After Dark

If you're looking for the usual Murakami experience, this is perhaps not what you should be looking for.

It's much smaller in scope, although the execution remains immaculate. There are excursions into different points of view, with most of the book taking place with Mari and the small cast being in third person, but occasional glimpses into Eri, Mari's sister, and her long slumber from a first person (we) perspective through a television screen. These passages involve a faceless man and an ominous sense of dread that leaves you with questions at the end of the book.

For a small book, there's a lot to unpack, such as the relationship between Mari and Eri, two sisters who went through a few traumatic experiences together, culminating in being stuck in an elevator together, before they drifted apart into different lives. Eri is a sleeper, always asleep, never awake, while Mari has a difficult time sleeping and finds herself out and about.

An encounter with one of Eri's classmates leading to needing to swoop into help a Chinese girl at a love hotel adds texture.

There's clearly an interplay between the girls going on here, where they're two parts of a whole, a yin and a yang. All while the male characters prove to leave both Mari and the reader feeling uneasy or downright disgusted with them.

It's very clear to see this is a short book about trauma, the people who inflict it, and what it does to the victims. You have to go digging for answers, which won't bode well for some readers. If you're willing to put in the work, though, it's an interesting read.