Review - After Dark
Jul. 25th, 2009 02:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wilderthanI've never read anything by Haruki Murakami before. I don't tend to read things in translation, but I don't really have a hope of reading it in the original, so translation it is. I think someone might have mentioned this book to me, maybe in passing, in a bookstore, or something like that. Something that drew my eye to it on the shelf at the library, anyway.
The translation doesn't seem bad. I mean, I've read some translations and you can immediately tell they're stiff, literal translations. This one still feels like a translation, but it's kind of appropriate anyway since it's not set in England or anything. It isn't jarringly so, though; it flows pretty well.
It isn't really a book with a plot. There are characters, and an interesting/surreal/magic-realism sort of situation, but there's little character growth and no resolution. All the novel follows is one night, during the hours of darkness. It has that late-night feel to it, somehow, quiet and contemplative.
I don't know how to feel about it really, since I'm normally all about plot and characters, plenty of both, please. It's a readable sort of book, and there are some interesting conversations/images, like the two sisters in the stopped lift and then in the bed, and the Sleeping Beauty imagery, and Mari reading her book, "biting it off and chewing it one sentence at a time". I might try reading something else by Haruki Murakami, because I kind of enjoyed it, I just didn't really know what to make of it.
The translation doesn't seem bad. I mean, I've read some translations and you can immediately tell they're stiff, literal translations. This one still feels like a translation, but it's kind of appropriate anyway since it's not set in England or anything. It isn't jarringly so, though; it flows pretty well.
It isn't really a book with a plot. There are characters, and an interesting/surreal/magic-realism sort of situation, but there's little character growth and no resolution. All the novel follows is one night, during the hours of darkness. It has that late-night feel to it, somehow, quiet and contemplative.
I don't know how to feel about it really, since I'm normally all about plot and characters, plenty of both, please. It's a readable sort of book, and there are some interesting conversations/images, like the two sisters in the stopped lift and then in the bed, and the Sleeping Beauty imagery, and Mari reading her book, "biting it off and chewing it one sentence at a time". I might try reading something else by Haruki Murakami, because I kind of enjoyed it, I just didn't really know what to make of it.
here via a reader is me
Date: 2009-07-25 07:27 pm (UTC)I do have The Wind Up Bird Chronicles by him on my to read list. I've heard that Wind Up Bird and Kafka on the Shore are supposed to be some of his best.
Re: here via a reader is me
Date: 2009-07-25 07:29 pm (UTC)