Title: After Dark
Author: Haruki Murakami
Reviewed by: Bhavana
A city in Japan seems to be reluctant to acknowledged the fact that it's time to quite down and go to bed. But it still has been thriving with not merely life but, loud music, bright lights, college students prancing, food and fun.
It all starts one night at Denny's family restaurant. Our young protagonist Mari Asai a student studying Chinese language at the University is busy reading a book. This is where she encounters Tetsuya Takahashi a passionate Trombone player. For the chatter box that he proves to be, our protagonist happens to be a patient listener. Some of the talk by Tetsuya Takahashi went over my head. Super short story on Intellectual curiosity by him definitely proved interesting.
Mari is soon approached by the staff of the Alphaville Love Hotel for translation of the Japanese language to a Chinese prostitute who has been abused physically by her customer. "The ordinary looking ones are the most dangerous" says Kaoru the hotel staff as she investigates on the hotel customer. The offender is identified...
Eventually Mari learns about the lives of some of the people she gets in touch with. But somewhere in the second half of the story I felt that the story was being needlessly dragged. Nevertheless, every now and then we have a look at the Enigmatic condition the beautiful Eri Asai, Mari's elder sister is in. A view point camera moves about very often in the story. There is a dash of humor, and a whiff of romance but not very obvious in the end. Ultimately a couple of questions go unanswered to the readers. I believe that the mystery the story holds is the beauty of the story.
Rating: 2 on 5
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