Genres
Publication
Knopf (2007), Edition: First Edition, 208 pages
Description
Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. HTML:A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami�??s masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. At its center are two sisters�??Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny�??s toward people whose lives are radically alien to her own: a jazz trombonist who claims they�??ve met before, a burly female �??love hotel�?� manager and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. AFTER DARK moves from mesmerizing drama to metaphysical speculation, interweaving time and space as well as memory and perspective into a seamless exploration of human agency. Murakami�??s trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary… (more)
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Media reviews
Många kommer nog att störa sig på den för att den är osammanhängande och saknar ett riktigt slut. Själv gillar jag den just därför, även om det finns en del annat att klaga på.
Murakamis romaner brukar alltid bli mer än summan av sina olika, ofta rätt banala beståndsdelar. Innan natten faller är dock ett undantag som inte blir mer än en, låt vara tidvis rätt så underhållande, smått förvirrad färd från mörker till ljus. Den är helt enkelt inte så bra.
Det är en stil flytande mellan genrer och upplevelser som Murakami driver sina underliga och vackra världar med, som smälter ihop myter och andeväsen med socialrealistiska plågor som kvinnohat, maffiahot, barnsexhandel och korruption.
San Francisco Chronicle
"A bittersweet novel that will satisfy the most demanding literary taste... It reminds us [that] while we sleep, the world out there is moving in mysterious and unpredictable ways."
Boston Globe
"Potent and disturbing... He reminds us that the essence of horror in the post-modern narrative is not some gothic extravagance, but the realities that await us outside our doorstep."
New York Times Book Review
"A streamlined, hushed ensemble piece built on the notion that very late at night, after the lamps of logic have been snuffed and rationality has shut its eyes, life on earth becomes boundariless and blurred ... Standing sentry above the common gloom, Murakami detects phosphorescence everywhere,
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but chiefly in the auras around people, which glow brightest at night when combined." Show Less
Salon
"One of the author's most fully realized short fictions... He's drilling down to the essential mysteries of existence."
User reviews
LibraryThing member ffortsa
Very much a Murakami book, with his signature surrealistic displacements. Very good read, with absorbing characters, and a view of the seamy side of Tokyo (I think), tangled in American culture (Denny's, 7-Eleven), Japanese practicality (Love Hotels), and sly references to classics of film and
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Western mythology. The main characters, a 19 year old named Mari and a young trombone jazz musician Takahashi, spend a wakeful night in the city, while Mari's extraordinarily beautiful sister Eri sleeps, as she has for months, escaping her life. At the end is hope for connection, between Mari and Takahashi, Mari and her sister, in spite of the almost random possibility of evil. Show Less
LibraryThing member emily_morine
I burned through Haruki Murakami's latest novel, After Dark, in about three sittings. Sometimes described as a distillation of the author's standard oeuvre, I found it to be more like an overture: quick and light in its movement, it suggests Murakami's standard themes without exploring them in much
Murakami's language in After Dark suggests explicitly a screenplay. Perspectives are described in terms of camera angles, panning and zooming, and the dialogue among characters is sometimes conveyed in script form. In many places the narrator explains in so many words "our" role as a disembodied point of view devoid of ability to alter the course of events. My guess would be that Murakami is commenting, here, on the passiveness of traditional media consumption; one of the main characters, who spends nearly the entire novel in an existentially-motivated hibernation, is a beautiful young model named Eri Asai. One gets the sense that she has been observed, admired and consumed from without until her interior sense of self has completely deteriorated. Now "we" are one more external point of view, observing her but unable to help her. She is forced to negotiate alone the un-world of her deep sleep, and the strange dislocation (literal and metaphorical) at the heart of it. Again and again, in different ways, Murakami brings up the idea of a permeable or impermeable divide - between point of view and subject, between the respectable citizen and the criminal, between public and private, and, of course, between night and day. So in that sense, the semi-screenplay form is quite fitting.
