The International Writers Magazine: Book Review

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After Dark by Haruki Murakami Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Harvill Secker (7 Jun 2007) ISBN-10: 1846550475 ISBN-13: 978-1846550478 • Sam North Review At last I thought, a new novel not a collection of short stories. The thrill of a new Murakami was present. I settled down to read and within one chapter I was once again wondering what has happened to this author. Has he no respect for his readers anymore? Perhaps I was alone with my disappointment for Kafka on the Shore - his cruelty to cats perhaps affected my judgement but yes - in a way it was a return to form. But reading After Dark it is so tedious one suspects he phoned it in. He was under some sort of contract obligation and had to toss a book off one weekend to get out of it. It's rather like a best of compilation of B-sides that you never got around to listening to.

After Dark is in the first instance told in first person plural, complete with arid asides as to the points of view - screenwriting techniques really and they are difficult because they immediately distance the reader from the events unfolding. He adopts this metafiction technique for the sleeping sister. He returns to normal and much more accessible narrative form for the awake sister.
So After Dark is about two sisters. One sister Eri, has voluntarily put herself into a coma to escape the tedium of her fashion model life. (She has perhaps discovered it is a shallow existence - shock horror). She sleeps and just in case we get a tad bored with watching her sleep in her perfect state, despite the drool, he remembers that he is the master of magic realism and so, as if by magic, she is transported to the other side of a unplugged TV screen where she remains trapped for a while. (Symbolic of her rather pointless life). As little happens there as in her bedroom and for a while we get to stare at her empty bed.

Her younger sister Mari, has decided to do the opposite and not sleep at all. This is the plain sister, the ignored but brainy sister, picked up in a Denny's where some pretty awful music plays in the background. The whole story is just one night in Tokyo and Mari Asai, the sleepless sister, is a troubled girl with her head buried in a thick book. The type of girl who doesn't want to be bothered by anyone.

She is chatted up by an aquaintance, Tetsuya, law student and trombonist in a wannabe band. By coincidence he has sort of dated her sister, Eri, the one who sleeps forever like Sleeping Beauty. They met on a double date, but Mari barely remembers him. He leaves promising to get in touch and he does, by way of Kaoru, the tough and gutsy night manager of a love hotel, who needs help with a troublesome Chinese girl. The girl has been badly beaten up by her john and Tetsuya has told her that Mari speaks Chinese.

Events unfold, not much happens, which is sometimes the delight of the Murakami novels, but because it is one night and these are pretty disconnected people we have little time to reflect or get to know them well as we cut back too often the Eri, the sleeping sister, who, of course, does nothing.

The man who beat the Chinese girl is painted in. His life, his tasks, but it goes nowhere and tells us only that Japanese men are revolted by women bleeding. It isn't resolved and may well never be. This is no detective fiction. It's a fraction of a moment in Tokyo life and yes, it leaves us wanting to know more, but that's it, that's all there is folks.

The best parts of this novella, one cannot really say it is a novel, are the moments with Kaoru, the girl who runs from her former life but choses to stay in the love hotel and the dialogue between Mari and Tetsuya when he finally reconnects with her later. He tries hard to make the younger sister like him, even though it is clear he was much more interested in her more beautiful sister.

It is complex, a quick read, but one feels that Murakami has begun to feel some contempt for his readers. The distancing using first person pural, the token moments of magic realism, leaving faces staring from mirrors after people have left...they serve to irritate rather than fascinate. It's inevitable that a writer must exhaust their muse. Does one blame him or the translator, Jay Rubin, but then again, Rubin has done so well on others, so - read it and make your own conclusions. Nevertheless one cannot really believe this is written by the same man who wrote the amazing Hard Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World and Sputnick Sweetheart.


© Sam North June 23rd 2007
Another Place To Die
by Sam North
ISBN: 1-84753-899-1
The Next Great Flu Pandemic is coming. Are you prepared?
Fascinating, frightening and compelling, Another Place to Die is the ultimate page-turner which I guarantee will result in many late nights under the bedside light with you uttering, ‘just one more chapter!!’ Ian Middleton
Read the first chapter on line
Order Now direct from Publisher : Another Place To Die

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