| Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF | |
|
|
|
After Dark (Vintage International) | 
 enlarge | Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $11.16
You Save: $2.79 (20%)
New (46) Used (24) from $6.83
Rating:  80 reviews
Sales Rank: 8171
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0307278735
Dewey Decimal Number: 895.635
EAN: 9780307278739
ASIN: 0307278735
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A sleek, gripping novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the spooky hours between midnight and dawn, by an internationally renowned literary phenomenon.
Murakami's trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. Combining the pyrotechnical genius that made Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle international bestsellers, with a surprising infusion of heart, Murakami has produced one of his most enchanting fictions yet.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 75 more reviews...
 Toast so crispy it is almost burnt May 16, 2007
Michael Ward (Athens, Georgia)
36 out of 47 found this review helpful
Writing about one's favorite author is a hard thing to do. Like many other Murakami fans, I have been anxiously waiting for the release of After Dark after the short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman whetted my appetite. However, after having been a fan of Murakami's fiction for almost six years now, I am well aware that in all likelihood that After Dark would be a lighter work after the considerably larger volume of Kafka on the Shore. Also, having read bits of the Japanese edition, I was aware that After Dark was written in a different style than Murakami's previous novels. Most readers are familiar with Murakami's deadpan, first-person narrator and not with some of his latter third person work and some critics wonder if Murakami's style is truly suited for third person writing. Yet, in this slim volume, Murakami takes things even further. Our omniscient narrator continually uses the pronoun "We" throughout the book thereby smashing the fourth wall and bringing the reader into the mix, but he continually reminds us that we are a powerless spectator that out personal actions have no bearing on what occurs in the book itself, but the personal involvement within the book and Murakami's use of cinematic style in framing scenes, including detailed lists of montage, adds considerably to the book. The reader might notice that this book is Murakami at his most descriptive. Never have I seen him detail the setting as much as he does within this book.
As for the story itself, in some ways it is not quite as interesting as the mechanics of writing that Murakami uses in this book's fewer than 200 pages. The story centers around a nineteen-year old girl named Mari who one night decides that she wants to spend the night reading within the confines of a Denny's instead of going home. While there she encounters a young man named Takahashi who invites himself to sit at her table to order a chicken salad. During their conversation we soon learn that Mari has an older sister named Eri who is strikingly beautiful and Mari is considerably less than happy at home. Also, we learn that, although she is Japanese, Mari is quite fluent in Chinese and in fact speaks it more than her native language. Takahashi soon leaves, but soon a large woman, pure muscle not fat, named Kaoru comes to seek Mari in order to gain her help. It seems that a young Chinese prostitute was beaten severely by a patron and she does not speak a word of Japanese. We also learn that the name of the love hotel is Alphaville and for those who are fans of Godard's film of the same name will have many levers switched.
Like in many of his other novels, the conscious and the unconscious states of mind play large parts within this book, but unlike many of the earlier ones, Murakami writes directly on the subject and many of his common themes are tied together within this book. Also, it is quite interesting to read Murakami's take on urban life in Japan and making the city itself a living, breathing creature and how it thrives off its denizens. While not one of his best books, After Dark displays Murakami's evolution as a writer and shows him breaking away from some of the plot devices that are common in his novels, no missing women in this one!, some might find this change to be a bit much, but it shows growth within the being of a writer in his late fifties, and makes one wonder what is to come in the future.
 Doesn't meet the standard set by his earlier works October 9, 2006
Charles E. Stevens
25 out of 34 found this review helpful
As much as it pains me to say this, After Dark is by far my least favorite Murakami novel. Murakami had already begun to experiment with his style in Kafka on the Shore, but After Dark is clearly a large leap in a new direction. Unfortunately, I can't say this first effort is successful. The story is cryptic as expected but for a Murakami novel the pace and writing is oddly flat. Unlike works like Wind-Up Bird and Hard-boiled Wonderland, I just was not able to care enough to fully immerse myself in this book. In some ways this story just felt like a bit of a private experiment of sorts, where Murakami spent more time focusing on technical issues (perspective in particular) rather than developing the story. In the end, as an old Murakami hand, I can't give this story more than 3 stars based on the high quality of his other works.
Where Murakami will go next is a bit of a mystery. The final five stories in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman were written after After Dark and bear more of a similarity to his earlier style than they do to this novel. Will he return to a brand of the mystic realism that has made him popular both in Japan and abroad, or will he continue the difficult process of reinventing himself? I hope Murakami has not run out of steam, but if After Dark is a sign of things to come then I'm afraid the period from the mid-80s through the mid-90s will be remembered as Murakami's halcyon days. His next work will be the key--as a fan of his work, I hope that my pessimism is unfounded and his next novel is a return to the greatness he is capable of. Personally, I look forward to reading other reviews of this book (as well as feedback on my own) to see what other readers think ... I have a feeling opinions will be divided.
