After Dark (Vintage International)

published	April 29th 2008 by Vintage
first published	2006
binding	Paperback
isbn	0307278735 (isbn13: 9780307278739)
description	A short, sleek novel of encounters set in the witching hours of Tokyo between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami’s ...more [close] A short, sleek novel of encounters set in the witching hours of Tokyo 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: Yuri, a fashion model sleeping her way into oblivion; and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny’s into lives radically alien to her own: those of a jazz trombonist who claims they’ve met before; a burly female “love hotel” manager and her maidstaff; and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These “night people” are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Yuri’s slumber–mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime – will either restore or annihilate her. 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 – the interplay between self-expression and understanding, between the power of observation and the scope of compassion and love. Murakami’s trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. “Eyes mark the shape of the city. Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature–or more, like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has indeed passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city’s moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.” —from After Dark From the Hardcover edition. [close]
date added	08-08-07 edit book

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Amichai rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

02/28/08

Read in February, 2008

I didn't like the book very much. It read like something he tossed off, like it was a book between books, like a book to satisfy a contractual obligation: the literary equivalent of a B-sides collection, or maybe a greatest hits collection, only not very good.

There wasn't anything very compelling about the characters. They were wooden, and not very fleshed out, like vaguely romanticized caricatures.

The narrative suffered--I'm guessing--because of the translation; there were details her...more I didn't like the book very much. It read like something he tossed off, like it was a book between books, like a book to satisfy a contractual obligation: the literary equivalent of a B-sides collection, or maybe a greatest hits collection, only not very good.

There wasn't anything very compelling about the characters. They were wooden, and not very fleshed out, like vaguely romanticized caricatures.

The narrative suffered--I'm guessing--because of the translation; there were details here and there that sort of pulled me out of the story to wonder how true they were: the main girl, a book-reading, chain-smoking, Godard-loving 19 year old, hangs out at Denny's--in Japan, although plausible, is it likely? It doesn't matter because every time it came up, I'd wonder the same thing; also, the girl wears a baseball cap (which I buy b/c baseball is huge in Japan), but it's a Red Sox cap (which I don't buy, b/c, even though baseball is huge in Japan, they have THEIR OWN TEAMS). How hard would that have been...to give her a cap w/ a Japanese team's logo? It's bad translating, unless Murakami wrote it in the original, too, which would speak more about his cultural and financial opportunism (how will this sell in the States, perhaps?) than the affected "disaffected teenager" he was creating.

The translation may also have something to do with the fact that the novel reads like a poorly written, adolescent's graphic novel, particular the psuedo-romance that sort-of blossoms between two late-teens characters. The dialog is bad enough in some instances that it pulled me from the story to consider its plausibility...

Here's some sample thought-dialog, by the book-reader's intellectually opposite and inferior older sister:

For some reason, a different kind of reality has taken the place of my normal reality. Wherever it might have been brought from, whoever might have carried me here, I have been left shut up entirely alone in this strange, dusty, viewless room with no exit. Could I have lost my mind and, as a result, been sent to some kind of institution? After all, who gets to bring her own bed along when she enters the hospital? And besides this simply doesn't look like a hospital room. Neither does it look like a prison cell. It's just a big, empty room.

Who in the world talks like this? Who in the world thinks like this? The book expects us to buy it, however. But in complete sentences? In complete paragraphs? And, let's not forget that the thinker of these thoughts is young, at most in her early twenties. As the narrative clearly establishes, she is poorly-schooled, and actually so pretty she's a model which caused her to further neglect her studies. And yet, you want me to believe she can think like this after just waking up in what is apparently a place she does not recognize? I know it's set in Japan, and I know the stereotypes about disciplined schooling in Japan, but c'mon...it reads entirely disingenuous.

It's cold, and it sounds like a paper: Could I have lost my mind and, as a result, been sent to some kind of institution? Yeah, the grammar asylum.

