A review by jentang
After Dark by Haruki Murakami

4.0

reading an excerpt of this book years ago kickstarted my general desire to read murakami's works. i will admit i chose to be a little less critical than usual when actually commencing reading due to this fact, but i do think that this book is genuinely deserving of praise. a little bit of every element unique to murakami's style can be found in this story, from the odd interjections of explicitness to the flowery prose to the local-heavy focus to the expected magical realism.  murakami exceeded my expectations when he gave dimension beyond clichés to the men and women of the book - incredibly, there was dialogue that actually demonstrated connection between both sides to varying degrees. of course, that isn't to say that the men were not still eccentric (for christ's sake, takanashi paired milk with both apples and tuna sandwiches) or the women broken non-simplistically. moving past that, i enjoyed how the storylines of all the characters were 1) connected through at least one link, 2) capable of cultivating completely different emotions within me, and 3) all authentic enough. although i did feel the sudden leaps from a basically sociopathic man to teenagers conversing about anything and everything to interdimensional boundary crossing were not done through seamless transitions, i liked how they created a mildly unsettling atmosphere while reading what was basically 3+ different genres of stories all combined into one. i recommend the read, especially considering the book's brevity.