The Weaver Reads reviewed After Dark by Haruki Murakami
A Surreal Tale About Care at Night
5 stars
This is such a beautiful, short novella. I went into it with no expectations, and I'm glad I didn't.
The whole story takes place over the course of seven hours, from midnight to 7 am, and follows a small cast of characters over the course of the night. The experiences that most of the characters had reflect a strong sense of community and care that I remember coming across late at night while I was in university. Of course, there are bleak moments here, but the weight of them are kept at bay by the humanism of the characters.
The story does have surreal moments, but they don't predominate, and they add a lot to the story. Late at night, things don't always feel right, and the surreal really feeds into that.
One component of the story that does a lot of work is the point of view. For one, …
This is such a beautiful, short novella. I went into it with no expectations, and I'm glad I didn't.
The whole story takes place over the course of seven hours, from midnight to 7 am, and follows a small cast of characters over the course of the night. The experiences that most of the characters had reflect a strong sense of community and care that I remember coming across late at night while I was in university. Of course, there are bleak moments here, but the weight of them are kept at bay by the humanism of the characters.
The story does have surreal moments, but they don't predominate, and they add a lot to the story. Late at night, things don't always feel right, and the surreal really feeds into that.
One component of the story that does a lot of work is the point of view. For one, the narrator and the point of view have nearly anthropomorphic characteristics. At the same time, the whole story is told in the present tense. The narrator learns about occurrences at the same time we do, and it offers a sort of meta-commentary. In some ways, it reads almost more like a screen play than a novel. The PoV's voice adds to the sense of strangeness and wonder.
My only regret was that the book is so short--but I also think it was as long as it has to be.
