After Dark by Haruki Murakami

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A college girl. A part-time model. A shabby musician. The manager of a love hotel. Lastly, a businessman.

These are the main characters of Haruki Murakami’s novel After Dark, which takes place in Tokyo between midnight and sunrise the next morning. I found Murakami’s novel resting on a display my local library had set up for authors and books from around the world. I thought the title sounded like the beginning of an interesting story, so I read the back and decided to take a chance on it. I’m so glad I did; Murakami’s novel was startling and stirring, but it was also full of hope.

The story begins at 11:56 p.m. inside a Denny’s. The narrator and the reader make up the collective “we” that Murakami uses throughout the book to refer to those watching the stories of the characters play out. So, at four minutes to midnight in a Denny’s, “we” first meet Mari Asai, a quiet college student passing the night hours at a restaurant with a thick book. She is soon joined by a shabby-looking young man about her age (Takahashi), carrying a trombone around the city in between practice sessions with his band. Takahashi knows Mari’s sister, Eri, who is so beautiful that she used to model part-time.

Takahashi also knows Kaoru, the kind, plucky manager of a love hotel, and through a series of circumstances including a businessman (who, naturally, is more than he seems), Mari comes to know Kaoru and the other women who work at the hotel. These new friendships help Mari come to terms with problems involving her sister, Eri.

Because the book focuses largely on the experiences of Mari, it is her we follow most throughout the story. Using Mari and Eri as focal points, Murakami tells a story that is full of suspense and surprising twists, but most importantly illustrates the connections between people. Each character in After Dark seems ordinary at first glance, but that’s the point. Everyone in Murakami’s book, as in life, is ordinary until we get to know the person behind the first impression.

I know there are parts of After Dark I missed; symbolism that went over my head, scenes I didn’t understand. Sometimes it caught me off-guard. And while I miss the depth of what I didn’t understand in the book, I’m grateful to have read something that surprises me. Murakami illustrates the relationships and connections between people delicately but vividly, and it’s only by reading to the end of the book that you really understand what it was about.

~K