Review on: After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Rating: 3/5
Like majority of Murakami’s books that I’ve read so far, After Dark follows a sort of pattern where the beginning pages/chapters seem realistic and normal, something you’d see happen in every day life. Then, it is followed by something mysterious and otherworldly, with a plot that becomes all too unrealistic or seemingly impossible. Murakami always has that tone in the way he writes (which by the way, his translator excellently writes into English) that feels as if everything is surreal, the way he uses words and describes people and situations. It’s not just text in a book; it captures the reader and makes them feel as if they’re seeing or experiencing it from a different plane of reality. In fact, a few chapters or segments in After Dark explain that feeling so very well – you see things happen as if you are a part of it, yet you are just part of an audience watching someone else’s story unfold, and how you feel or see things in no way may or can affect how the character’s perceive their own reality.
When I first started reading After Dark, which was on the second floor of a Mcdonald’s branch, alone with my food, and concentrated on the novel, it struck me how my situation at that time was eerily familiar to that of Mari – a character introduced in the first few pages of the book. She too was engrossed in her own world, reading a book while sitting in a restaurant (a Denny’s), eating. Part of the way she was described in the book struck me as being very similar to myself, especially when it mentioned she spoke Chinese and studied it in university. There were differences too of course, but as a reader reading the book, one tends to put oneself in a position most similar to the character they’re reading.
After that, everything else was different though. Mari’s interactions with a boy named Takahashi whom she meets after many years, thrusts her into a situation far different from what she’s used to. A strange night perhaps, for one young and normal girl such as herself. But then Murakami switches the chapters between Mari and her experiences for that evening, with that of her sister Eri, whom Mari claims later in the story went to sleep and never wakes up again. Eri’s story, and the way it’s detailed in the novel, feels much like a sci-fi-slash-horror story put into words. You don’t see it happening, but you imagine how it’s happening. And it’s written in a way where you feel utterly helpless to do anything or say anything, despite what you see or imagine unfolding. And that’s what’s innately frightening.
I was left in awe, but also frightened, of the way Murakami wrote the contrasting chapters of the sisters Mari and Eri. Mari’s story was realistic – it’s something you can imagine happening in real life. But then it switches over to Eri, and you have no idea what’s happening at the moment, so there’s no way to predict what’s happening next. And each chapter leaves the reader curious, but also afraid, as to how far the next chapter will take them – how much it will or will not change.
This was shorter than the previous Murakami novels I’ve read; and though the style is definitely Murakami’s, the way his usual themes of philosophy, thinking deeply and inwardly, expressing subconscious thought in a physical and entertainingly creative manner are written, are a little bit different. Usually the reader has to piece together his storytelling, with vague details here and there that ultimately get explained in the end of the novel. After Dark though, it a little more blunt in showcasing these inner emotions and ideas, so there’s less of a buildup of a connection with the story and the characters that in the end, leaves a very deep impression with the readers.
While the novel was beautifully written in more ways than one (how does Murakami do it?!), somehow I was not as fond, or left speechless, or left inwardly thinking about all parts of the book, as Murakami’s other novels did.