After Dark

After Dark by Haruki Murakami
I should have known, I suppose, the strangeness that is a Murakami novel. Questioning and prompting, After Dark invades our sense of normalcy and of the conscious and unconscious worlds in an odd and uncertain way.

The novel takes place over the course of a few hours in the dead of night, in Tokyo. We follow Mari as she wanders the streets, frequents diners and generally runs into various night characters. Her meetings, which take her to love hotels, make her witness to crimes and have her encounter old acquaintances, meander in and out of normalcy, painting a patched portrait of Tokyo night life. Spliced with Mari's encounters are narrative snippets relating to her sister, Eri, a mere figure - silent and unmoving - bound in a perpetual sleep.

After Dark is not a passive novel. By no means a light read, it denies you the luxury of an east narrative, demanding patience and thought. The novel begins to explore connections between siblings and human beings in a general sense, while touching on aspects of life, death and consciousness, all in a seemingly detached manner. A style unlike any other I have read, Murakami writes without weight, drifting in and out of subject matter, often dark material, without ever putting down roots. It is easy, then, to feel disconnected from the story, and rather uninterested in the characters themselves, as the lack of connectivity can feel cold. While questions arise from the pages about connectivity and existence, it is as though as an after thought, a mere vague wonder, which lacks any sense of urgency or importance. This is, however, a hallmark of Murakami's style in that he does not aid the reader or allow them easy access to his work. His stories, instead, require time, the slow reading of poetry where words are ingested and then digested. It is only through active reading that the deeper sensations of After Dark begin to show through.

Because of this, After Dark is often polarizing, sometimes hailed as a masterful display of genius writing, or else dismissed as a cold hard story about one bland character and her sleeping sister. For me, I fall somewhere in between. I can recognize the careful work that is After Dark, and yet despite knowing the assumed intentions, I could not grab hold of a strong enough -anything- to really connect with the novel. Such is the effect of Murakami, it seems. Brilliant perhaps, but therefore isolating.

The Ghost Brush

The Printmaker's Daughter by Katherine Govier
In theory, The Ghost Brush, by Katherine Govier (which was evidentially later renamed 'The Printmaker's Daughter') had all the ingredients for a great story. An interesting and troublesome setting, relationships fraught with twisted ideals if love, duty, honor and dependency - rebellion, subversion, defiance, art, prostitution, poetry - everything was there. And yet...
Frankly the novel was rather boring. I liked Oei, the main character: painter, tomboy and devoted second hand to her somewhat dictator father. I also like Shino, the graceful sophisticated courtesan who is both mother and sister to the wayward young girl. The Old Man, Hokusai, around which the story truly revolves, is similarly intriguing in flawed, curious in both his genius, madness love and distinct lack there of for his family. And that is all well and good, but interest in a character only goes so far, an 'liking' an individual is but the first step for the reader. Readers want- they need- to care. Become invested. Feel.

Despite everything that seemed to set th novel up otherwise, I felt no connection to the characters. Sorrows took place, triumphs, hardships.. Friends and lovers came and went, and yet the mood and tone if the narrative seemed to remain the same - steadily unattached - throughout.

I am a painter, a writer and a lover of books. The context if the story could not be better suited, as the narrative follows the life of a painter and his artist comrades who toil on despite the looming punishments and restrictions of the Shogun & bakufu of early 19th century Japan, and yet I found myself as a reader struggling to connect.

Luckily, I was familiar with the historical context at least, having once upon a time studied Modern Asian History. Thus the important of Edo in the 1800's and the implications of the Shogun spies held further weight in the story, but it seemed there was a distinct disconnect between the history surrounding the novel and the way it was portrayed to the reader. Even having studied the terms and treaties I found myself unclear at times, and Govier seemed to work under a sense of assumption rather than explaining - even if only with regards to her characters - properly what it meant to love in Japan in those days.

That is not, of course, to say that all was for naught, merely thT that characters presented were not fully explored. The very fact that I wished to be let in to the lives of Oei, Shini and Hokusai suggests the merits of their character, but by not allowing the reader to dive into them as they read, the reader losses interest over time.

Similarly, though plot need not always be presented chronologically, the manner in which the characters move forward in time and space is disjointed at times, presenting information much later as only when the situation directly calls for it rather than laying a ground work of setting and understanding which the reader can build on as they progress through the story.

By no means a failure, The Ghost Brush stings more of unfulfilled potential - much in the way Oei remains an untapped well of talent - merely allowing for glimpses of that brilliance here and there, while keeping the rest concealed and hidden from any would-be audience. Picturesque, but lacking colour, The Ghost Brush is but the outline of a drawing, still waiting for the pigments to be filled in.


