After Dark (Vintage International) by Haruki Murakami Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of After Dark (Vintage International)
Book Review: Tolerable but not his best
Summary: 2 Stars
Not much of a plot, thinly drawn characters (often a bit of a problem with HM, but more evident without a plot)...one or two interesting settings. It passed a little time.Book Review: Murakami's most limpid work to date
Summary: 4 Stars
The action takes place during one night in Tokyo, between midnight and 07:00 in the morning. There's actually very little happening and the book is structured as a suite of conversations between different characters, each one of them more or less on the fringe of "daylight" society. The deeper you get into the night, the more personal the conversation.
Murakami is a master at lifting the false blanket of security that we create for our lives: the routine of our jobs, our families, ambitions and worldly possessions. What does he show behind the veil? To be honest, I'm not sure. There are darkness and shadows moving. We are alone with our fears but everything takes the unreal quality of dreams. The weight of the past, the uncertainty of the future and their complex relationship and trade-off with individuality are all themes that come to mind but, as in some paintings, they are suggested rather than shown. There is actually something a-temporal about this book, the same conversations could happen at different times and places, the darkness sending us back to a primeval age.
In spite of this, this book is not actually dark or pessimistic. These lonely characters find some degree of comfort in each other and after the night, comes the day again. It does not make the problems disappear but they take a more defined and manageable form and we can fight them off to the back of our minds ... until the night comes again.
This is by no mean my favourite Murakami (I would recommend "The wind-up bird chronicle" first) but it is much less hermetic that other of his novels which makes it especially interesting for anybody who, like me, likes his work but has sometime difficulties in pinning down why or what it's really about.
Book Review: not Murakami's best - but a nice, provocative and abstract look at life one night after dark
Summary: 4 Stars
A nice Murakami novel, but by no means the best, After Dark is unique in his fiction as being the first novel he has written in present tense. It reads like a film script. However, it is a very unsatisfying movie.
There are many great Murakamiesque elements to the 'plot' and nice, disembodied, ethereal conversations, but like most of his weird fiction there is something profound in thought, but deeply unsatisfying in execution.
The narrative involves a collection of characters going through the motions one night in Tokyo, but there is no real plot to speak of - things happen, no explanation, no real cause and effect. What it is though, is a great observation of reality, albeit Murakami's take. Reality doesn't have a plot and things do 'just happen'. In that way it is interesting.
Overall, readable and provocative - his fans will find many things to enjoy - but as an extended short it lacks a bit of coherence and satisfaction, but is a lovely observation of the quiet and weird, disembodied hours after dark.
7/10
Book Review: Thin Gruel
Summary: 2 Stars
I read a fair amount of translated fiction, and Murakami is one of those writers I feel like I ought to like, but the few times I've tried, just haven't connected with. This latest novella seemed like another chance to check him out without a huge investment of time. The last book of his I read was his collection of short stories After the Quake, which were unified by common themes of alienation and loneliness. Those themes are dominant in this brief story as well.
Set in night-time Tokyo, the book often feels much more like a script for a moody film than it does a work of fiction. Many passages adopt a first-person omniscient voice, written in the style of a script, directing the camera and describing what it/we see. After a while this gets annoying, and made me wish that Murakami had just gone ahead and made a film if that's what he wanted to do. The storyline, such as it is, is arranged around the coincidental intersections of people, which calls to mind the structure of recent films such as (Short Cuts, Crash, Magnolia, Babel, Amores Perros, etc.) where we follow characters in and out of each others lives.
These characters include: Mari, a 19-year-old sitting in a diner reading the night away, Takahashi, a 20-something trombone player who recognizes her from high school, Karou, the ex-wrestler manager of a love hotel, a Chinese hooker who's badly beaten at the hotel, Korogi, a mysterious handyman at the hotel, Shirakawa, the nondescript but disturbed salaryman who beat the hooker, the hooker's mysterious motorcycle-riding boss, and finally Mari's model sister Eri, who is stuck in some kind of prolonged Sleeping Beauty-like slumber. The final character is Tokyo itself, which like these nocturnal people, is still awake but somewhat surreal.
Once again, Murakami seems fixated on creating a mood rather than a narrative. One gets a good sense of the characters and the strange ambiance of the night, but it doesn't lead anywhere particularly interesting. Once again, alienation and loneliness are the main themes -- but all these tales of missed connections can only take you so far before you start wanting something more substantial. I suspect, however, that ultimately, Murakami just isn't for me. (Neither, for that matter, is the "other" Murakami, Ryu, whose graphically violent books focus on the same themes, but in a very different manner.)
Book Review: Don't expect much
Summary: 2 Stars
Being a fan of his work, I was anticipating another delightful surprise from the master of the genre.
But it was a far departure from his usual surreal and supernatural stories. I do not know whether I'm missing something here or Mr. Murakami was deliberately experimenting with something beyond his usual style.
I found the story to be flat, bland and leads to nowhere, devoid of his signature bizarre and unexpected twists (think Wind up Bird Chronicle or Kafka on The Shore). Too much style over substance perhaps?
Having read and re-read, it neither left any unsettling feeling nor satisfaction; As if trying to dive in shallow waters.
It seems that I am not the only reader disappointed by the master's latest work. So the bottom line is: if you like the previous ground breaking works of Mr. Murakami, you will find this one less interesting.