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Loading... After Darkby Haruki Murakami
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Interesting. I don't think I truly took time to think about what all the 'weird' things are about (like why Eri's asleep). This book still has that Japanese feel, I felt like I was walking the streets of Tokyo as well as Mari. I would have liked the 'meaning' a bit more fleshed out- I was left with a lot of questions. Beautifully written and translated though. Alternating stories of Mari who spends the night at a Denny's and a love hotel where she meets several people, and her sister Eri who has been asleep for two months. A slow, weird, supernatural and beautiful book. Nothing much happens throughout the book and not a lot is resolved in the end. But it is a sweet, short story that takes place during a single night. The story telling technique used in this book is rather unusual, but unusual is what I’ve come to expect of Murakami and his writing. We are told right from the beginning that we are only a viewpoint, a camera floating in space, not having the capacity to participate in all that happens. Like camera viewports, we can only see what is within the rectangular frame, and we make up the rest of what we can’t view with our own imaginations. This book reads much like watching a movie, but gives us the insight of a book. It is very intriguing, to say the least, as it’s not every day that I come across such a story. It’s almost like a study of contrasts, pulling into pieces the workings of a movie while keeping to the formalities of a book, jumping from place to place while still keeping within the same time frame. This here is a story, I feel, about balance. There is this world, and then there is that other world. They both exist together, feed off each other, and both will cease to exist if any one disappears. There is an endless connection from me to you and back to me again. No matter how insignificant we feel about ourselves, or how far apart we may be, there is this web of connectivity that keeps all things in balance. A tone poem about several teenage characters whose lifes intersect over the course of one night. Nothing much happens, as the main characters Mari and Takahashi meet, part, meet and part again with the possibility of 'a date' after Mari returns from six months in China, but it is beautifully evoked. For me, the surrealistic passages about Mari's sister, Eri, add little to the story, but help make the unreal mood that is successfully created. I have read several novels by Murakami so the themes and types of characters are familiar, and whilst this novel has the least narrative drive, it creates a beautifully realised world. no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0307265838, Hardcover)A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami’s masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Allthough the book is – of course, considering the author – very well written and beautiful handicraft, it will not be my personal favourite of Murakamis. I was left with a wish to connect a bit more to the caracters instead of – as I thought I did reading this – watching them in a lovely and accurate exposition of art photography. (