A listless, minimalist novel that toys with the metaphysical August 8, 2007
Jessica Lux (Rosamond, CA)
16 out of 22 found this review helpful
Haruki Murakami's twelfth novel is "a short, sleek novel of encounters set it Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn." It is set in a seven-hour period of real-time. The reader follows a skeletal outline of the interactions between six lost souls. We meet 19-year-old Mari, studying late at night in a Denny's and her sister, Eri, a beautiful model in a semi-comatose state, being watched by someone evil. Other alienated souls of the night include a former fighting champion working at a love hotel, a prostitute, a jazz musician, and a sadistic office worker.
Murakami is an author known for his mysterious characters and minimalism. With this book, however, he was too minimalist, leaving far too much up to the reader for not just interpretation, but invention of a story line. He doesn't provide the reader any conclusions, which is his trademark, but with this book, he has released a lot of story threads, loosely wound together, without the true structure of a novel.
At least it was short and sleek, so it wasn't terribly painful to finish. As a reader, I was left wanting more, left wondering too much about the dream-like nighttime landscape of these characters. The story around the sleeping sister is ostensibly the most eerie, with hints of something terrible that drew her into social withdrawal, but the lack of action or reason behind her coma renders those chapters listless and sluggish.
After Dark was originally released in Japan in 2004, and had Russian, Dutch, Chinese, and French translations before it was released in English in May 2007.
 let's be honest October 5, 2007
Michael R. Brubaker (bend, or)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Let's just be honest here and not mince words with our darling author Mr. Murakami. Yes, we all love his earlier work. Hard Boiled Wonderland, Wind Up Bird, Kafka on the Shore are deep bright wells of metaphysical insight and terror. After Dark is just terrible. It's boring, and intellectually light to say the very least. The characters are flat and the plot refuses to budge. I applaud Murakami for his bravery in breaking with his traditional style and his takes on the Japanese I novel and trying something different with his narrative structure, but that alone does not make it an interesting or well written novel, just unique in his oeuvre. Let's not let our love of his previous work cloud our reception of his current novel.
Murakami misdirection May 28, 2007
Mr. Richard K. Weems (Fair Lawn, NJ USA)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
Haruki Murakami is a master at meaningful misdirection, which makes him something of a kind of magician on the page. Elements present themselves to create a kind of supernatural mystery. For example: early on in this book, an unplugged television presents the darkened image of a man watching the sleeping figure in the bedroom beyond. Naturally, such an image is out to create a driving curiosity in the reader--a curiosity to find out who this person is, what power is at work here.
But, as the seasoned Murakami reader might soon realize, mysteries like this often go unresolved in his books. Murakami's characters are often at the whim of grander powers that they will never understand nor control. Instead, they must learn to live under the thumb of such powers. It all sounds like a kind of existentialism, but Murakami's characters are suprisingly casual in this position.
This novel is an exploration of night dwellers, those who exist after midnight, when the trains no longer run and those stuck in the city have to wait until dawn for release. Whether they are managers of love hotels who once had profitable careers as professional wrestlers, or Chinese prostitutes, or those who like to beat up Chinese prostitutes, or young students who like to practice their trombones in all-night jam sessions, these are all people with pasts, with stories that darken their shadows just a little bit more. The story revolves around Mari Asai, a young girl who has always felt a far second from her sister, Eri, who is a model. But Eri has been asleep for two months, so Mari likes to spend her nights at a Denny's, reading books.
From this Denny's, Mari encounters most of the other odd characters of this book, characters who have stories to tell and histories to relate, advice to give. They come across not as people scared of the powers that hold sway over them, but of people trying to get through their day-to-day existence, no matter how messy that existence can get at times. Like a lot of Murakami books, Mari and Takahashi are characters searching for connection, maybe even searching for emotion itself. The scenes and dialogue are very organic and natural, interspersed with little reminders that something more powerful is at work, something mysterious that may never be resolved, but hopefully the characters will find their own resolutions within the realm of forces they will never understand, though they may leave their own reflections behind in mirrors.
Though not one of the more compelling Murakami books because of a rather seemingly loose set-up and beginning, and there were times that I was a little dubious of Jay Rubin's translation choices, _After Dark_ has a satisfying conclusion and a smooth read throughout. Perhaps this was Murakami enjoying the kind of conversational tones he got to present in Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche in his interviews of the victims of the Tokyo Sarin attacks, where tuna fish and jazz history is a more prevalent point of conversation than the mysterious power that steals people's reflections.
|
|
|
| |