For me, though, it also makes the novel less pleasant to read than other Murakami work. The prose is jerkier, more like a set of stage directions than a flowing narrative, and the dialogue seems insufficiently ingegrated into the prose. It also has that certain flatness of a play read silently; the lines rely on the creative interpretation that actors would give, and without it they seem lacking. In fact, throughout After Dark it kept striking me that this is one novel better-suited to life as a film - preferably directed by Jim Jarmusch or David Lynch. While all the stage directions are clunky to read, the actual images involved are intriguing and effective; to me, telling this story in film form would feel like cutting out the middleman. And Lynch would have to do very little adaptation to fit After Dark into his established oeuvre; as it ends, much like Mulholland Drive or the Twin Peaks pilot, we are unsure if Eri has met with triumph or defeat in her ordeal, or indeed whether the crisis was brought to any kind of breaking point at all. There is a scene where she attempts to communicate her plight to the outside world, and a point at which "we," as her disembodied audience, attempt to warn her of an impending danger. In both cases, the attempts seem completely unsuccessful, yet they form the only semblance of a climax available to the reader, and seem to represent some kind of corner turned. I generally adore this kind of ambiguity, yet Eri's story left me somehow unsatisfied; I wanted greater access to her, more meaty characterization - which, come to think of it, is just what her sister, the other protagonist of the novel, wants as well.
Despite my complaints, After Dark was an enjoyable way to spend a few days of reading, and there were some trademark sparkles of Murakami descriptive prowess. I particularly liked the phrase, in his opening paragraph, that describes Tokyo at night as "sending out new contradictions and collecting the old." As a précis, a Murakami primer or appetizer, it's quite effective, and whets my appetite for more.
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depth. Were I putting together a Murakami syllabus, I might put After Dark at the beginning, to start a conversation that would deepen and expand with novels like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase and Kafka on the Shore. As such, it would work well, introducing Murakami's preoccupations with the quester who wanders aimlessly, with the tendency of music to form unexpected alliances between people, and with the lost, escaped or misplaced woman (a sister in this case, although often a romantic partner) who must negotiate dreamlike landscapes of unspecified violence. It would also introduce the typically ambiguous Murakami climax and ending, although in the case of After Dark the resolution seems not so much ambiguous as nonexistent. Murakami's language in After Dark suggests explicitly a screenplay. Perspectives are described in terms of camera angles, panning and zooming, and the dialogue among characters is sometimes conveyed in script form. In many places the narrator explains in so many words "our" role as a disembodied point of view devoid of ability to alter the course of events. My guess would be that Murakami is commenting, here, on the passiveness of traditional media consumption; one of the main characters, who spends nearly the entire novel in an existentially-motivated hibernation, is a beautiful young model named Eri Asai. One gets the sense that she has been observed, admired and consumed from without until her interior sense of self has completely deteriorated. Now "we" are one more external point of view, observing her but unable to help her. She is forced to negotiate alone the un-world of her deep sleep, and the strange dislocation (literal and metaphorical) at the heart of it. Again and again, in different ways, Murakami brings up the idea of a permeable or impermeable divide - between point of view and subject, between the respectable citizen and the criminal, between public and private, and, of course, between night and day. So in that sense, the semi-screenplay form is quite fitting.
For me, though, it also makes the novel less pleasant to read than other Murakami work. The prose is jerkier, more like a set of stage directions than a flowing narrative, and the dialogue seems insufficiently ingegrated into the prose. It also has that certain flatness of a play read silently; the lines rely on the creative interpretation that actors would give, and without it they seem lacking. In fact, throughout After Dark it kept striking me that this is one novel better-suited to life as a film - preferably directed by Jim Jarmusch or David Lynch. While all the stage directions are clunky to read, the actual images involved are intriguing and effective; to me, telling this story in film form would feel like cutting out the middleman. And Lynch would have to do very little adaptation to fit After Dark into his established oeuvre; as it ends, much like Mulholland Drive or the Twin Peaks pilot, we are unsure if Eri has met with triumph or defeat in her ordeal, or indeed whether the crisis was brought to any kind of breaking point at all. There is a scene where she attempts to communicate her plight to the outside world, and a point at which "we," as her disembodied audience, attempt to warn her of an impending danger. In both cases, the attempts seem completely unsuccessful, yet they form the only semblance of a climax available to the reader, and seem to represent some kind of corner turned. I generally adore this kind of ambiguity, yet Eri's story left me somehow unsatisfied; I wanted greater access to her, more meaty characterization - which, come to think of it, is just what her sister, the other protagonist of the novel, wants as well.
