After Dark (novel)

Set in metropolitan Tokyo over the course of one night, characters include Mari Asai, a 19-year-old student, who is spending the night reading in a Denny's. There she meets Takahashi Tetsuya, a trombone-playing student who loves Curtis Fuller's "Five Spot After Dark" song on Blues-ette; Takahashi knows Mari's sister Eri, who he was once interested in, and insists that the group of them have hung out before. Meanwhile, Eri is in a deep sleep next to a television and seems to be haunted by a menacing figure.

Mari crosses paths with a retired female wrestler, Kaoru, now working as a manager in a love hotel called "Alphaville". Kaoru needs Mari to talk to a Chinese prostitute who had just been beaten in the love hotel by an office worker, Shirakawa. The group then tries to track down Shirakawa, and includes the Chinese Mafia group that 'owns' the prostitute.

In the love hotel Mari also hears stories from some of the staff working there and takes a glance at the other world hidden below the one we are aware of.

Parts of the story take place in a world between reality and dream, and each chapter begins with an image of a clock depicting the passage of time throughout the night.

• Mari Asai, a 19-year-old student learning Chinese philology. As a child she went to a school for Chinese children. Mari is rather reserved when talking to strangers but however is keen on "making everything right".
• Tetsuya Takahashi, a trombone-playing student who, however, wants to stop practising music and start learning law. He is rather optimistic and doesn't want to live a big life.
• Kaoru, a retired female wrestler now working as a manager in the love hotel, "Alphaville". She is trustworthy, honest and always seeking justice.
• Shirakawa, an office worker who beat a Chinese prostitute in "Alphaville".

Like other Murakami novels, After Dark features a dual narrative. About half of the book focuses on Mari Asai and half focuses on her sister, Eri. There is a third narrative involving Shirakawa, but this is woven into Mari's half of the tale. Like his other novels, Murakami brings the two story threads together.

The novel is filled with symbols that can be understood in many different ways. Such strong symbols as music, night, light, cameras and not working television are used, and the author leaves it to his readers to interpret them in one way or another.

The novel received a 64% rating from the book review aggregator iDreamBooks based on 17 critics' reviews. A common point of criticism was the ending, or apparent lack thereof, which many critics found retroactively soured the rest of the book.^[2] On Bookmarks Magazine Jul/Aug 2007 issue, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a       (4.0 out of 5) based on critic reviews with the critical summary saying, "Other than an unexpected cheerfulness, After Dark is classic Haruki Murakami, featuring themes of loneliness and alienation, carefully crafted characters, Western references (such as an all-night Denny’s where Hall & Oates plays in the background), and distinctive magical-realist twists of fate".^[3] Globally, Complete Review (with rating assessments based on the critic reviews from Complete Review ranging from scores such as B-) saying on the consensus "Many not entirely clear what it might all be about, but the majority impressed, in one way or another" with scores such as B- given by publications.^[4]

Walter Kirn, for The New York Times, lauded Murakami's ability to take a birds-eye view of his nightly world: "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."^[5]

Steven Poole, in The Guardian, appreciated the book's style: "After Dark is perhaps the closest Murakami has yet come to composing a pure tone-poem ... Exposition is set to the minimum, while the mood-colouring is virtuosic."^[6]

• Comprehensive After Dark resource page
• The Guardian review
• Strange Horizons review
• After Dark at the Internet Book List