![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Though he recalls meeting her while courting the attention of Mari’s beautiful sister Eri, Mari seems indifferent-until Takahashi (realizing Mari speaks Chinese) persuades her to assist his friend Kaoru (who manages an all-night “love hotel”) in helping a Chinese prostitute who’s been savagely beaten by one of her johns. It begins “around midnight” as young trombonist Takahashi invites himself to join college student Mari, as she’s studying in an all-night Denny’s restaurant. Its characters are ships in the night that carry cargoes of suppressed emotion and unresolved desires hence their interactions comprise a spare narrative quite different from Murakami’s hip, weird epics ( The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore) and more reminiscent of such plaintive tales of unrequited or misdirected affections as Norwegian Wood and Sputnik Sweetheart. Casual acquaintances and complete strangers alike meet and pass during the small hours of a Tokyo night, in the terse, riddling new novel from Japanese master Murakami ( Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, stories, 2006, etc.). ![]()
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