Despite my complaints, After Dark was an enjoyable way to spend a few days of reading, and there were some trademark sparkles of Murakami descriptive prowess. I particularly liked the phrase, in his opening paragraph, that describes Tokyo at night as "sending out new contradictions and collecting the old." As a précis, a Murakami primer or appetizer, it's quite effective, and whets my appetite for more.
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LibraryThing member zugenia
Of all the Murakami novels I’ve read, this one is the most deliberately cinematic. The narrator reminds us periodically that we are a mere “point-of-view” moving through different scenes, observing objects from specific angles, and each character study in this slim account of several
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individuals’ movements through one night between the hours of 11:56 pm and 6:52 am focuses on the problem of how much you can know a person by observing him or her in this cinematic framework. What can possibly be going through the mind of a businessman in the office between the hours of 2 and 4 am who has just severely beat a young prostitute in a “love motel” a few blocks away? What does a self-absorbed, pill-addicted young model think about when isolated from the rest of the world? The novel makes no attempt to answer such questions, but makes bizarre, even surreal spectacles of these subjects’ inscrutability; the result is a study of human character absent of the explanatory narratives of psychology, which makes the idea of human depth strange, mysterious, and appropriately dark. So why entitle it “After Dark”? As the spare, tense prose moves toward the first hints of sunrise, it gradually reveals that each human subject is, like any cinematic object, a play of light and dark—or, rather, of dark and light. After the darkness of subjectivity has been established—the inscrutable, inexplicable, and invisible—the glimmers of light that animate the individual and make him or her perceptible to others come through that much more brilliantly. Show Less
LibraryThing member msf59
A cool hypnotic tale of a small band of night owls, cruising and interacting through the late hours of one autumn night.
LibraryThing member freddlerabbit
I might have liked this book less if I weren't such a Murakami afficionado - I've read (and I have a copy of) every other work of his that's been published in English.
This book is lighter than his previous novels - it has much more of a flavor of a short story. He doesn't delve too deeply into
The book does remind me of jazz riffs after dark. It's a series of scenes set from nightfall to daybreak, alternating from one character to the next and then back again. The characters are connected in a style familiar to viewers of modern American television shows like Lost or Heroes - seemingly ordinary connections that allow us access to a new set of stories. They are funky, and light - I'd love to hear the book as a piece for the trombone.
I found the book enjoyable. There were points of recognition with Murakami's other works, and you can see him exploring new directions. From his nonfiction, I believe he's the kind of author who is unsatisfied doing one thing over and over, and I know he often prefers the short story to the novel. It's not my favorite of his works, and I'd only recommend it to someone who knew what they were getting into - I appreciate it more for what it tries to do, for the style and structure, than for the enjoyment I got from reading it.
This book is lighter than his previous novels - it has much more of a flavor of a short story. He doesn't delve too deeply into
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character's internal feelings - in fact, he stays on the outside, and when he does refer to a character's internal process ("milk is an important substance to him"), you get the sense that this is a conclusion from the available evidence, rather than a statement based on superior, narrator-knowledge of the character's thoughts and feelings. I think that this style is appropriate for what he is trying to do - Murakami explicitly refers to points of view and things we can't see in this work. But if you are used to the richness and internal depth of say, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, you may be taken aback and dislike the work.The book does remind me of jazz riffs after dark. It's a series of scenes set from nightfall to daybreak, alternating from one character to the next and then back again. The characters are connected in a style familiar to viewers of modern American television shows like Lost or Heroes - seemingly ordinary connections that allow us access to a new set of stories. They are funky, and light - I'd love to hear the book as a piece for the trombone.
I found the book enjoyable. There were points of recognition with Murakami's other works, and you can see him exploring new directions. From his nonfiction, I believe he's the kind of author who is unsatisfied doing one thing over and over, and I know he often prefers the short story to the novel. It's not my favorite of his works, and I'd only recommend it to someone who knew what they were getting into - I appreciate it more for what it tries to do, for the style and structure, than for the enjoyment I got from reading it.
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LibraryThing member voluntaryist
This is my least favorite of the Murakami books I have read so far, but it is still an enjoyable read. The chapters centering around the girl sleeping in the room read like scenes from a David Lynch film.
