Afterdark

Posted by kenshin03 on Aug 1, 2005 in books | 0 comments

Just spent a couple of weekend evenings to complete this paperback.

As expected, the books is easy to follow but hard to understand. Like
most Murakami novels I feel like I have merely caught a glimpse at the
surface of what the author intended to convey. But I don’t think I’ll spend too much time re-analyzing it and decipher the hidden metaphors or whatever. It ain’t that necessary.

Nevertheless the characters are always animated and could effortlessly pull out fascinating stories that keeps the reading fun. There’s a strong resemblance to “Hard Boiled Wonderland and End of the World”, both in the way how the passage of time is emphasized (every chapter starts with a clcok showing the current time during that part of the story), and that there are to be two lines of somehow related stories going on at the same time.

Things I liked about the book:

• Comparing a city as a living organism, and the courthouse as a giant octopus-like creature: are we living right inside a monster we have created? This has a bit of Matrix feel to me.
• No Murakami book is complete without a musician or two.
• The lively descriptions of “us” being a floating camera without substance. It’s so compelling it puts you right inside the scene.