After Dark, Murakami

My sister collects books written by Haruki Murakami. She's started this since we saw the cover of 1Q84 in a magazine. It had been trending in Korea for some time, so I decided to buy it for her. 

Ever since then, I have bought her three more Murakami books. Not because it was a  special occasion or anything, but just because I know that it makes her happy when I buy her random books. 

After Dark  is a relatively short book. It only has about 200 pages.

But, I have to say that I have no idea what this book is about.

I just finished reading it, and I'm so lost and confused. 

All I know is that Haruki Murakami has a wonderful talent. He draws the reader in with his writing. And, even though, for the majority of the book, I have no idea what is going on, I keep reading. And, I'll still keep on reading his books.

My friend once told me that its useless to read Murakami's book in English because the translations are so terrible. He told me to read it all in either Japanese or Korean.

Too bad I really can't. But, I'm pretty satisfied with the English. I'm not reading his book for the perfect dialogues. It's his crazy plots that keep me interested.

“You know what I think?” she says. “That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed ‘em to the fire, they’re all just paper. The fire isn’t thinking, ‘Oh, this is Kant,’ or ‘Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,’ or ‘Nice tits,’ while it burns. To the fire, they’re nothing but scraps of paper. It’s the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there’s no distinction — they’re all just fuels.”

- Haruki Murakami, After Dark