a web of stories of people who have their problems and their worries. From Mari, trying to deal with a reality that she can't fathom, to her sister Eri, sleeping herself into a blissful nothingness sheltered from reality, the characters are real and messy. Interwoven through it all is Murakami's unique weaving of reality and the ethereal nothingness that lurks just beneath the surface.

This would have to be one of Murakami's more accessible novels, and one that leaves a somewhat pleasantly disturbing after glow. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel to the very last page. I had intended to read it just while commuting, but I got absorbed into it and had to finish it. It is one of those books, I think.

For people who have not read Murakami before, I think this is the ideal novel to start with. It is not too surreal for people and it is has a depth of perception that is still able to be shared with readers. It is a great book and one that I will be thinking about for some time.

Haruki Murakami's twelfth novel is "a short, sleek novel of encounters set it Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn." It is set in a seven-hour period of real-time. The reader follows a skeletal outline of the interactions between six lost souls. We meet 19-year-old Mari, studying late at night in a Denny's and her sister, Eri, a beautiful model in a semi-comatose state, being watched by someone evil. Other alienated souls of the night include a former fighting champion working at a love hotel, a prostitute, a jazz musician, and a sadistic office worker.

Murakami is an author known for his mysterious characters and minimalism. With this book, however, he was too minimalist, leaving far too much up to the reader for not just interpretation, but invention of a story line. He doesn't provide the reader any conclusions, which is his trademark, but with this book, he has released a lot of story threads, loosely wound together, without the true structure of a novel.

At least it was short and sleek, so it wasn't terribly painful to finish. As a reader, I was left wanting more, left wondering too much about the dream-like nighttime landscape of these characters. The story around the sleeping sister is ostensibly the most eerie, with hints of something terrible that drew her into social withdrawal, but the lack of action or reason behind her coma renders those chapters listless and sluggish.

After Dark was originally released in Japan in 2004, and had Russian, Dutch, Chinese, and French translations before it was released in English in May 2007.

I am glad that I am comfortable with ambiguity. That personality trait came in helpful while reading this, AFTER DARK, the first book by Haruki Murakami I had read. I had heard that Murakami is a writer heavy on the esoteric, the metaphysical, the ambiguous. I heard correctly. That was not a concern of mine. But what about the prose itself? Some authors write in such a way that the optic nerve just slides over the words, transmitting the wonderfully drawn pictures instantly into the brain. Others write prose as thorny and difficult as walking on a rusty nail.

Fortunately, Murakami falls into the first category. Although AFTER DARK's "plot" (is it even that?) may be way out there, the writing itself is quite accessible. That comes in handy when we dive in.

AFTER DARK alternates between a realistic thread and one created of the bizarre, set over about seven hours of night. Mari, 19 year old college girl, is trying to get some pleasure reading in at an all-night Denny's when she is interrupted by Takahashi, a trombone player about to hit practice. They had met a couple of years ago through Mari's sister, Eri. Before the night is through, Mari will also meet the manager of a love hotel (that's where unmarried couples in Japan go to get some luvin' on) and a Chinese prostitute, beaten to a mess by some john. We, though not Mari, also meet that john in his personal and professional life. The strands of the relationships between these characters gets, if not exactly woven together, at least loosely connected with one another.

Interposed with this is the story of Eri, the older sister. Stuck in a very deep sleep for months, we encounter her as pure spectator, Murakami using an extreme objective point of view for this encounter. Something bizarre is about to happen, and the flickering and static of an unplugged television lets us know that that "something" is not of this reality. A masked man, perhaps threatening, appears but with the sole aim, it would appear, of watching Eri, as well.

Is this a dream? Is this the projection of someone's inner psyche onto a blank space for pure observation? We do not know. It is, however, a world unfamiliar and strange to us and interesting to explore. The ambiguous nature of the fantastical plot allows for considerable speculation. Feel free to do so, pick up AFTER DARK and start reading. But do not expect to solve the mystery of what is, in this book, unanswerable.

Murakami is excellent with mood pieces, and 'After Dark' is a brilliant study of characters who inhabit the after hours for various reasons; some to jam with bandmates in a jazz ensemble, others to flee a checkered past, or to seek some solace away from a difficult home condition.

Chapters are marked out with timings as the night progresses, as the ensemble of characters cross paths with cinematic precision, reflective of Murakami's clean sharp prose (once again brilliantly translated by the ever-reliable Jay Rubin).

This novel is an insomniac's dream come true, with detailed description of the nightscape that betray undisguised film aspirations. This is especially seen in the dream-like sequences, featuring a girl who is (perhaps willingly) lulled into a comatose state. The narrator beckons the reader to take on the 'viewpoint... of a midair camera' and the scene transforms into a still from "Through the Looking Glass".

Beautifully written, and like most Murakami pieces go, there's little resolution in the end, which is arguably fitting as a detached observation of the slice of time between midnight and daybreak.

I find myself thinking about Murakami's books long after I've read them. Murakami compares writing to jazz music and with his writing it is true. Just as I find myself humming memorable bits from songs like Take Five, I also come back again and again to passages of Murakami's novels and short stories. I don't always recognize the deeper meaning in his works right away, but like a piece of music his writing continues to work on me over time.

After Dark takes place in Tokyo between the "witching" hours of midnight and dawn. The nighttime setting lends itself to the loneliness and alienation of the characters. We are never drawn too close to these characters, but instead we watch and listen, along with the narrator, as though through a camera as it zooms in or out and then pans around at times giving us mere glimpses of the wider setting. The story is told in scenes of dialogue between six characters within segments of sequential time. Mari is a 19 year old university freshman who perceives herself as plain and dull, especially compared to her beautiful older sister Eri. Mari has for some reason, known only to her, decided to stay up all night reading at a Denny's. She is joined several times throughout the night by Tetsuya, a young jazz musician. Mari is unexpectedly drawn into the lives of a large female ex-wrestler who now manages a "love hotel," a Chinese prostitute, and two women with mysterious backgrounds who hide under cover of night and transient jobs.

These scenes are interrupted occasionally as we, the camera, look in on Mari's older sister Eri who sleeps. Her sleep is reminiscent of that deep and complete slumber of Sleeping Beauty. Several months previous to the night our story takes place, Eri announces to her family that she is "going to sleep for awhile"; she has not woken since. On this particular night she is watched by something or someone menacing. Eri has withdrawn completely and may or may not find her way back. We are not sure if she is being controlled by the menacing presence or if her continued slumber is by choice. The scenes with Eri are eerie and unexplained.

Much in this short novel is left unexplained. In one of the more magical scenes, an image of a man wavers, his outline bends, quality fades, static rises. Murakami's story is very much like the image of this man. We can't always see clearly what it is that the author is showing us. I don't think this is an accident or poor writing. I believe Murakami does this intentionally and the reader must look for meaning in a less cognitive way. As the author says through his character Tetsuya:

"You send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of a physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state."

Murakami's works are very much a shared state. Not everyone will find his writing to their liking, but those who can resonate with the author will find themselves coming back for more.