After Dark
by Haruki Murakami
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Book Summary Information
Author: Haruki MurakamiEdition: Paperback
Published: 2007-01-01
ISBN: 0739489062
Publisher: ALFRED A KNOPF
Book Reviews of After Dark
Book Review: Another Dull Day
Summary: 3 Stars
Certainly it is about darkness. Eri, the pretty one is seeking it in sleep, and Mari the other one is escaping it in Denny's and other places. I used to work in Japan and its Americanization, at least as told here, is dull.
It is about the search for identity. They are Japanese, yet everything about them, the coffee shop venues, the background music, the menus, are foreign, American. It is about loneliness - all are looking for a friend, but fail, covered as they are by a cloak of an unredeemable past and no vision of the future. Eri, a beautiful woman, avoids the confrontation by sleeping. Mari, drowns hers in a book, and rejects, sort of, the friendship of a stranger, Takehashi. He arkwardly pursues Mari, but the intellectual distance between them is uncrossable. He is going to join the world by going to law school - an unlikely solution for him.
Playing about Mari and Takehashi is the story of the sleeping sister, an abused Chinese prostitute, the guy who beat her, and the guy on the motorcycle chasing him. The dawn arrives, and nothing is resolved. It is not a story, but a slice of life. It is the author's comment on common life today - boring and uncreative for some. Some funny things happen and if played out could enhance the idea. The cell phone on the store shelf could be expanded into a number of funny encounters. The dialog, if sparse, is catchy and clearly defines the characters. It is more for a film script. The third person narrative makes it that way.
Frederick Andresen, Author of Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia
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