Murakami’s After Dark worked for me. I feared it going in, as I tend to get really angry at his short stories, as like his novels they are very outlandish, but with out the requirement of holding one’s attention for several hundred pages, I find the short stories too emphemeral. I can’t hold on to them even while reading, let alone after I put the book down.

After Dark, a novella for Murakami at less than two-hundred pages, did keep me (and really, him) linked to the story. But then the shortness of time (it takes place in a single night), and the lack of too much jumping between strange parallel universes (hey, it is still Murakami) kept things tied to reality. No really, it did.

(Oh also, really hate that cover. Wish I would have had the Vintage International paperback to match the rest of my Murakami collection)

I am a huge fan of Murakami. He is currently my favorite contemporary author. I greatly enjoyed After Dark, it is unfortunate that it is so short, but it is fitting for this novella. It details the surreal goings on in the hours between midnight and dawn, focusing in two perspectives on two sisters, Eri and Mari Asai. We follow Mari as she encounters many odd chacters who are up at these hours, and slowly reveals the reason for her sleeplessness. The line of the story that follows Eri is in classic Murakami surreal style, making references to the observers actions and throwing in a bit of the supernatural. As in many Murakami stories it feels like it could turn at any moment into a horror story but never crosses that line, leaving the reader instead with many unanswered questions (often in this story brought to the readers attention and posed directly in the narrative, as if to say I know I left you hanging, but you are just going to have to figure it out for yourself.)

Certainly not my favorite of Murakami’s works, but a quick read that will hold one over until his next (hopefully longer) book.

I sort of want to be each of his characters, and Murakami because if I could write like this I am not sure I would do anything else with my time. This is one of his finest, the story of a teenage boy who takes the name Kafka, runs away from home, and enters a world of people that talk to cats, lasting remnants of past wars, living ghosts, and a pair of extremely intelligent librarians that serve as wonderful guardians.

Read this in place of sleeping, because he writes dreams more beautiful than you could imagine.

Some books we cannot do justice to in a short post.

I can say that Murakami write a whole lot, and I should have started reading him long ago, so that I could catch up.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles is a story about a man who has cat named for his borther in-law whom he hates that disappeares (the cat – not the brother in-law). And … that is really all the set-up you get, and possibly even all you need. What makes this novel so beautiful is the way it evolves, taking on background and meaning as it grows organically. You are never given information ahead of the design of things, which is often impossible to trace.

This simple story about a man looking for his missing cat becomes so wonderfully parallel and entwined with the lives of mystics, war veterans, teenage surveryers of the follically challenged, detectives, spelunkers, mutes, and healers that you are bound to fall in love.