Book Review: After Dark, by Haruki Murakami (2004, English translation 2007)

My paperback copy of After Dark, by Haruki Murakami, 2004, English translation 2007. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Night. It can be scary, romantic, sexy, all sorts of things. Darkness can reveal strong emotions and passions, and novelist Haruki Murakami knows this well. Murakami’s 2004 novel After Dark takes place between midnight and dawn on a single evening.  

The main character of After Dark is 19-year-old Mari Asai, who is reading a book at a Denny’s when the novel begins. This Denny’s plays a lot of 1960’s easy listening music, which I found unlikely, but hey, it’s Murakami’s Denny’s, so they can play whatever he wants them to. Mari is eventually approached by Tetsuya Takahashi, an awkward college student a little older than Mari who plays jazz trombone. Tetsuya tells Mari that he knows her older sister, Eri. From my limited knowledge of Murakami, Tetsuya seems to fit the pattern of other male Murakami protagonists: nice, awkward, a little goofy, with lots of pop culture knowledge.  

To reveal more about the plot seems, as usual with Murakami, superfluous. It’s less about the specifics of what is revealed and more about the journey Mari goes on over the course of this evening. There were things I didn’t quite understand in After Dark, but that’s sort of par for the course with Murakami, isn’t it?  

I like art that compresses the time frame, as it generally heightens tension and moves the plot along. After Dark is a bit of an exception to this rule, as the time frame is very compressed, but for me there wasn’t much tension in the plot. That’s not really meant as a criticism, as I don’t think After Dark is trying to be a page-turning thriller. I read After Dark very quickly, but I wasn’t breathlessly wondering what came next. I know, that sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Hopefully Murakami would appreciate the contradiction.  

There are some great quotes throughout After Dark. One of my favorites is from a bartender who tells Mari, “Time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night.” (p.78) That’s so true, as time can speed up or slow down at will after night falls. One of my other favorite quotes was this: “In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.” (p.204)  

If you’re a night owl like me, go ahead and add After Dark to your nighttime reading list.