What I've been reading lately...

[geri_chan]

Just thought I'd share a couple of the things I've been reading lately: a series of mystery novels and a non-fiction book about an old, traditional Japanese house as seen through the eyes of an Australian-American woman who married into the family that owns the house. Two completely different topics and styles, but I've lumped them together because they both relate obliquely to Harudaki--or at least, they've inspired thinky thoughts about my AU fanfic universe.

I've recently gotten hooked on the J.D. Robb "In Death" futuristic mystery series. ("J.D. Robb" is a pseudonym for romance author Nora Roberts.) My mom is into mystery novels and was looking for new series to read, and knowing they were popular, I suggested the Robb books even though I hadn't read them. So I borrowed some from the library and she loved them--she's been tearing through the series at the rate of about one per week. I figured I might as well give them a try, too--I thought they'd be easy reading, enjoyable but forgettable.

But wow, I got completely hooked, too! I told a friend earlier that it was oddly addictive, like eating junk food. ;-) They're a bit formulaic, but most mysteries are, and maybe there's something comforting in knowing what to expect. The series is set in the 2050s with some sci-fi trappings, but it still feels like a standard mystery--forensics are a lot more advanced, but advanced technology can't change human nature, and people still commit murders.

The main character is Eve Dallas, a tough, independent female homicide detective--although "independent" is putting it mildly. She has a deep fear of relying too much on anyone but herself, and of getting too close (emotionally) to anyone. This is understandable, considering that she was brutally (and sexually) abused as a child, but she's so closed off that she often pushes away the people who care about her.

This is a mystery series, but not surprisingly considering the author, there's also a romantic element, so enter Roarke (one name only, like Sting): a mysterious, aloof, and incredibly rich and (of course!) handsome man who is a suspect in a murder that Eve is investigating. He can have any woman he wants, so of course he wants the one woman who doesn't seem to find him irresistible and fawn over his looks and wealth: Eve. And of course, Eve is drawn to him in spite of the fact that he's a suspect, and more importantly, her fear of making herself vulnerable to anyone, especially a lover.

I'm giving away a bit of a spoiler, but I'm sure it won't come as a big surprise that Roarke is not the killer or that he and Eve begin a passionate, emotionally turbulent affair--they have torrid, mind-blowing, and sometimes literally tear-your-clothes-off sex in every book. As I said, formulaic, but since much of the yaoi manga and slash fanfic that I read (and write) follows that formula too, I'm hardly one to point fingers. ~_^

Even after they begin sleeping together, Eve is frightened by her new feelings for Roarke, and tries to convince both him and herself that it's only about sex, not love--which doesn't work on him at all and with only limited success on herself. Roarke also had a difficult childhood in which he had to fend for himself at an early age, so he has some sympathy for Eve's state of denial, and courts her persistently but patiently, trying not to push too hard for a commitment because he knows that will only scare her off. If I have a complaint about Roarke, it's that the guy is perfect beyond belief: not only is he gorgeous and great in bed and the richest guy on the planet (or so it seems, anyway), for such a cynical and aloof guy, he is able to fall in love with Eve and open up his heart to her with remarkable speed. (Then again, that is the standard romance trope, that the heroine is able to tame the rake/rogue/cold-hearted bastard in a way that no other woman can.) On top of that, for a proud, rich, and powerful guy who's used to getting his way, Roarke is almost impossibly patient with Eve's refusal to commit and her sometimes hostile attempts to keep him emotionally at bay. Actually, we see from his inner thoughts that he is a bit impatient and wants more from Eve than she is willing to give, but he's careful to not show it for the most part.

Don't get me wrong, I much prefer a guy trying to be understanding of his lover's feelings to the "I love you so much that I can't control myself and must rape you" trope that I see too often in yaoi, but I was actually kind of glad when Roarke finally lost his cool in book 2 of the series (Glory in Death). He gives Eve a diamond pendant as a gift (a little souvenir from a business trip to Australia) and she freaks out. She accuses him of trying to make her dependent on his luxury, of trying to tame her with luxurious food and gifts and "fancy words": "I see your pattern, Roarke. Say I love you at regular intervals until she learns to respond. Like a well-trained pet."

Roarke finally snaps, although his is a cool, controlled fury in contrast to her heat, and says that he's tired of having his feelings thrown back in his face, and of her never saying "I love you" back to him. He tells her that he wants all or nothing, and that she will have to make the next move and come to him if she wants him.

I must admit, I really loved that scene, because it reminded me a bit of my fanon version of Kikuchi and Onozuka in my Haru fics. Of course, Onozuka had nowhere near as traumatic a childhood as Eve and he isn't anywhere near as emotionally damaged as Eve is at the beginning of the series, but he is afraid to let himself love and trust Kikuchi. And Kikuchi, like Roarke, tries to patiently win over his lover, taking things slowly in order not to scare Onozuka off, but eventually loses his temper and expresses his true feelings, and like Eve, Onozuka figuratively takes off running.

I don't know, I guess there must be something I like about that type of character who tries to shut people out because they're afraid of getting hurt--my Snape is like that too, come to think of it. I like seeing them slowly won over by their patient and/or stubborn lover, to see them finally let down their guard and find happiness. I tend to like hurt/comfort, too, and maybe this has the same kind of appeal.

