Matt
I believe this is my sixth Murakami novel. He’s easily one of my most read authors despite the fact that I think he has some fairly notable issues that pop up in almost all of his books. Notably I think he is fairly incapable of writing women characters, his sex scenes are always disturbing and he will linger on certain details for far too long. Sometimes I wonder why I read him. And then he’ll conjure up a beautiful turn of phrase or have a really interesting line of dialogue or make a really astute observation and I remember why. For me he is very much an author where you have to accept his flaws in order to truly enjoy his writing. Sometimes the flaws outweigh the strong points and then there are times like After Dark where he keeps his worst instincts restrained and lets you enjoy the beauty of his craft.
Of all of the books I’ve read by him I think After Dark is his least-flawed. His women here actually feel real and not like a different species. There are no explicit sex scenes (although there is one description of a woman’s naked body that feels quite pointless and I feel most authors would not include it). The book is short enough that there aren’t a ton of things that he overly focuses on. Fixing these flaws allows me to appreciate the strong parts of his writing more and they are present here, although not in as high of doses as I’d enjoy. Certain phrases are indeed really pretty, the dialogue is really nice and the narration is quite interesting, but none of these things really blew me away the way they did in other Murakami novels. All-in-all this is Murakami at a very high level and I do think this is a great introduction to him.
I believe this is my sixth Murakami novel. He’s easily one of my most read authors despite the fact that I think he has some fairly notable issues that pop up in almost all of his books. Notably I think he is fairly incapable of writing women characters, his sex scenes are always disturbing and he will linger on certain details for far too long. Sometimes I wonder why I read him. And then he’ll conjure up a beautiful turn of phrase or have a really interesting line of dialogue or make a really astute observation and I remember why. For me he is very much an author where you have to accept his flaws in order to truly enjoy his writing. Sometimes the flaws outweigh the strong points and then there are times like After Dark where he keeps his worst instincts restrained and lets you enjoy the beauty of his craft.
Of all of the books I’ve read by him I think After Dark is his least-flawed. His women here actually feel real and not like a different species. There are no explicit sex scenes (although there is one description of a woman’s naked body that feels quite pointless and I feel most authors would not include it). The book is short enough that there aren’t a ton of things that he overly focuses on. Fixing these flaws allows me to appreciate the strong parts of his writing more and they are present here, although not in as high of doses as I’d enjoy. Certain phrases are indeed really pretty, the dialogue is really nice and the narration is quite interesting, but none of these things really blew me away the way they did in other Murakami novels. All-in-all this is Murakami at a very high level and I do think this is a great introduction to him.