There was an interesting device employed by the narrative: first-person camera narration, with tracking, zooms, close-ups, and phrases like "We turn the camera..." and "We pull in to see..." Maybe that's second person camera...I don't know......less

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Terri rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

05/31/08

bookshelves: 2008

Read in May, 2008

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 &...more 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....less

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Dean rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

03/02/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: Aislinn, Lindsay, Liz, Elena, Tamara

I believe that the power of Murakami's work is in it's ability to make the regular irregular. After reading this book I was speaking with someone about how his books generally belong in a genre that I find hard to define. I almost want to consider his work some kind of Science Fiction because they can at times seem to be so fantastically strange...But the truth is they aren't really Science Fiction...I don't claim to be able to define his genre, but I feel that in his work, in particular this ...more I believe that the power of Murakami's work is in it's ability to make the regular irregular. After reading this book I was speaking with someone about how his books generally belong in a genre that I find hard to define. I almost want to consider his work some kind of Science Fiction because they can at times seem to be so fantastically strange...But the truth is they aren't really Science Fiction...I don't claim to be able to define his genre, but I feel that in his work, in particular this book, Murakami weaves a story of regular people, people with nothing special about them other than the fact that they are the subjects of the stories he is telling...but it is in that regular, 'nothing special about them' way that they become much more interesting than even the most out of the ordinary characters we can imagine...their regularity is exactly what makes them intensely interesting...However, for myself, it is also the possibility that these characters may be a reflection of many of the people who read Murakami's stories that makes them much more exciting...thus creating a sense that our own, not extremely out of the ordinary lives may in fact be a much more interesting adventure than we had previously imagined...the possibility that the mundane and the 'normal' and the regular are in fact not what they appear to be...Hence the power of his work seems to lie in the feeling that as strange and fantastical or as mundane and regular as his stories may seem they all rest on a precipice of believability...there is always, to myself anyways, a possibility that what he is describing is not completely out of the realm of what may be possible...This is not Murakami's strangest story, but it comes highly recommended from someone who has read all of his books. Anyone who has read his stories will know that there are two 'basic' types, the 'Norwegian Wood' type and the 'Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World' type. This story falls into the 'Norwegian Wood' type, meaning it is strange, but not dramatically so. I highly recommend it and I believe that some might find the narrative perspective quite interesting, it's a bit on the unusual side, but very interesting and mysterious....less

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Larissa rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

11/06/07

bookshelves: vicarious-travel

Read in November, 2007

I started this book at 3:30 on an insomniatic Friday night and finished it on the subway on the way to work on Tuesday. It was a rather apropos reading schedule considering the format of After Dark which begins around midnight and ends around 7 AM.

It's a simple and sufficiently enjoyable book--one that I'm sure hardcore fans and mild appreciators can both agree is 'Minor Murakami.' But it brings up an interesting conflict that I think is implicit in Murakami's writing, namely that hi...more I started this book at 3:30 on an insomniatic Friday night and finished it on the subway on the way to work on Tuesday. It was a rather apropos reading schedule considering the format of After Dark which begins around midnight and ends around 7 AM.

It's a simple and sufficiently enjoyable book--one that I'm sure hardcore fans and mild appreciators can both agree is 'Minor Murakami.' But it brings up an interesting conflict that I think is implicit in Murakami's writing, namely that his ideas often outstrip his prose. And while I found After Dark to be a little cutesy and gimmicky and perhaps beneath what Murakami is capable of, I do think that it's subject matter is far better suited to his writing style than say--and I know I'm about to wholly alienate a good 58% of you--The Wind-Up Bird Chronical, which was so sprawling and large that by the time I got to the end of it I was perhaps, impressed at the expanse of the novel, but not terribly sure of why any of it actually mattered.

It's not to say that Murakami can't write about larger, more involved, more resonant topics. I hear, for instance, that his essays about the Kobe earthquake and the posion gas attacks in the Tokyo subway are quite good. And I was strangely moved after reading Hardboiled Wonderland. But even in the case of the latter, we're dealing with unicorns, and time travel, and secret subway tunnels, and then finally, something larger, something more tangible in the midst of all of his fantasies. And I suppose I trust more in his ability to deal with a Big Idea like the vulnerability of memory than I do in his ability to render accountability for Japan's role in mainland China massacres and its actions in Manchuria.

I read Murakami for his 'pop sensibility,' for his aging jazz aficiandos and Beatles fan self-stand ins and his fondness for mysticizing the darker, more hidden worlds within urban settings. I like his quirkiness. I like the fact that he conned The New Yorker into publishing a story about a talking monkey.

I like, truth be told, Sputnik Sweetheart best, which I realize does not make me his 'ideal reader.'

...less

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Jason rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

11/25/07

Read in November, 2007

(My full review of this book is larger than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find it at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

"You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper."...more

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Daniel rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

07/18/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: people who like thinking about feelings.

