Haruki Murakami's After Dark is set in the nocturnal wee hours of Tokyo.Our characters move through Cafes and Diners lit with fluorescent lamps that evoke Edward Hopper paintings, music in the background, Duke Ellington, Pet Shop Boys and others. I didn't expect Tokyo to be so replete with Americana. The central characters Mari and her sister Eri the Snow White like delicate beauty. Eri is the older of the two, and has lived a life in the limelight, literally, modelling and starring in TV shows. Her life feels hollowed out, in an effort to meet others expectations. Mari on the other hand, lives life on her own terms, though she is insecure and has to work hard to build her self confidence, she seems like the kind who will get it together eventually. We are offered a birds-eye-view of Tokyo, which from our view point is compared to an organic being with arteries carrying life sustaining matter to its various parts and returning used up remnants. The clock starts ticking at about 11:30 P.M and moves forward with every chapter, we participate in conversations between Mari and Takahashi, Eri's classmate who practices trombone with a band at nights. Takahashi has had a difficult childhood, his Father was jailed when he was still a child, and is scared about how precariously close to evil we all are.The tough but kind manager of the love house 'Alphaville', Kira who takes an immediate liking to Mari, after Mari helps her with a Chinese prostitute who has been badly beaten up by her customer. Going through the security camera tapes, Kira identifies the culprit as an engineer working for VERITECH, presumably a software company. The tale switches between Mari's world of reality and Eri's world of sleep which is described in terms of the metaphysical merged with television, this is a story about two sisters unlike each other, estranged, one is asleep for two months, the other cannot sleep because of that, and how Mari eventually finds a way to connect with her sister. We never learn about what happens to the VERITECH employee. An interesting read, if one is willing to accept the open-endedness.
08/23/2011
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