The Floating Girl
by Sujata Massey

An Book Review

by Mighty Doom

If there's one thing Americans do well, it's condescend to other cultures. By way of example, look to Sujata Massey's popular mystery series starring Rei Shimura, a fiercely independent Japanese-American female detective/journalist (holy shit that's heavy-handed - uh, I mean original). Doom recently had the vague displeasure of reading one of her recent outings, The Floating Girl, while working at The News Journal here in the wild safaris of Delaware. I had just completed The Bird Yard by Minette Walters, a very capable writer, and had hoped to follow it up with something light but equally palatable. The Floating Girl was my first Shimura novel, and will likely be my last.

We find Rei hard at work at the Gaijin Times, a rag published by a small group of Japanese and gaikokujin for the information and enjoyment of Japan's growing foreign element. Her manager, a lecherous Australian, bending to the will of the magazine's new owner, tasks her to write an article concerning the bridge between traditional Japanese woodblock prints and modern manga. Rei dislikes the assignment, gives her manager a great deal of lip (for which she'd be fired, were she not a fiercely independent female detective/journalist and the protagonist of the story) and at last gets to work. Having decided that Oh My Goddess and other series are too "trashy" to be called art, she does some research and discovers a doujinshi called Mars Girl.

Mars Girl would seem to be, from Massey's description, a sort of magical girl story whose time-traveling heroine finds herself in pre-WWII Japan, where she and other women endure starvation, rape at the hands of Japanese soldiers, etc. All this is fairly unpleasant, but Rei seems to think it fits the bill and runs with it, seeking out its artist, who has vanished. The writer, an American, is sleazy and uncooperative, and soon turns up dead. Other players in this rather one-sided (read: distasteful American) exploration of the more unsavory aspects of Japanese culture include Rei's fellow cutesy schoolgirl journalist, a Yakuza who seems to enjoy the beach a little too much, a copy girl and an otaku who introduces her to the wide world of cosplay.

The Floating Girl has a great deal of potential that is simply squandered on utterly dislikable characters and trite observations about Japanese pop culture. Rei comes across as a snide, ball-busting bitch, and her partner is simply irritating. Rei's boyfriend Takeo is flat as cardboard, existing for the benefit of a few gratuitous love/sex scenes, and any comic chemistry that might have existed between Rei and her manager is quickly doused by Massey's decision to make him a genuinely slimy bastard. We feel no sympathy for Rei or her friends (though she really has no friends - they're all sleazy and awful), nor do we pity the inevitable victims.

Furthermore, there's nothing in Massey's description of this supposedly outstanding manga to keep the rest of us interested. Hooray, magical girls and rape! Never seen that before. Despite Massey's personal knowledge of Japanese-American heritage, her views of Japanese culture are snide, acerbic and, worst of all, nothing we haven't heard before a thousand times from people who hate Those Jap Cartoons. Oh no! Nudity! Big eyes! It's not realistic! We've heard it over and over again and it wasn't funny or even sensible the first thirty times, so fuck you people to hell and back. To quote Farscape's John Crichton, "It's not supposed to be realistic, it's supposed to be entertaining."

I wish I could say The Floating Girl is an entertaining read, but it isn't. It serves up an unfortunate caricature of Japan by way of a group of disturbingly selfish and vicious characters without any sort of chemistry between them. I'm fond of mysteries and don't read them as often as I'd like, but stick with Walters, though her tastes run toward the dark, or with Lillian Jackson Braun, who keeps it light and writes some truly fun and unique characters.

DOOM'S FINAL JUDGMENT: C-