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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17803.After_Dark?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="After Dark" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1178063629m/17803.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17803.After_Dark?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">After Dark</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3354.Haruki_Murakami">Haruki Murakami</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/15314556?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>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.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/663646?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Dean's review
rating:
recommended 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 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...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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