#36 - After Dark

This book is very surreal. I'm now interested in reading more of his work. Here is a synopsis copied from Barnes and Noble:

A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami’s masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore.

At its center are two sisters—Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny’s toward people whose lives are radically alien to her own: a jazz trombonist who claims they’ve met before, a burly female “love hotel” manager and her maid staff, and a Chinese prostitute savagely brutalized by a businessman. These “night people” are haunted by secrets and needs that draw them together more powerfully than the differing circumstances that might keep them apart, and it soon becomes clear that Eri’s slumber—mysteriously tied to the businessman plagued by the mark of his crime—will either restore or annihilate her.

After Dark moves from mesmerizing drama to metaphysical speculation, interweaving time and space as well as memory and perspective into a seamless exploration of human agency—the interplay between self-expression and empathy, between the power of observation and the scope of compassion and love. Murakami’s trademark humor, psychological insight, and grasp of spirit and morality are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery.

My progress in the 100 Book Challenge so far:

1. An Idiot Girl's Christmas - Laurie Notaro - 142 pages
2. The Missing - Chris Mooney - 360 pages
3. All the Numbers - Judy Merrill Larsen - 269 pages
4. The Quickie - James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge - 274 pages
5. The Darkest Evening of the Year - Dean Koontz - 354 pages
6. Plea of Insanity - Jilliane Hoffman - 598 pages
7. When Madeline Was Young - Jane Hamilton - 274 pages
8. Sunshine - Robin McKinley - 405 pages
9. Spying in High Heels - Gemma Halliday - 318 pages
10. I Am Legend - Richard Matheson - 312 pages
11. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer - 563 pages
12. Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City - Kirsten Miller - 380 pages
13. The Husband - Dean Koontz - 415 pages
14. Kiki Strike: The Empress's Tomb - Kirsten Miller - 369 pages
15. Plum Lucky - Janet Evanovich - 166 pages
16. Blood Rites - Jim Butcher - 372 pages
17. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - 245 pages
18. Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist - 513 pages
19. The Spellman Files - Lisa Lutz - 368 pages
20. Little Stalker - Jennifer Belle - 333 pages
21. Watchers - Dean Koontz - 352 pages
22. Lost and Found - Carolyn Parkhurst - 289 pages
23. Dead Beat - Jim Butcher - 396 pages
24. Steve & Me - Terri Irwin - 273 pages
25. Bright Lights, Big Ass - Jen Lancaster - 385 pages
26. Curse of the Spellmans - Lisa Lutz - 407 pages
27. Bleeding Kansas - Sara Paretsky - 431 pages
28. Dead Witch Walking - Kim Harrison - 416 pages
29. The Abstinence Teacher - Tom Perrotta - 358 pages
30. The Good Guy - Dean Koontz - 493 pages
31. The Double Bind - Chris Bohjalian - 368 pages
32. Dork Whore - Iris Bahr - 216 pages
33. Eclipse - Stephenie Meyer - 629 pages
34. Monkeewrench - P. J. Tracy - 404 pages
35. Diablerie - Walter Mosley - 180 pages
36. After Dark - Haruki Murakami - 191 pages