LibraryThing member figre
I’m not sure I have anything to write about this book. (The world’s shortest review – no, can’t do that). But do not be mistaken by that comment - it is an excellent book. Fans of Murakami will see the exquisite writing and engrossing characters that exist in all his efforts. There is even
It is a simple story – the events of one night starting at 11:56 pm and ending at 6:52 pm. (The chapters are named for the exact time the events in the chapter start.) A young Japanese girl is staying up all night and meets an old acquaintance. They talk, then go there separate ways. Events (not overly dramatic events) draw them together again. At night’s end they talk more; then go their separate ways. Underlying all this is the surreal existence of the girl’s sister who is sleeping all the time. Not much of a plot. Yet, by the book’s conclusion the characters have come alive; the events (even when seemingly mundane) have driven toward something; and the locations have taken on a reality. Ultimately, the transitions – though subtle – represent real change, and our investment in these individuals has been worth the time
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the since of strange mysticism that creeps into his stories. I was sucked into the world he created, empathized with the characters, and enjoyed the subtle transitions that occurred. And that may be why I’m taken aback at what to say – maybe I’m just too used to wham-bang transitions, not subtle ones.It is a simple story – the events of one night starting at 11:56 pm and ending at 6:52 pm. (The chapters are named for the exact time the events in the chapter start.) A young Japanese girl is staying up all night and meets an old acquaintance. They talk, then go there separate ways. Events (not overly dramatic events) draw them together again. At night’s end they talk more; then go their separate ways. Underlying all this is the surreal existence of the girl’s sister who is sleeping all the time. Not much of a plot. Yet, by the book’s conclusion the characters have come alive; the events (even when seemingly mundane) have driven toward something; and the locations have taken on a reality. Ultimately, the transitions – though subtle – represent real change, and our investment in these individuals has been worth the time
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LibraryThing member fourbears
I found this one really compelling--I find Murakami generally fascinating. His odd slant on contemporary culture--both Japanese and American, or maybe really world culture--is fascinating, unsettling and strangling satisfying.It begins with an encounter in Denny’s (Murakami is fascinated with
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American pop culture) between two college students, a girl who’s quietly reading in order to avoid going home and a guy who’s off to practice with the band where he plans trombone—in a old warehouse they can use only at night. They begin talking about chicken salad—his favorite at Denny’s. She’s skeptical—chickens are abused and full of hormones; he’s surprised at her health concerns since she’s smoking. These two—Mari and Takahashi--are the focus of the narrator’s commentary at different times during the night, basically between midnight and dawn in Tokyo. We learn that Mari is studying Chinese, has a scholarship to study in China, and that her beautiful sister—with whom she’s been compared unfavorably all her life—has been sleeping for weeks, apparently healthy but avoiding the world. Takahashi loves music, but has decided to concentrate seriously on his law studies so that he can get a pretty good job at a pretty good company and live in a pretty good house with a pretty good family in a—well you get the idea. They encounter each other and talk several times during the night, getting to know one another and relating to each other with increasing authenticity.In the meantime we encounter a Chinese prostitute who’s been raped and beaten in the Alphaville “love hotel”, and the seemingly respectable computer expert (who lives in a pretty good neighborhood with a pretty good family) who’s responsible, and we meet those who work at Alphaville at night.It’s a simple story really—increasingly real people navigating an increasingly unreal world. Show Less
LibraryThing member edfinn
Not so great, though I have heard that Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicles are both excellent. The book reminds me of a Murakami short story called "TV People" that addressed some of the same themes in a much more compact venue.
LibraryThing member benjamin.duffy
If it's possible to be disappointed by a four-star book, I was by After Dark. It was a riveting read: fast, vivid, visceral, quickly and completely drawing me into its world. The point of view, expanding, contracting, and squeezing through cracks like some sort of liquid camera, was especially
Halfway through this book, I fully expected to find it a five-star classic. Yet, by the time I finished it, I couldn't help wishing this story were somehow...more. The story built towards a crescendo that simply fizzled. No Stephen King- or Brandon Sanderson-esque explosive climax, nor even a Kazuo Ishiguro-style symphony of subtlety and restraint. Just kind of a wet plop. Not enough to ruin this excellent book, by any stretch; just a bit of a head-scratcher. Nonetheless, I'm definitely interested in reading more Murakami.
