Thought Train to Pusan

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A quick little foray into the world at night, when people exist in almost a different realm. After Dark takes place in Tokyo, over the course of one night, and centers around a small selection of people whose activities all end up interconnected somehow. But it’s not quite so simple, as there seems to be some other kind of… I don’t want to say supernatural, but fantastical elements at play as well. It’s a simple and quick read, that comes across as very gentle and thoughtful, yet I can’t say as I was 100% sold on it in it’s entirety. After Dark features twining stories centered around a number of people, including: a young woman trapped in a deep sleep, the girl’s sister who wants nothing more than to stay away form home all night, an old acquaintance of the two sisters who wants to be more acquainted, three women working at a love hotel, a young Chinese prostitute who is the victim of violence, and the businessman who hurt her. Everyone lives separate lives which all influenc...

A story of a young man’s unrequited love, tangled in a web of death, mental illness, and the impact of sexual experience upon a person’s life. I was unaware that that last point would play such an important role in the story of Norwegian Wood , which made reading on the bus next to an older women conspicuously reading over my shoulder a bit of an interesting experience. In general, however, this novel focuses on the confusing time that is a person’s late teens, and how certain moments have the power to stay with us all through our lives. Norwegian Wood begins with a 37-year-old Toru Watanabe, suddenly being hit with a wave of nostalgia, and memories from the 1960s when he was around 17-20 years old. And the trigger of these memories? An orchestral version of The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood”. The rest of the novel is where Toru recounts all that occurred during this early and altering time in his life. It all begins when Toru’s best friend, Kizuki, commits suicide when he is 17...