Customer Reviews

After Dark (Thorndike Basic)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(47)
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.

This was my introduction to Murakami. With his new novel coming out, Iq84, I wanted a primer on his tone and chose "After Dark" as it was rather short and had an interesting premise and I am so glad I did. I felt like I was reading a movie, especially the chapters revolving around Eri, they were almost creepy with its voyeuristic tone and you could see Murakami's words unfolding into pictures in your mind. I think I have found a new favorite author and can't wait until Iq84 comes out.

I was led to this book by a bit of serendipity doo dah after rereading The Great Gatsby. I googled Great Gatsby for my book review and came up with Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. It seems the protagonist of Murakami's novel was a fan of F. Scott's book, and he reread it several times, and because of it forged a pivotal friendship with a rich and popular frat boy. In further discussions of Gatsby I brought up Norwegian Wood and heard more praise for Haruki's prose. Next Norwegian Wood was in the news as it was being banned at yet another High School. I quickly went to the library to see if they had it, but the only available title by Haruki Murakami was After Dark.

I was captivated by it from the start. It kind of veers between experimental novel and hyper-realism. The experimental novel parts are where the point of view is described as an actual camera, hovering over the action, zooming in and out, observing the scene, and also observing the first law of time travel: do not intervene in the events unfolding. Televisions that aren't plugged in nevertheless flicker in and out, showing further unexplained scenes of a faceless man watching. There is a Sleeping Beauty, we gradually learn that she is named Eri Asai, and she has been asleep for a very long time, yet she is not in a coma. This concerns her sister, Mari Asai, who is studying in a Denny's restaurant in an effort to escape the oppressive atmosphere of waiting for when, if ever, her sister will awaken from her slumbers.

The parts of the novel involving younger sister Mari are the hyper-realistic ones. It seems you couldn't pick a more mundane subject, a night studying in a family restaurant chain, yet there is something about the way Murakami describes it that is fascinating. Then another student enters and recognizes her from a double date they had been on with a buddy of his and Mari's sister, Eri. He tries to break the ice, but Mari barely gives him the time of day, or rather, the time of night, since the events described occur After Dark. She won't even tell him what book she is studying so intently. She does let slip that she is studying and can speak Chinese. In spite of or because of her reluctance to engage in the conversation, their encounter is like one long extended "meet cute" where we gradually learn that the male student is a trombone player. When he describes the song he heard that inspired him to take up the trombone, "The Five Spot After Dark" by Curtis Fuller, and hums the first eight bars, Mari responds with the next eight. Kismet. Even though he goes off to his jazz band rehearsal, we know the two will meet again.

The manager of a nearby Love Hotel, a former Lady Wrestler, enters Denny's and seeks Mari's help. This leads to encounters with various denizens of the night and a possible epiphany for Mari. The Bottom Line is that though the dénouement was not what I expected, and when the deus ex machina rang twice in the Seven Eleven the calls weren't heeded, it still added up to a very satisfying reading experience that left me hungry for more books by Haruki Murakami.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Norwegian Wood
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel (Vintage International) by Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick
Adventures of the Karaoke King by Harold Taw
Five Spot After Dark by Curtis Fuller featuring Bennie Golson From the Album Blues-ette
The April Fools (LP Version) by Burt Bacharach performed by Dionne Warwick From the Album The Dionne Warwick Collection: Her All-Time Greatest Hits
Sonnymoon For Two by Sonny Rollins From the Album Sonny Rollins (Digitally Remastered)

"Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?"

After Dark by Haruki Murakami reminded me of carefully-shuffled cards. Two decks representing two separate (yet ultimately and intimately related) stories are slowly merged, chapter by chapter, until they make one cohesive whole that is far more beautiful and evocative than either story would be if taken alone. Murakami is a master of this technique, and he is in fine form here.

Story one: It is midnight in downtown Tokyo. An introverted, bookish, somewhat cynical young woman drinks coffee and reads in an all-night diner, escaping into her book, retreating from the world, hiding from phantoms. She encounters several quirky and unexpected other late-night souls and has conversations and adventures, forming serendipitous attachments and revealing more about herself as the story progresses.

Story two: A beautiful young woman sleeps...and sleeps...and sleeps, still as stone in her bed. A quiet (David) Lynchian drama unfolds which may be literal or metaphor, dream, hallucination, or reality, or a bit of each. Any details I could give might spoil the story for potential readers, so I'll simply say it is subtly surreal, atmospheric, and rich in symbolism.

I mentioned David Lynch, and although he is a bit more in-your-face than Murakami, I feel the points of comparison are strong. There is a magical realist air all through the book, where the mundane takes stranger and less expected turns as the story progresses. This is not a work of horror fiction, yet there are several instances of imagery that would be right at home in one of the finer, more understated Japanese horror films. This book felt very cinematic to me, and I can very much see it being adapted for the screen by one of Japan's avant-garde and visionary auteurs. (I'd suggest Katsuhito Ishii, or perhaps Takashi Miike in one of his thoughtful, introspective phases.)

Murakami has created a lovely, unusual book full of surprises, wry humor, gorgeous prose, artful dialogue, poetic metaphor, and cinema-worthy scene-building. Read this if you love the author or Japanese literature in general, multi-layered meaning that will keep you thinking and re-evaluating long after you've finished reading, deftness of language, colorful and theater-quality casts of characters, or plots that coil labyrinth-like back and around and onto and into themselves. Read this if you are looking for the perfect book to escape into over coffee, in an all-night diner, after dark.