Bloodless Coup

After Dark

Last night I finished reading another Murakami novel, his latest novel, After Dark. It's the fourth novel of his I've read, and the fourth I've very much enjoyed. It's not as grand or sweeping as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Kafka on the Shore. Here he is looking at one night - and how a few people in a rough neighborhood of Tokyo interact during the darl hours. And while there is a feeling of a threatening gloom all around, and some bloody violence, ultimately the story is about a few characters working through the night, connecting, and surviving. On that note Walter Kirn concluded his review in the New York Times thusly:

He sees how bravely earthlings muddle on, bits of eternity lashed, prodded by baffling appetites and instincts into vinyl-upholstered booths at Denny's and Lysol-soaked rent-by-the-hour motel cubicles. No wonder it's his practice as a writer to log every song that comes in over the radio; catchy tunes offer legitimate solace to such beings. In the darkness a beacon is anything that shines, however weakly, however briefly. Standing sentry above the common gloom, Murakami detects phosphorescence everywhere, but chiefly in the auras around people, which glow brightest at night and when combined but fade at dawn, when we go our separate ways.