Murakami is not a great author for passive readers. If your main interest in fiction is plot and story, and especially if you tend to be the sort of reader who plows straight through a book and then thinks about it only after you're done, "After Dark" is going to be unsatisfying.

To me, Murakami is a great author for teaching you how to read (forgive me) proactively. He works a lot with impressions and mood, so that it's most rewarding when the reader stops after every few sentenc...more

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John rated it:

(review of isbn 0385663463)

04/03/08

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: Literary readers, fans of Kafka, fans of dialogue

Don't let anyone fool you by describing After Dark's plot. It doesn't have one. Two people have a conversation at the beginning and the chapters (titled with the minutes they began during that night) follow them or people in some way related to them during that night. The entire thing happens between dusk and sunrise. It opens with a beautiful view of the city as a living being, with all the people, their machines and data as the blood cells and thoughts of the beast. The disjointed slice...more Don't let anyone fool you by describing After Dark's plot. It doesn't have one. Two people have a conversation at the beginning and the chapters (titled with the minutes they began during that night) follow them or people in some way related to them during that night. The entire thing happens between dusk and sunrise. It opens with a beautiful view of the city as a living being, with all the people, their machines and data as the blood cells and thoughts of the beast. The disjointed slices of plot and life that follow are just part of what's in this crazy meta-lifeform. Sometimes one scene will have ramifications for another, but don't mistake descriptions of a girl in perpetual sleep or a prostitute being abused as plot.

I took a long time reading this slender book. It's a pleasure to read that I suspect is similar to how people enjoy fine whiskey. You sip it slowly and feel it go down. I don't drink though. I only read. After Dark is primarily composed of dialogue scenes and description scenes. There's very little action (characters only really "get things done" in four or five of the chapters), in favor of those dialogues and descriptions. The dialogues are sometimes languid, and sometimes sharp; the Murakami's speakers are the sort who will catch and question a dangling modifier or a vague answer. The dialogues dance across discussion of classic film, why siblings grow up to be so different, the possibility of afterlife, the abuse of immigrants, why Denny's can't get toast right - all a little too detached when it should be amiable, all a little too positive when it should be depressing. If you can get into the groove, these attempts between characters to share and understand each other (quite poignant since this is all taking place in a novel that views a city as a frantic system of information), it's quite beautiful. The descriptions tend to get theoretical (the city as a lifeform) or surreal (we eavesdrop on dreams), but are generally short and have at least one line worth reading for. The whole package is short enough that you'll lose nothing in giving it a try....less

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Jason rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

05/20/08

Read in May, 2008

recommends it for: People who already like Murakami

I'm having some issues sorting out how I feel about this book so I'm just going to run down some main points:

- This would have been a better short story than a novel. True, 250 pages for Murakami is a "short story," but that's not what I mean and you know it.
- The narrator is present and extremely obtrusive, perhaps moreso because he is constantly reminding the reader that he's "just there to observe." This was neat at first, but the narrator-heavy parts tended to dra...more

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irene rated it:

(review of isbn 1846550475)

09/24/07

Read in September, 2007

a friend has lent me this book. murakami is one of her favorites and she thought i will like it too. i read it for one day last weekend in lahore and finished just before the sun sinks in. kept me going coz it's not that thick, though quite weird. at times i need to flip a few pages back to understand. the story is set in japan and tells a lot about japanese culture, in the barest language and yet rich imagery. basically, the story, which all happened in one night, is about estranged sisters -...more

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Elizabeth rated it:

06/02/08

Read in May, 2008

As I Murakami fanatic, I feel justified in saying, Eh. I suppose he's the master of fashioning a career resting on two or three great novels (Kafka... Windup...) and then keeping his name in the news by producing plenty of light as air oughtta-be-short stories padded so thick with fat margins and linespaces that make your eyes vibrate that they actually seem like 244 -page books, in fact are 244 pages for that matter. According to my calculations this is about 40 - 45,000 words. Call me bitter, ...more

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Tony rated it:

05/13/08

bookshelves: awesome-books, books-that-scared-me

Read in May, 2008

Haruki Murakami explores that special time of day between midnight and morning. He does so with a nice flow of descriptive prose and dialogue that makes you feel like you haven't slept for a day.

