review on Murakami's After Dark (opini and playlist)

This morning, I need to commute quite far by train. So I picked this for reading. After Dark by Haruki Murakami. this version I hold was printed in 2007. I finished it just now (around 2.30 am) and all of a sudden this melancholic feeling of nothingness crept into my chest. Maybe, it was the reading; the night; the note left by the previous owner of this book (apparently someone bought this at the airport in November 2009); or maybe, it was the fact that 2009 was a solid 15 years ago. Or the fact that nothing was mine; That life is nothingness to begin with? okay stop that for now.. I want to review this book. It will be done from two perspective. first, the experience (how the book make me feel and what left with me). second, the plot.

Experience :

just like any other Murakami's work, it's a quite pleasant light reading. and yet, he always has a unique description of thoughts. there is an anecdote of three brothers in Hawaii that god let them to decide themselves where they wanna live. it actually is an anecdote of how far u willing to sacrifice in life to feed your curiosity. the oldest brother choose to survive on licking frost and eating moss for live, bcs he wants to see as much as possible of the world. Insane. I don't think I will ever able to make that decision, to sacrifice comfort for curiosity... what do I get from that?? ignorance is a bliss, they say. 

another anecdote is Takahashi's experience attending trials (pp.177-121). the trial becomes a "weird creature. It has..., a bunch of long, undulating legs, and it's heading somewhere... It takes on all kinds of different shapes— sometimes it's 'the nation,' ... 'the law'... [or] shapes that are more difficult and dangerous." it make you feel "a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that  [you] could never run away, no matter how far [you] went."   he went on how he cried and shivered after a guy death penalty.. and that's how he decided to study law even if it's not fun at all, "that's life. That's what it means to grow up."

I may have taken this out of it's context.. but I think what Takahashi really afraid of is being useless, forgotten, powerless, and not able to defend himself. sure, playing music is fun.. but he will not able to survive in world with his music. plus, he doesn't have that confidence in himself to make it his career. and once you become marginalized in this society, that's the end of it. Law is even more powerful and 'useful' in this context. and that's what Takahashi has chosen to help him survive instead of music. i think this interpretation is not that far off notes how conformist the Japanese society is.  

and yet, we have Mari Asai who never think herself as capable as what people claim she is. Mari speaks chinese,  manage to help people, a good listener, and soon will go for study exchange in beijing. she seems.. so well put together.  maybe Murakami wants to tell us, hey, no one really know what they are doing anyway. as long as you do the best you can; you do it sincerely. that's enough. everything will seem put together eventually. 

Plot :

over all it's good, it's so Murakami to think of it.. things just end like that, reader get not much reasonable nor plausible explanation.

will Eri ever recover? What is that things that carry Eri to the other world? Will the chinese gang find  Shirakawa? or Takahashi? or the combini guy instead? or nothing happen? 

but i love the time arrangement of the story tho.. things happen between 11:56pm to 6:52am, when sky is dark and people are vulnerable to their feelings. it makes sense how the characters starts to open up on things they will never tell anybody... bcs people do that all the time during the night... after dark.
that's it for now.

playlist from the book

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