Nightime Verbatim

Here’s my first blog post. A no-spoiler review of After Dark by Haruki Murakami. Stare into the abyss and it stares right back at you. Same with the night, it seems.

The Review:

To be honest, I don’t think I’m enough of a deep thinker to have fully comprehended this book. However, it definitely made me feel things and this is an attempt to document those feelings. An oddball of a book, everything about it is just so unique and I think one of the quote reviews printed on the back describes it really well. “The novel could be an allegory of sleep”. Now, of course, that does not mean that it will put you to sleep. The story is continuously unveiling itself at a decent pace, just enough to keep you from slipping. The sentence rather describes how the book, the style of writing used and the story itself is sort of transcendental, somewhat like sleep itself.

That description will make a lot more sense after reading the book. We have two main characters in the story, but only one does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to giving the readers an idea of what’s happening. That would be Mari Asai, the younger of two sisters who have a rather complicated relationship. The other sister, Eri Asai, is a very unconventional character, for someone without a dialogue she commands a good chunk of the story. Sleep is the central theme of the story and all the characters, in some or the other way are being affected by it. Either by a lack of it, or by a mystifying abundance of it. Every event in the story takes place in the span of a single night, 11:55 pm to a bit after 6. But its a very happening 6 hours and the 200-ish pages of the book condenses it quite well. With each chapter, the passage of time is brought to our notice along with a shift in perspective. For the most part, it follows the standard third person narrative style and structure. But, whenever the scene shifts to Eri Asai’s room, we are explicitly reminded, time and time again that we are merely spectators, a point of view, and have no ability to affect what is happening. Honestly, this narrative style was one of the most unsettling things about the book. As the story progresses we carry on with our journey through the night with various events taking place. However, the plot doesn’t move forward to any apparent end point. But after the last page, our ticket to this experience has been fully redeemed, the story moves on, leaving us behind.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do any sort of justice to this book because of my desire to not spoil any part of it. Overall, a lovely, lovely read that has you thinking with each line. An 8/10, the goth vibe helps too. This book is night time verbatim, representative of all of its chaos and silence.