After Dark - Murakami

 

“After Dark”, by Haruki Murakami, is the most recent work by this fascinating novelist available in English.  Murakami’s signature is all over the novel though his entrancing and effortless prose coupled with new and experimental elements of narration and story time-line.  The action takes place over a seven hour period from just before midnight through just after sun rise.   It is very short; you should get through it on a Sunday in much less than the seven hours of darkness that he describes.

Although it is short read Murakami  is still able to build multiple stories and create a handful of memorable characters including a jazz trombonist aspiring to become a lawyer, a retired female wrestler with a good heart, a sadistic computer programmer who takes and beats prostitutes, and the two main characters, Mari who is awake throughout the night and witnesses firsthand what happens “After Dark”, and her “Sleeping Beauty” of a sister Eri who chooses to go to sleep one evening after dinner and then refuses to wake up , trapped in a prison of sleep, induced through vanity and pharmaceutical drug use, throughout the entire novel.  Their stories intertwine after the trains from the city stop running and the streets grow quiet with only all night diners, convenience stores, and hotels providing a haven for those who choose not to sleep.

There are places Murakami can take his story but fails to go, human sex trafficking, organized crime, mental health.  He even lays the foundation for two love stories – one between Mari and the musician and one between Mari and her sister, but the stories themselves fail to materialize.   Perhaps this is still part of the experiment to leave the stories hanging, as how could any complex relationship between individuals be resolved over the course of seven hours?

For those familiar with his other novels, “After Dark”, will almost certainly be a disappointment.   Yet whereas his style is vintage Murakami, he keeps holding the reigns, not walking through the doors he opens, abiding more by his discipline to keep the novel experimental, one in which the reader must feel and experience the effects after dark, that occur continuously night after night to nameless faceless characters in every city throughout the world, rather than know what happens to the specific characters, we learn about on this single evening in Tokyo.