Mari soon becomes swept up into the labyrinth of night, when she meets Takahashi, a law student-cum-trombone player who claims to have met her previously, and a brothel madam who used to be a wrestler. Mari then helps save a Chinese prostitute who was savagely beaten by a businessman. It is this act that leads Mari to question – will her sister ever wake up? Can she ever save her sister?

An easily digestible novel of less than 200 pages, After Dark is told in real time from midnight to 6am. Fans of Murakami will be familiar with his witty dialogue, alienated misfit characters and metaphysical themes. Readers who dislike novels that bend the lines of reality and fantasy are more likely to respond like my father, who read a couple of chapters and declared, “This book’s too weird for me.”

One of the “weirder” elements is that After Dark reads like you’re watching a movie. The point of view dips into close up of heart-to-heart conversations between Mari and Takahashi and overhead shots of Eri sound asleep, being watched by a mysterious stranger. Murakami deconstructs the storyteller into a film director and describes only what the camera (and hence Murakami) allows us to see.

As a result we are only ever allowed a brief glimpse into each of the characters’ lives, during the six hours before dawn. The unique style comes at the cost of the reader forging too close a bond with any of the characters. We unearth fragments of their fears, insecurities, hopes and dreams. This is all they are willing to reveal to strangers they meet at night and the readers/viewers of their stories.

After Dark is not Murakami’s greatest novel, nor is it my favourite, but it indeed captures the essence of human bonding and relationships that pull us through the sometimes inexplicable darkness of life.