Gina in the Floating World
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A bank internship in Japan’s booming 1981 economy is supposed to be twenty-three-year-old Dorothy Falwell’s ticket into a prestigious international MBA program. But the internship is unpaid—so, to make ends meet, she accepts an evening job as a hostess in a rundown suburban bar, a far cry from the sensuous woodblock prints she’s seen of old Tokyo’s “floating world.”
Like her namesake, Dorothy hasn't planned on the detours she encounters in her own twisted version of Oz. Renamed Gina by her boss, she struggles with nightly indignities from customers and confusing advice from new friends. Then her internship crumbles and the suave but mysterious Mr. Tambuki offers help. How can she resist?
With patience and the utmost respect for her opinions, Mr. Tambuki lures her into his exotic world of unorthodox Zen instruction, erotic art, and high-octane sex. Soon, bizarre sexual escapades with monks, salarymen, and gangsters begin to feel normal until one of her clients goes too far, and Dorothy realizes she’s in over her head. But can she find her way back from this point of no return?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1981, Dorothy Falwell, the narrator of Brett's arresting first novel, arrives in Tokyo, where she has come to take part in what she hopes will be an internship program with a major bank. "I'm supposed to be acquiring something that Wharton that's the school I'm going to calls cultural adaptability,' " she comments. Her plans soon change when she finds out that her internship is unpaid, no arrangements for housing have been made, and her Japanese mentor has no interest in helping her. With her money running out fast, she accepts a hostess job at a club. Her progress from goody-two-shoes student to a prostitute known as Gina is the work of Mr. Tambuki, a businessman who offers to educate her with trips to art galleries, fine restaurants, and swanky hotels. Is Mr. Tambuki really a gangster? Has Victoria, Dorothy's colleague at the Bar Puss 'n' Boots, been murdered? Is she being followed by an assassin or a foot fetishist? Many readers will feel that these questions are merely window dressing for a story about Dorothy's psychosexual development. Along the way, Brett provides fascinating insights into Japanese culture. This is a promising start for a writer to watch.
