The night is full of stories. You know, the stories of daylight may be close to each other.
The same old breakfast, work stuff. But when it gets dark we all have different stories. We
all have vivid memories, savage attitudes, and deliberate silences.
The story takes place in Tokyo, but as Borges once said (to Gabriel Nachmias): "Athens,
New York, London—all of them are the same, after dark". By the same token, we may say
that After Dark is set during a single night in a post-industrial metropolis. One night is
enough time for Murakami, probably because every night is the same in a metropolis.
While the rest sleep, those who stay awake form an ill-assorted family of sinners and
saints, heroes and villains, hunters and prey. The diverse cast that peoples Murakami’s
brief novel “After Dark” seems to be a cross-section of this community of outcasts, whom
we accompany on the streets of Tokyo over one eventful night. There’s Mari Asai, a timid
student who kills the early hours reading in a Denny’s. There’s Takahashi, a jazz
trombonist who’s doing his last gig. There’s retired female wrestler Kaoru and her fellow
employees at the Alphaville “love hotel”. There’s also a Chinese female prostitute battered
by an improbable assailant, the suave office worker Shirakawa.
Blended together, these elements make for a surreal reading experience that is both
fantastic and illusory. On one page you have a straightforward narrative of life during the
wee hours of the night in Japan. But on the other page, a journey is taking place. Where
this journey will end is anyone's guess. From a sleeping sister to a brothel to a kid that
plays in a jazz band to a woman searching for her relationship with the sleeping sister,
Murakami takes the reader to every corner of the imagination.
The story seems really unfinished. The open ending definitely redefined I guess. But I feel
like the book has reached just halfway when it ended.
The whole concept of the book seems weird to me. But again it's a Murakami book. The
story was just picking up when it ended all of a sudden. Even if it was a short story I would
still feel the same. So many things are left in the dark. I needed more details or
explanations towards the end or somewhere in between in order to come to my own
conclusions even if there's no proper ending but I feel like there's none.
The book started slow and it kept on being really slow in the first half. The writing really
picked up in the second half. But I feel like the story is so incomplete. Wanting for more
from a story is one thing but not getting much from a story regarding the characters or the
plot is something I really don't want from a book.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book while reading it because of the way the writing kept
hinting at explanations regarding the different characters and the situations they were in.

Check out After Dark from NBPL!