The book revolves around a girl who's hanging out in the city at night because she can't sleep, a man who beats a prostitute and steals her belongings, and the girl's sleeping sister in a nearby suburb. All these storylines intertwine in a sense, but also hold up on their own. The chapters are lai...more

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maryhelena marked it as to-read (review of isbn 0307265838)

03/21/07

bookshelves: to-read

This book isn't out yet.
But AmazonUK has this synopsis: The midnight hour approaches in almost empty all-night diner. Mari sips her coffee and glances up from a book as a young man, a musician, intrudes on her solitude. Both have missed the last train home. The musician has plans to rehearse with his jazz band all night, Mari is equally unconcerned and content to read, smoke and drink coffee until dawn. They realize they've been acquainted through Eri, Mari's beautiful sister. The musician so...more

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Adam rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

08/15/07

Read in June, 2007

I'm getting to the point with Murakami where I can pretty much tell where he's going as soon as I get introduced to the cast of characters. While this book was good, I'm kind of experiencing what I like to call "The Tom Robbins Effect" (or, if in regards to a film, "The M. Night Shymalan Effect"), whereby the first book you read (or film you see) by a given artist is amazing, mind-blowing, just...new. The second thing, well, there's enough of the same elements to keep you int...more

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Michael B rated it:

(review of isbn 0307265838)

10/09/07

bookshelves: quickreads

Read in October, 2007

I found myself trying not to compare and be disappointed with After Dark because it wasn't Norwegian Wood... But then I got over it and compared the crap out of it. I thought Norwegian Wood was an absolutely brilliant piece of work, and if it so happens that an author's achieved brilliance has become the standard by which I gauge his other work, then I consider myself hopeful. That said, Norwegian Wood is somewhat of an anomaly in Murakami's bibliography, and Aft...more

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Tattered Cover added it (review of isbn 0307265838)

04/03/08

bookshelves: pete-recommends, staff-recommends

After Dark is a book that explores a single night in Tokyo, Japan. From midnight at Denny's to the break of dawn we enter the lives of Mari, a 19 year old student, and Takahashi, a young jazz musician who remembers Mari from an incident in the past, though she has little recollection of him.

In Mari, Murakami has created a contradictory character: A girl who looks like a boy, a Japanese more comfortable with Chinese, a good girl with a dark curiosity. Mari roams Tokyo after hours while her si...more

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Alisa rated it: (review of isbn 0307265838)

11/22/07

bookshelves: 2007, airplanereads

Read in November, 2007
recommends it for: those who have not yet read a novel that includes text-messaging in its pages. trippy.

There was one part in this book that I really liked. A girl is sitting at a Denny's, reading, and this "stray mutt" of a man walks in and plants himself in the seat across from her, asking if she isn't so-and-so's sister. She's quiet and -- get this -- she "looks at him with eyes that could be looking at an overgrown bush in the corner of a garden."

That's good stuff.

This seems to be something Murakami does, actually~ he compares the way one character looks at another to...more

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J.R. rated it: (review of isbn 0307265838)

11/30/07

bookshelves: fiction

Read in July, 2007

We’ve been led to expect novels to be of great length and deal with major issues. That expectation can result in disappointment because it flies in the face of the definition of a novel.
By Webster’s definition, a novel is “a fictitious tale or romance.” By further definition, “A fictitious prose narrative, involving some plot of greater or lesser intricacy, and professing to give a picture of real life, generally exhibiting the passions and sentiments in a state of great activity, es...more

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Joshua rated it: (review of isbn 0307265838)

01/16/08

bookshelves: quote-literature-unquote

Read in May, 2007
recommends it for: Ehh... don't bother

I'm a huge fan of Haruki Murakami. If there were a Mount Rushmore of writers, his face would be next to Beckett's, Herbert's and Miller's. So when I found out he released a new book, I quickly bought it and brought it along on my trip to Italy. I thought, this would be a fantastic read as I travel around Florence and Rome. First off, it's very short. A novella rather than a novel. That wouldn't have been bad, but the story felt even to long for a novella. This should have been a short story incl...more

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Yulia rated it: (review of isbn 0307265838)

05/11/08

bookshelves: by-and-of-japan

Read in January, 2006

Ah, Murakami, why couldn't you have tried harder? Couldn't you have completed this work? Or if it wasn't possible within the always-confining time-frame of 24 hours in the life of these characters, couldn't you have dropped that idea? The story's ending on a note of hope came off as forced, while the admiration for the sleeping beauty by her bookish younger sister was oddly (and not quite intentionally, I can only hope) incestuous. Meanwhile, the plot-line of the salary man who seeks to esca...more

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Kellie rated it:

06/27/08

bookshelves: bookclub

Read in June, 2008

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