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compelling. I can't speak or read Japanese, so I can't say whether or not the translation here is accurate, but it's a damn fine piece of English writing either way.Halfway through this book, I fully expected to find it a five-star classic. Yet, by the time I finished it, I couldn't help wishing this story were somehow...more. The story built towards a crescendo that simply fizzled. No Stephen King- or Brandon Sanderson-esque explosive climax, nor even a Kazuo Ishiguro-style symphony of subtlety and restraint. Just kind of a wet plop. Not enough to ruin this excellent book, by any stretch; just a bit of a head-scratcher. Nonetheless, I'm definitely interested in reading more Murakami.
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LibraryThing member tronella
This is a pretty short slice-of-life thing, with some typical Murakami surreality. It follows a group of loosely connected characters over about 7 hours one night in Tokyo, and although the events are fairly dark and strange at times, something about his writing style still made it very relaxing to
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read. Show Less
LibraryThing member lisa_emily
I have never read any Murakami's books, but I became obssessed with the need to read After, Dark when I read a review. It was worth the hunt.
What struck me most is the point of view within the book. The reader is a "neutral ouside witness" spoken to by a comforting, semi-omniscent speaker. We see
All these little notices cannot convey the pleasure of reading the novel. The language is simple but not simplistic and the pacing moves ahead with out feeling rushed. Most importantly, the characters are enjoyable to read, yet they maintain their mystery. After Dark, I found, is a pretty good novel to start off your summer reading.
What struck me most is the point of view within the book. The reader is a "neutral ouside witness" spoken to by a comforting, semi-omniscent speaker. We see
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it as though we are looking through the camera lens, swooping down on the characters' actions and conversations. Most of what we do learn about the characters are revealed by themselves in conversation. All these little notices cannot convey the pleasure of reading the novel. The language is simple but not simplistic and the pacing moves ahead with out feeling rushed. Most importantly, the characters are enjoyable to read, yet they maintain their mystery. After Dark, I found, is a pretty good novel to start off your summer reading.
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LibraryThing member sirfurboy
My third Murakami novel, and for a while I thought it might be one I positively enjoyed. There is some humour here, and I was able to understand some of the cultural references. Murakami deceptively laces his work with Western cultural references, but it is a mistake to think that one can
In this book there is a theme that seems to have reference to a Japanese cultural phenomenon where young people wall themselves up in their rooms and become totally uncommunicative - you need to understand that to see what is going on with one of the characters - Eri.
Other themes explored in the book are Murakami's obsession with a kind of dualism, where we have alter egos beyond our control (like the murderer of Kafka's father in "Kafka on the shore") He seems to link this with influence of animal spirits, and I can only suppose that is some kind of reference to japanese mysticism (Shinto perhaps?)
There is also bad sex as usual, with the love hotel theme which divorces sex from love and commitment. At least in this novel we are invited to see that this divorce is directly related to the evils of the attack described therein.
The whole narrative takes place in real time through the course of one night.
The problem with Murakami (other than the difficulty presented to readers not steeped in Japanese culture) is that his books really are trying too hard to be surreal and metaphorical. I read Kafka on the Shore first, and felt it was trying too hard - but now I feel that book was the best of the three I have read!
In this book the surrealism is just tagged on. It doesn't seem to have any reason for being there. The watcher in Eri's room... what is that all about? Frankly, I don't care! If a book requires so much work to interpret, then no two people will interpret it the same. Some people don't mind that, but what I want to know is what the author is telling me.
I don't need to read this book to know what I am thinking myself. A clear message still requires thought from the reader. Do we agree? What can we add? But works that defy understanding and jump around between realism and the surreal - well these are a lot of work for little reward.
Of course Murakami has his supporters, and many people will love the surrealism, the lack of conclusion, the dropped threads, the moral relativism, and of course the little in jokes (room 404 is surely a reference to the HTTP error code for "page not found").
So if you like Murakami or any of the above - read this book. Otherwise your time would be better spent with something else.
The one saving grace - the reason this gets two stars and not one - is that the book is short. Much shorter than "Kafka on the Shore", or the 'Wind up Bird Chronicle". It may be a waste of time reading it - but it won't be such a huge waste of time.
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understand his novels without knowing a lot about Japan. In this book there is a theme that seems to have reference to a Japanese cultural phenomenon where young people wall themselves up in their rooms and become totally uncommunicative - you need to understand that to see what is going on with one of the characters - Eri.