One thing I noticed about Robb's writing style is that she has a tendency to switch POVs back and forth between Eve and Roarke and the other supporting characters without any dividing scene or chapter breaks. I always see gripes about random POV switching on places like fanficrants  and fanfic writing forums or meta posts, so I found it highly amusing that a bestselling professional author commits what many fanfic writers seem to regard as a cardinal sin. I remember that I used to do the same thing in my earlier fics--none of my readers ever complained about it, but once I became aware of the POV gripes/rants, I decided that it did make sense to mark POV changes more clearly to avoid confusion.

Actually, I did find the POV shifts a bit jarring at first, but I quickly got used to it and it doesn't bother me anymore. But I found myself cracking up at thought that if Robb were posting her stories on fanfiction.net or Fiction Alley, they'd probably get ripped apart by the type of reviewers who seem to feel that it's their duty to instruct newbie writers on How Things Are Done--plus, they'd probably call Roarke a Gary Stu. (Which he is, but I still like him anyway. ^_^) Honestly, I'm really glad that I was blissfully ignorant about all these fanfic "rules" when I started writing, because I'd probably have been too terrified to write anything!

Anyway, if you like mysteries (and you don't mind a lot of explicit sex), you might give this series a try. The stories move at a good pace and are written suspensefully enough that I'm going through them pretty quickly because I'm reluctant to put the book down once I've started it. And the characters are pretty engaging--I'm especially fond of Eve's assistant, Peabody, and Roarke's butler Summerset has turned out to be an interesting character. He appears to be a typically proper English butler who looks down his nose at the scruffy cop that his master has inexplicably fallen for, but as the series progresses, the reader discovers that there's a lot more to him than meets the eye.

***

And now for something completely different, another book that captured my attention recently was At Home in Japan: A Foreign Woman's Journey of Discovery. The book jacket summary describes it as "the story of author Rebecca Otowa's personal journey from suburban California to rural Japan, where she marries into a traditional Japanese family and becomes the steward of a household that has lived in the same farmhouse for the past 350 years."

It's partly a biography detailing the difficulties and cultural clashes that come along with a Western woman marrying into a traditional Japanese family (she was born in the U.S. but grew up in Australia, and traveled to Japan as a college student, where she met her future husband), but it's mostly a love letter to the house that Otowa became the caretaker of. It's obvious that she developed a deep love and respect for the house that reflects the love and respect she developed for the family and culture that she married into, without dismissing the very real frustrations and misunderstandings that arose out of her mother-in-law's attempts to train her to become the perfect Japanese wife--with limited success, but better than one might expect under the circumstances. Otowa admits that she is closer to the "obachans" (old "aunties") in the village than to the women her own age, who were becoming more modern and Westernized while she was learning to become more properly Japanese. To be fair, I should add that her husband seems very easygoing and didn't care about things like proper bathing order or helping his wife in the kitchen with cooking and dishwashing, although it appalled his mother. (Apparently the wife is supposed to be the last one in the family to bathe, even if the husband will be working late and it would make more sense for the wife to bathe first. And on top of getting stuck with the used and probably lukewarm bath water, the wife also gets the chore of the cleaning the tub and bathroom after everyone is done. But at the time of the writing, Otowa says it's just her and her husband in the house now and things are pretty mellow.)

Otowa's personal story was interesting, but I was also fascinated by the descriptions of the house itself, in part because I found myself thinking, "I bet the Iwaki family house looks something like this!" From the drawings (done by the author) and photographs of the house, along with Otowa's loving descriptions of it in the text, one gets a sense of a home that is steeped in tradition, which in turn reminded me of the very traditional Iwaki family. (And now that I think about it, it's interesting and perhaps a little ironic that Otowa is an outsider who has tried to embrace that tradition, while Iwaki is an insider who fled from the tradition that stifled him.)

You know that you're hooked on fanfic when you read a book like this and think, "Hey, this would be good research for writing about a visit to the Iwaki family home in Niigata!" ^_^ It gives one a good sense of how a house like that would be laid out, and the work that goes into maintaining it. In one of my stories (Dreams), I wrote that there was a small storage building on the property because I read somewhere that it was common for a traditional Japanese estate to have one. Well, this book informed me of the reason (or at least, one of the reasons) why: to hold the "twenty ceramic or lacquer dishes" required for each place setting for a formal dinner (for an occasion such as a memorial service), multiplied by a dozen guests. That's 240 dishes total--a bit too much to fit in the kitchen cupboard!  (p.19)

I also didn't know that the sliding doors in a Japanese house are changed with the seasons: "In June, the dark, solid winter doors are exchanged for lighter ones made with reeds that allow the free flow of cooling breezes." (p.69) Oh, and there's another use for the storehouse--the doors not currently in use are kept there! According to Otowa, figuring out which door goes where and fitting them in place are quite a chore, as is cleaning them: "The average door has between ten and thirty separate and distinct horizontal edges, each of which must be wiped with a damp cloth wrapped around a finger." (p. 70) This refers to the doors made solely out of wood--there are others made out of shoji paper laid over a wooden frame, which must be changed every so often when the paper dulls with age or is torn by accident. Hisako (the Iwakis' housekeeper) must work really hard!

This is really a wonderful book, and highly recommended for anyone interested in Japanese culture, whether you're a fanfic writer or not.