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The Tale for the Time Being

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Nao is the type of girl who immediately makes you here friend. Though an outcast, dislodged in time and space, and -within her own world - society, she writes with an honesty and sincerity that grabs hold of the reader and pulls them in. Nao and I were, from the start, friends. And she refers to the reader as such, as she goes along - writing to the invisible someone who maybe, just maybe, is reading her thoughts so many years down the line. For her it does not matter who, or when, merely that you are there.

Ruth, is a reader like us. Having found Nao's diary awash in the sea, she forms what she feels to be a unique and solitary bond with the unknown teenage girl, reading her words as though the very act my bring life to her - save her from what seems to be the inevitable tragedy of her life.
Both reader and writer need each other - giving each other purpose, and therefore life, and Ozeki uses this relationship to her advantage as we as the public readers gain a sense of purpose in our own reading of the novel.

Real, in both her pain and her triumphs, Nao is the inner self, in many ways, her ever wise and peaceful Jiko, the outer. and we are as Ruth, caught somewhere in between, desperate to pull both together and save each.

While the novel holds a nice level of mystery and what is -in my own opinion - the poetic tragedy of uncertainty in that Ruth will never know for certain who Nao is or was, and what became of her life, the novel takes a turn which alters this. As we progress, there is a sense of fantasy with regards to the very words on the pages of the diary - as they appear and disappear. For me, this was a flaw in the flow of the reader/writer connection for although it elaborated on the importance of one upon the other, it took away the authenticity by applying it to an un-real and therefore removed form. While ghost, powers, and mystery certainly have their place,e and were used effectively in the novel, this one inexplicable aspect seemed not only odd, but unnecessary, and thus diminishing.

Still an intertwined tale of human dependency, A Tale of the Time Being challenges questions of time, space, and human form as writing transcends these planes to pull people together.

Noruwei no Mori

Norwegian Wood is a story about love, sex, relationships, and the complexities which define and effect the interactions of the human species. A novel centered around loss and pain, Haruki Murakami paints a picture of late 1960's Tokyo fraught with confusion, emotion, and the breaking down of the human mind. Norwegian Wood is in many ways a beautiful tale of tragedy and confusion. The style and cadence of Murakami's writing, and specifically his dialogue hold a distinctive, snappy honesty rarely found. The chracters are flawed, real, and therefore that much easier for the reader to invest in as we follow them along these winding roads of instability and small victories. The bluntness with which chracters unfold topics and events of their lives is refreshing, though occasionally jarring.

Written originally in 1987, and dealing with the 60's there was a sense of era about the novel that really seemed to capture the spirit of the times - which though enjoyable for the atmosphere of it, occasionally left me feeling I was a bit young to fully appreciate all the underlying currents of the time period in which the novel was set. [myself having been born in 1988] Never-the-less the feel of the novel was an authentic and wonderfully mystical one, permiated by a love of music, free spirits and soft revolutions which coloured the novel and its tragedies with all the more clarity.

A complex novel which attempts to unravel the logistics of the soul, sanity and love and death, Murakami questions convention and loyalties as the main character, Toru Watanabe stumbles his way from adolescents into full-blown accountable adulthood.

Toru is a resolutely optomistic character that finds himself hopelessly in love with his deceased best friend's girlfriend Naoko. Despite her sweetness and beauty, Naoko remains emotionally unavailable as she constantly attempts to unravel the sickness within her own mind - a reoccuring theme that is never directly explained nor defined, as mental strangeness and 'brokeness' becomes a concept of relativity which continually infiltrates chracters and relationships as the story unfolds.

In stark contrast to the quaint Naoko is Midori - the spunky, outspoken, short-skirt wearing character from Watanabe's classes. Midori adds a sense of uncertainty, adventure and bluntness to Watanabe's life previously missing, and he and Midori become odd but close friends. As Watanabe manueveres his way through university, he continually finds himself re-evaluating and analyzing not only his relationships, but the way in which he interacts with those closest to him.

Because of this constant evaluation of relationships, the novel is completely interwoven with explicit interactions of sex and erotic encounters. Though this certainly adds merit to Watanabe's inner dilemas - namely, the fine lines between love, sex, romantic relationships and friendships - the explicit nature was certanly more than my person taste appreciated, and is something to keep in mind and be advised of for readers.

Despite these less than appealing scenes, the novel is a well written stylistic tale of the downfalls in human nature, and the inexplicable connections humans form with one another.