Haruki Murakami has a unique talent for bending readers’ brains while propelling them through a story. The very readability of his work, set in Japan but packed with references to western culture, camouflages the complexity of his ideas. “After Dark” fully fulfills expectations, but its slim size and short chapters make it arguably the most accessible of his work.
The story is tight in time frame, locale and construction. Murakami explores a nocturnal Tokyo peopled with characters who are at once running from their lives and searching for something better or perhaps just different. And in the nearly seven hours that is the duration of the tale, understanding is reached and salvation won.
Two sisters are at the center of the tale, Eri and Mari Asai, and their stories unfold in alternating chapters. Both sisters have clearly defined roles. Eri is the family beauty. Mari, the younger of the two, makes up in brains what she lacks in physical attraction. She has accepted her role as the ugly sister, but has come to Denny’s at midnight because she cannot spend the night at home.
Mari is seeking escape from her sister’s interminable sleep. It’s been two months since Eri came home and announced that she was going to sleep “for a while.” She is not in a coma – the meals left on her desk are eaten; occasionally she showers and changes pajamas. But none of the family members has actually seen her awake, and they are unable to wake her up. Mari, knowing that her sister’s stupor is unnatural and inescapable, is unable to find her own escape in sleep. On this night, she’s seeking refuge on Tokyo’s streets.
An apparent stranger stops at her table. Tetsuya Takahashi is a student and a musician, his chosen instrument the trombone. He has met Mari, though she doesn’t remember, because he was a classmate of Eri’s. Before leaving to rehearse with his band, Takahashi draws Mari out, finding out why she’s at Denny’s and that she is a student of Chinese.
The next person to approach Mari truly is a stranger. Kaoru is the manager of a nearby love hotel and a friend of Takahashi’s. A Chinese prostitute has been beaten and robbed. Mari is needed to translate, so they can find out what happened and offer help.
Mari’s story is anchored in a gritty reality, and the reader could be at a neighboring table, watching her evening unfold. Eri’s narrative takes place at an almost omniscient remove and has all the reality of a dreamscape. As the reader hovers with an unnamed narrator in her bedroom, an unplugged television set slowly comes to life. The static eventually resolves, revealing a faceless man. And perhaps he is watching the girl sleeping so deeply that she doesn’t seem to breathe.
The juxtaposition of these two tales, one firmly anchored in reality and the other in a substantial yet unreal world, is the distillation of Murakami’s magic. The reader is pulled between understanding what is happening to Mari, though perhaps not fully why, and needing to suspend disbelief and simply float through Eri’s tale. The confidence that the two strands will eventually entwine is not misplaced. When they do, the “aha” moment is magnificent and followed immediately by a kind of unbridled admiration for the writer – because it is right and because the reader never sees it coming.
Murakami’s work is a joy to read, in no small part because he playfully straddles East and West. Mari’s landscape is nocturnal Tokyo, not a place familiar to most U.S. readers. But the fluorescent lights of Denny’s, the cups of coffee offered while Hall and Oates play in the background are as familiar as the siblings’ mixed feelings of love and resentment.
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. But it’s short and fast, not as daunting as “Kafka on the Shore” or “The Wind-up Bird Chronicles.”
For the unfamiliar, it’s the perfect appetizer. For the established fan, it’s a quick work that is over far too soon.
Robin Vidimos reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
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FICTION
After Dark
Haruki Murakami
$22
