After reading After Dark, by Haruki Murakami, I am overwhelmed by how deeply an interesting novel can engross it's reader. I am not used to read translated Japanese novel, in fact this book is my first one, so it took me several pages to get familiar with the author's tone (or the translator's, I can not tell.)
As the book's title suggested, the story is set in a period of time between 11:56 pm and 06:52 am, during which one of the two sisters was sleeping all the time in her bed and the other couldn't sleep and ventured into a territory that she was not accustomed to, the live after dark. The two sisters have two completely different lives, one is under the spotlight and the other outside of it. "While I was little, my parents kept telling me that I was not as good-looking as my elder sister, so if I don't study hard enough, I would be of no use." the one outside of the spotlight once said. (It's a déjà vu. I am sure I had heard a friend said that before.)
I think the story is about searching for the meaning of life, of being a sister, or simply of being a human. One of character who abandoned her real name and adopted a new one, cricket, had her idea about it "I think what's called human is one who lives with burning it's own memory, as fuel. It doesn't mater what the memory is as long as there are some existed for one to burn..." I admire the idea of thinking of memory as fuel, as impetus for keeping us alive. Good ones remind us we did have them once and bad ones remind us we had them already.
This is the first translated Japanese novel I read but hopefully it's not going to be the last one.