Other themes explored in the book are Murakami's obsession with a kind of dualism, where we have alter egos beyond our control (like the murderer of Kafka's father in "Kafka on the shore") He seems to link this with influence of animal spirits, and I can only suppose that is some kind of reference to japanese mysticism (Shinto perhaps?)
There is also bad sex as usual, with the love hotel theme which divorces sex from love and commitment. At least in this novel we are invited to see that this divorce is directly related to the evils of the attack described therein.
The whole narrative takes place in real time through the course of one night.
The problem with Murakami (other than the difficulty presented to readers not steeped in Japanese culture) is that his books really are trying too hard to be surreal and metaphorical. I read Kafka on the Shore first, and felt it was trying too hard - but now I feel that book was the best of the three I have read!
In this book the surrealism is just tagged on. It doesn't seem to have any reason for being there. The watcher in Eri's room... what is that all about? Frankly, I don't care! If a book requires so much work to interpret, then no two people will interpret it the same. Some people don't mind that, but what I want to know is what the author is telling me.
I don't need to read this book to know what I am thinking myself. A clear message still requires thought from the reader. Do we agree? What can we add? But works that defy understanding and jump around between realism and the surreal - well these are a lot of work for little reward.
Of course Murakami has his supporters, and many people will love the surrealism, the lack of conclusion, the dropped threads, the moral relativism, and of course the little in jokes (room 404 is surely a reference to the HTTP error code for "page not found").
So if you like Murakami or any of the above - read this book. Otherwise your time would be better spent with something else.
The one saving grace - the reason this gets two stars and not one - is that the book is short. Much shorter than "Kafka on the Shore", or the 'Wind up Bird Chronicle". It may be a waste of time reading it - but it won't be such a huge waste of time.
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LibraryThing member ivan.frade
Not the best book of Murakami. It contains the usual elements of the author's style: characteristic descriptions and some "strange" situations in realistic circunstances... but something is missing, the special touch of his other novels, like the "Wind-up bird chronicle" or "Kafka on the
Good for Murakami's fans, but i wouldn't recommend it as introductory reading for new comers. Luckily, it is short, so the reader doesn't get tired even when the story is not moving forward too much.
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shore".Good for Murakami's fans, but i wouldn't recommend it as introductory reading for new comers. Luckily, it is short, so the reader doesn't get tired even when the story is not moving forward too much.
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LibraryThing member MikeFarquhar
Few things tease me more than knowing that there is a new Murakami extant, but that it will take some time for it to be translated; I've been looking forward to this from the moment I put down his last. Compared to his last new novel, [i]Kafka on the Shore[/i], this is a simpler, shorter novel,
The novel takes place in the course of a single night, beginning 'as the date is just about to change'. In an all-night diner, nineteen year old Mari sits reading a book and sipping coffee. She is about to encounter Takahashi, a slightly older man who once met her years ago; he went to school with her sister, Eri. Before the night is over, Mari will be drawn to help a nineteen year old Chinese girl who has been beaten up in Alphaville, a love hotel; and in an office building, the man who beat her up works into the night solving a computer problem. Through it all, Mari's sister lies asleep a perfect sleep, watched by a TV screen that flickers on even though the plug has been pulled.
[i]After Dark[/i] is short, but intensely atmospheric. Murakami's characters are warmly drawn, wandering through a slightly unreal night-time urban landscape where things look familiar but seem to hide subtle threats, and a looming sense of menace builds through the book. Everyone is lost to a degree, searching for something, sitting on the cusp of choices, some mundane, some fantastic. The characters flit in and out of each other's paths through the night, little intersections that occasionally peak and crescendo, particularly Mari and Takahashi, as they swap stories and feed tuna sandwiches to cats. Even the bit-part characters buzz with the life lived by those who wake and work while most people sleep: Kaoru, the former wrestler, now manageress of the Alphaville hotel, and her two assistants; the late-night bar tender still stubbornly playing LPs instead of CDs; the taxi-driver taking the office worker home at 4am - they all pulse in their scenes. It's a very cinematic book; an omniscient narrator guides us through key scenes by imagining ourselves behind a camera, and Murakami's prose, bundled into short chapters with an image of a clock telling the time at the beginning, is as tight, descriptive and evocative as ever.
