After Dark -- Haruki Murakami

I heard about this book on NPR.  They have a section of their Books podcast that lists three books with similar themes that you just have to read.  After Dark was listed beside Salman Rushie's Midnight's Children and Dashiell Hammett's Nightmare Town.  I knew nothing about any of these books, and had never read any of these authors, but I wanted to read them all.  I'm currently working on my own novel that takes place in the dark places in between worlds.  

After Dark starts just before midnight, and revolves around 19-year old Mari, who can't go home and won't say why, and her encounters with the night people of Tokyo.  Meanwhile, her beautiful older sister, Eri, sleeps, her black hair spread over her pillow, her face a perfect mask.  Eri's sleep is deep, and she doesn't notice the flickering image on her unplugged television set struggling to come into focus.

I have to admit I was initially a bit disappointed by After Dark.  To me it seems too obvious somehow, too predictable.  It's a Japanese Horror movie mixed with Film Noir, and the characters do exactly what they have to do, and are exactly who you'd guess they are.  Even the most surreal moment seems planned, understood, ordinary.  

And yet, the entire book sings and vibrates in a way I hadn't expected.  Murakami tells you what you are hearing.  Not just a description of noises, but titles and artists: "a Scarlatti cantata sung by Brian Asawa," "the languourous, sensual music of Duke Ellington," "Burt Bacharach's 'The April Fools.'"    Every scene is bursting with music. Indeed, the book itself is structured to read like a jazz solo.  Like any good jazz piece it picks a theme, a series of notes, a phrase, a character, an image, and repeats it, changes it, expands it, builds upon it and finally, naturally, returns to it.  Soon, I don't care that the book is predictable.  Jazz music is too, once you work it into yourself.  If jazz music flows through you, not just over you, you can hear the breaks, the beats, the dancing melodies long before they hit.

"Music for the middle of the night."

The book is just a little too visual, a little too much like a screen play, every camera angle planned and rapidly changing, every scene perfectly blocked and ready for filming.  I find, however, that the visuals are interestingly, and masterfully crafted.  The reader is pulled into a visual world that falls somewhere between Edward Hopper, Bladerunner, and Cowboy Bebop and can't help but feel the weight of insomnia, quiet desperation, and complete isolation from the things of daylight.

And I love the voice of the author.  Murakami has a very clear voice, and there's a subtle magic to it, a hypnotic power that I can't quite describe. The book is written in the present tense, and it's not told, but rather observed.  

In the end, I have to say I very much enjoyed this book.  It was a quick read: a little less than an hour, and a very welcome break from my daily routine.  It put me in a good place.  For writing, for looking at the world with a different voice ringing in my head, for seeing patterns that weren't there before.  I'll definitely be reading more of this author.

"No one can predict when or where such abysses will swallow people, or when or where they will spit them back out."

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