"After Dark" by Haruki Murakami

"After Dark" was the last novel by Haruki Murakami before 1Q84 and it is a little bit different than most Murakami's novels.  First, it is very short, which is very unlike Murakami, only 206 pages.  It was published in 2004 but the first English translation was done in 2007, while the audio book one even later.  The novel happens in only 6 hours between midnight and 6am, mostly in a Denny's restaurant and a nearby love hotel "Alphaville".  Mari, a 19 years old student and Takahashi, trombone player and student who met Mari and her beautiful sister Eri some time back for a pool party.

There is a former female wrestler involved, who is now the manager of the love hotel.  A few maids in the hotel also appear on stage, as well as a 19 years old, beaten up and robbed of all belongings, start naked Chinese prostitute.  A representative of a Chinese prostitution gang and a sadistic computer programmer who works night shifts and uses prostitutes regularly to get away from his ordinary wife and kids round up the main characters in the book.  A main character who spends most of the book sleeping is Eri, Mari's beautiful sister who one night declares she will go to sleep for a longer time and continues to sleep for the next two months.

The book is written more like a movie script or a teleplay than a true novel.  Often the author tells us directly about what point of view we have, at what angle we are seeing things and uses declarative descriptions like in a play script.  This detracted from the book for me and made me unable to enjoy it as much as his other works like The Wind Up Bird, Norwegian Wood, Dance dance dance, Kafka on the shore, etc.  There are not too many magical elements, except for Eri sleeping in a non-deterministic room in a non-deterministic space and world.  An interesting read overall, but below Murakami's usual standards.