After Dark

I'm not sure why I haven't burned through the Murakami canon yet, considering how much I loved The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

After Dark is a collection of stories all occurring between midnight and dawn. Quick snippets of life, fragments, and they move on to the next character. Nothing is wrapped up at the end, just a lingering sense of daylight coming in through the cracks.

Mari the 19 year old who knows Chinese, helps out at the love hotel when the Chinese prostitute is beaten. Takahashi the older boy who sits down at her table in Denny's and who sends her to the love ho, then meets up with her later that evening during his all night band practice (he plays trombone). Mari's sister Eri is asleep, as she has been for months. There's some nonsense with the Man Without a Face in Eri's room, and her sleeping body moving from the room into the TV and back.