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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 continuoussupply 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.
Tori, July 12, 2010 (view all comments by Tori)
Definitely not my favorite Murakami, but he manages to create such a mood and such a light-headed fuzziness through his words that I couldn't help but get sucked in.
Truly masterful in its sparseness.
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dharmabooks, June 17, 2007 (view all comments by dharmabooks)
Murakami's penchant for ignoring the occasional boundary between the real and surreal is evidenced in this short novel. One achieves an intimate understanding of each of the characters despite their taciturn natures and the brevity of the book. After Dark is an atmospheric, mildly disturbing foray into the late-night hours of Tokyo, Japan.
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Hammer Chick, June 8, 2007 (view all comments by Hammer Chick)
I've loved Murakami ever since I read A Wild Sheep Chase back in 1997. After Dark carries the surrealism and the clarity that all Murakami's novels display to a new level. He takes the notion of an omniscient narrator and makes it into "pure point of view". We're right there witnessing everything, hearing every conversation, seeing what the camera sees...
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Product details
208 pages
Knopf Books for Young Readers -
English9780307265838
Reviews:
"Staff Pick"
by Gerry,
More menace than melancholy, readers will find After Dark a deliciously dark entry in Murakami's oeuvre.
by Gerry
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Murakami's 12th work of fiction is darkly entertaining and more novella than novel. Taking place over seven hours of a Tokyo night, it intercuts three loosely related stories, linked by Murakami's signature magical-realist absurd coincidences. When amateur trombonist and soon-to-be law student Tetsuya Takahashi walks into a late-night Denny's, he espies Mari Asai, 19, sitting by herself, and proceeds to talk himself back into her acquaintance. Tetsuya was once interested in plain Mari's gorgeous older sister, Eri, whom he courted, sort of, two summers previously. Murakami then cuts to Eri, asleep in what turns out to be some sort of menacing netherworld. Tetsuya leaves for overnight band practice, but soon a large, 30ish woman, Kaoru, comes into Denny's asking for Mari: Mari speaks Chinese, and Kaoru needs to speak to the Chinese prostitute who has just been badly beaten up in the nearby 'love hotel' Kaoru manages. Murakami's omniscient looks at the lives of the sleeping Eri and the prostitute's assailant, a salaryman named Shirakawa, are sheer padding, but the probing, wonderfully improvisational dialogues Mari has with Tetsuya, Kaoru and a hotel worker named Korogi sustain the book until the ambiguous, mostly upbeat dnouement." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review A Day"
by Anya Yurchyshyn, Esquire,
"After Dark is not Murakami's best work — there's an intrusive narrator spoon-feeding meaning you'd prefer to find on your own. But Murakami's humor and pop culture references remain, as do the underlying questions about the human condition....If only Nietzsche and Sartre had made questioning the meaninglessness of existence so fun." (read the entire Esquire review)
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review),
"[A] pellucid dramatization of disconnection, alienation, the hunger for human contact and the strategies by which we all manage to 'make it through the night.' A seductive and gratifying intellectual and romantic adventure."
"Review"
by Booklist,
"Each character is unique in his or her form of loneliness, yet each possesses a capacity for momentary empathy that is both sweet and heartbreaking. Murakami's genius, on both large and small canvases, is to create worlds both utterly alien and disconcertingly familiar."
"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
"[A] bittersweet novel that will satisfy the most demanding literary taste....Murakami's fiction reminds us the world is broad, that myths are universal — and that while we sleep, the world out there is moving in mysterious and unpredictable ways."
"Review"
by Los Angeles Times,
"After Dark doesn't always hit the high notes, but it is, like Takahashi's music, straight-ahead jazz — with a quiet grace as likely to be overlooked as a snare shuffle."
"Review"
by Providence Journal,
"This strange, mesmerizing, spell-binding, voyeuristic novel is impossible to put down."
"Review"
by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
"After Dark is Murakami condensed. It's a very good place to become familiar with some of his interests (music) and themes (loneliness) in a truncated version. Nevertheless, do not neglect his rich, dense metaphysical novels."
"Review"
by Denver Post,
"To readers unfamiliar with Murakami, After Dark may be the perfect place to start. All of the touchstones are there, the mix of physical and metaphysical, the blending of cultures, the imaginative story lines that are impossible to predict."
"Review"
by Cleveland Plain Dealer,
"In Murakami's talented hands, After Dark emerges a tightly controlled narrative, carefully constructed in both time and place....We stay alert to exact detail on each page, within every frame. The result is palpable and enthralling."
"Review"
by Christian Science Monitor,
"Like a latter-day Walker Percy or Albert Camus, Murakami raises questions about perception and existence, though he feels no compunction to propose answers."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
With his trademark humor and psychological insight, Murakami's power of observation plays out in this sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn.
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