There are dark undercurrents, lots of questions, and no neat resolutions. It's a very Murakami-ish Murakami novel, the literary equivalent of a good arthouse film, and whether the lost and alienated characters within are ever going to find their way to safe harbour is an open question. Despite that, I finished it leaving satisfied and contented. As with most of his books, one to reread in a few months and savour all over again.
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weighing at just over 200 pages. It's satisfying in a very Murakami sort of way; there's no neat resolution of the plot, but that's rarely the point of a Murakami novel, though there is a thematic return to an origin point. The novel takes place in the course of a single night, beginning 'as the date is just about to change'. In an all-night diner, nineteen year old Mari sits reading a book and sipping coffee. She is about to encounter Takahashi, a slightly older man who once met her years ago; he went to school with her sister, Eri. Before the night is over, Mari will be drawn to help a nineteen year old Chinese girl who has been beaten up in Alphaville, a love hotel; and in an office building, the man who beat her up works into the night solving a computer problem. Through it all, Mari's sister lies asleep a perfect sleep, watched by a TV screen that flickers on even though the plug has been pulled.
[i]After Dark[/i] is short, but intensely atmospheric. Murakami's characters are warmly drawn, wandering through a slightly unreal night-time urban landscape where things look familiar but seem to hide subtle threats, and a looming sense of menace builds through the book. Everyone is lost to a degree, searching for something, sitting on the cusp of choices, some mundane, some fantastic. The characters flit in and out of each other's paths through the night, little intersections that occasionally peak and crescendo, particularly Mari and Takahashi, as they swap stories and feed tuna sandwiches to cats. Even the bit-part characters buzz with the life lived by those who wake and work while most people sleep: Kaoru, the former wrestler, now manageress of the Alphaville hotel, and her two assistants; the late-night bar tender still stubbornly playing LPs instead of CDs; the taxi-driver taking the office worker home at 4am - they all pulse in their scenes. It's a very cinematic book; an omniscient narrator guides us through key scenes by imagining ourselves behind a camera, and Murakami's prose, bundled into short chapters with an image of a clock telling the time at the beginning, is as tight, descriptive and evocative as ever.
There are dark undercurrents, lots of questions, and no neat resolutions. It's a very Murakami-ish Murakami novel, the literary equivalent of a good arthouse film, and whether the lost and alienated characters within are ever going to find their way to safe harbour is an open question. Despite that, I finished it leaving satisfied and contented. As with most of his books, one to reread in a few months and savour all over again.
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LibraryThing member ggarfield
An Amazingly Unique Book
Murakami’s book takes place between midnight and 6:52 am in Tokyo. It could alternatively be called “Night People” as it traces the lives of two sisters Eri and Mari for these few nocturnal hours. What transpires during this almost seven hours is both the literal
Murakami’s book takes place between midnight and 6:52 am in Tokyo. It could alternatively be called “Night People” as it traces the lives of two sisters Eri and Mari for these few nocturnal hours. What transpires during this almost seven hours is both the literal
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reality of that time duration and then again a lifetime of possibilities and the human condition. A wonderful and enlightening book. Recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member scorl
The characters in the novel are animated for the benefit of the reader. The reader is told that he/she is a camera and is told how to set up the camera shot and what to look at. All of the characters in the book are searching for something: an actual person, love, acceptance, peace... In the end,
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some are resolved and some are still searching. Show Less
LibraryThing member suejonesjohnson
A favorite author; unlike most of Murakami's novels, this one is quite brief with little of his usual magical realism. Yet it is a haunting account of what we mistakenly think of as the underbelly of city life.
LibraryThing member michaeldwebb
Gentle, poetic and simple - a short novel taking place over the course of a single night, centered around a girl who never wakes and acquaintances who may become more.
A change of style for Murakami - short (very short) chapters, simply told, as if watching a film (he treats the reader as if
I read this book very slowly as I didn't want it to end.
A change of style for Murakami - short (very short) chapters, simply told, as if watching a film (he treats the reader as if
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viewing through a camera at times).I read this book very slowly as I didn't want it to end.
