Review: Darkly Excellent
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 1, 2013
This is another one of those books that's described as `not for everyone' - a description that I find so irresistible.It's a darkly erotic read with Jennifer, a British girl working as a bar hostess in Roppongi in Tokyo, drugged and abducted by Shindo San, a Yakuza henchman, in retribution for an apparent slight. He is no hero by any stretch of the imagination and she is held against her will, pierced and raped but horrified to find her own body betraying her with arousal and desire. So it's non-consensual but it is portrayed in a fairly sensual way.It's a strange little story and very short but no less compelling for that. It's told in a very matter of fact way, very little descriptive prose. The rape isn't gratuitous - it's just necessary for the story.I have to say that the Japanese don't come off very well in this one. I'm British and I've lived and worked in Tokyo and mostly I found them to be impeccably polite. It is an apparently male dominated society but really the women prevail - they're just clever enough not to let the men realise. Only once in my time there did I get warned about speaking to a Yakuza (I did it unwittingly) and it was a Japanese woman who realised what I was doing and stopped me. Perhaps she perceived a danger that I never did.They really did used to call me Gaijin San - which means foreigner but it was rarely used as an insult. The Japanese are a fairly insular society and a `gaijin' is always going to stand out in a crowd and they really don't know how to deal with us.The ending, while not happy, is perfect for the story. Very interesting read - Oh and the pearl thing - how incredibly fascinating!