After Dark follows two young people who meet in the late hours of a Tokyo night and spend the time until dawn revealing bits and pieces of themselves in Haruki Murakami's whimsical, magical, yet sometimes maddening novel.
Although I thought Murakami had the rythyms of staying up all night down right, not to mention the denizens you find there, I was unhappy with the open-ended conclusion and some of the writing conceits. Perhaps it was in the translation from Japanese, but I found the storytelling mannered and often written, curiously enough, like a screenplay.
However, I thought Murakami had a unique style and I know some of this other novels have been very well-received. I will mark this one down as interesting if not entirely satisfying and perhaps seek out another.
I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.
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Kafka on the Shore also had an some what disappointing open ended conclusion. Murakami has said if you read Kafka... many times it will make sense due to it being a riddle. I've only read it once.
Norwegian Wood was great. It was less surreal and magical than his other work.
Those are the only Two Murakami novels I've read so far. I hear The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World are amazing.
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