Number 56- After Dark- Murakami

Several years ago I read Kafka On The Shore.  I enjoyed the writing style, but when I got to the end I thought "Wut? was there a point to any of that?"

I finished this late last week and... well, it seems his writing is consistent.

The action, such as it is, centres around a small cast of characters up and about in the early hours in a Japanese city.

Mari is sitting in a small café trying to read and drink her coffee. She's interrupted by a young jazz saxophonist called Takahashi, and soon afterward by the a representative of a local love ho (love hotel where rooms are booked by the hour) to help with a Chinese girl who has been viciously beaten. 

Meanwhile, her beautiful sister, who has been asleep for three months, is about to experience a strange awakening.

I really liked the flow of language.  The prose was almost hypnotic.  I raced through this in two days.

 

However, when I got to the end, I felt like I'd been cheated. Spoilers ahead.  Apologies, but I can't explain this in vague terms.

 Strange things are happening to Eri- Mari's sister.  These things never intersect with the story of the characters outside her bedroom and her television, except for brief references to the office of the man who beat the Chinese prostitute. She finds herself awake in a situation from which there appears to be no escape. The next time we see her, she's back in her own room, on her own bed, with no explanation as to how she got there.

There's a fine line between being mysterious and leaving unanswered questions, and lazy writing because you don't know the answer yourself. This feels like Murakami took a running jump over that line. The resolution of that storyline felt so lazy that Snorlax is jealous (Japanese book, a Pokémon reference is allowed). 

The worst thing is, without that storyline, the book would have been 100 times better. It felt like weird padding for the sake of it. It added nothing in the end and was a net detraction from the quality of the book.

So basically, it's enjoyable to read, but don't expect to finish the book and think that it was a good story. Maybe there's something cultural that doesn't come across in the translation.  Maybe I'm too dumb to understand the parallels and subtext.  Maybe HM is a lazy writer who fudges details because he thinks it sounds mysterious. It's one of those three.