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LibraryThing member Aerodynamics
'After Dark' is a disappointment. Judging from the other reviews I've read, most readers find this novel enticing in what it lacks. I've always appreciated an artist who can get out of the way of his story, allow subtext to remain subtext, and encourage the reader to take an active role in the
This is less a novel then a collection of beginnings. Maybe it should be used as a teaching device in writers' workshops; I'm sure that some enterprising artist could fashion compelling conclusions for these threads of story.
Much has been written about Murakami's unique approach to storytelling, and I will grant that the best elements of his work are the most elusive. This being the case, the best point of reference for any critique of Murikami is Murakami himself. 'After Dark' just doesn't stand up to Murakami.
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construction of the dream-world of the book. However, 'After Dark' strikes me as the unfortunate case in which less is, in fact, less.This is less a novel then a collection of beginnings. Maybe it should be used as a teaching device in writers' workshops; I'm sure that some enterprising artist could fashion compelling conclusions for these threads of story.
Much has been written about Murakami's unique approach to storytelling, and I will grant that the best elements of his work are the most elusive. This being the case, the best point of reference for any critique of Murikami is Murakami himself. 'After Dark' just doesn't stand up to Murakami.
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LibraryThing member Karlus
A book with a superb pair of opening chapters, which start parallel and interleaved story arcs for two sisters.
A book with chaotic events which almost, but not quite, connect to each other.
A book with a story so slender and light as to almost float up out of one's hands.
A book which left me with a
A book which finally leaves me with the most neutral reaction to a book I can ever remember having.
Glad I read it? No.
Sorry I read it? No.
My kind of book? Might have been.
Your kind of book? Who knows?
A book with chaotic events which almost, but not quite, connect to each other.
A book with a story so slender and light as to almost float up out of one's hands.
A book which left me with a
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feeling of unfulfilled promise.A book which finally leaves me with the most neutral reaction to a book I can ever remember having.
Glad I read it? No.
Sorry I read it? No.
My kind of book? Might have been.
Your kind of book? Who knows?
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LibraryThing member lauriemk
Strange, like many of Murakami's books, and a little darker than some. I liked this a lot, but I prefer Murakami when he is a little more whimsical, like in A Wild Sheep Chase.
LibraryThing member shawnd
A different Murakami. I've found most of his books very similar, almost indistinguishable. Older man in relationship struggle of some kind (recently ended or struggling or ambiguous), young girl with some obscure tie to the guy. In a residential neighborhood with some city action. Fits them all.
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This one is a little different as it focuses on younger folks - the older man is missing here. And he's getting more and more psychedelic - this one is almost off the deep end. Bizarre, and not very interesting in my opinion. I'm always suspicious of someone who writes about character's dreams they have during sleep in the novel itself, which Murakami has a penchant for doing, but with this book he's gone off the deep end. Show Less
LibraryThing member kafkascampi
I found this, along with Kafka on the Shore, to be very unsatisfying. It seemed half-baked to me. The characters were good, the story promising, but it was more like an idea for a story than an actual story. Of course, the writing and imagery were pleasing, but I wanted more.
LibraryThing member Niecierpek
It's the latest book by an author who has become my favourite over the last two years. It's not exactly a novel, more a novella, or a long short story, not far removed from a nocturne- music of the night.
Music metaphor comes naturally to mind as music is an underlying motif in the story.
"You send
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."
The characters seem to be somehow in a shared state of darkness which is not only the darkness of the night, but metaphorically the darkness of the soul.
The narration takes place over seven hours, between a few minutes before midnight and 6:52 in the morning in Tokyo's red light district. Murakami uses a movie technique to narrate his story. We get a bird eye view shot of the city first and then a close-up of what is happening to a small group of characters who accidentally get entangled in one incident. The characters are very well drawn, and I liked them all but the novel is disappointingly small.
Music metaphor comes naturally to mind as music is an underlying motif in the story.
"You send
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the music deep into your heart so that it makes your bodyundergo 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."
The characters seem to be somehow in a shared state of darkness which is not only the darkness of the night, but metaphorically the darkness of the soul.
The narration takes place over seven hours, between a few minutes before midnight and 6:52 in the morning in Tokyo's red light district. Murakami uses a movie technique to narrate his story. We get a bird eye view shot of the city first and then a close-up of what is happening to a small group of characters who accidentally get entangled in one incident. The characters are very well drawn, and I liked them all but the novel is disappointingly small.
Show Less
ISBN
9780307265838