Murakami's previous novels have won high praise.  This short book portrays a night in modern-day Tokyo. 

It starts in a Denny's, where a young college student is sitting.  In walks a young man, Tetsuya, and stops at her table as he is walking past.  He recognizes her, Mari Asai, from a double date he went on with her and her sister a couple of years ago.  He sits down and talks to Mari, who is reticent.  He explains that he is getting ready for a music practice with his jazz-playing friends.  He plays trombone, which he realizes is not cool, but he likes it anyway.  His manner is direct and friendly, but Mari does not open up to him.

Next the scene shifts to a screen, where we see Mari's sister, the beautiful Eri, asleep on a bed.  Eri is a mysterious figure throughout the novel.  This motif of the room seen from a screen by the reader recurs regularly in the book, given it the feeling of a graphic novel rendered in text.  We gradually learn more about Eri's situation, although it is never clear how literally to take these images.  This is an unusual feature of the novel, and while it makes the novel more interesting, it is also disconcerting. 

The third aspect of the novel revolves around Alphaville, a love hotel.  A Chinese prostitute has been beaten up there, and the manager and her staff are helping her and sorting out the problem.  We eventually meet the man who beat the girl, and some of the gang that controls the Chinese prostitutes and protects them.  It's a seedy and violent world, but it turns out that the manager is a good-hearted woman with a complicated past.

These three elements come into contact as the night develops.  By the end of the night, there's some resolution, and some mystery remaining.  We get some sense of the differences between different classes in modern Japan, the influence of Western commercial culture on Japanese youth, and hints of a malaise in Japanese culture.  Yet it is a subtle work, not at all didactic, and enjoyable.  The unabridged audio version performed by Janet Song is subdued in tone, but pleasant to listen to, with good characterization of the different speakers. 

Author web site (not recently updated): http://www.murakami.ch/main_3.html

© 2007 Christian Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian Perring, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction, AudioBooks