Discover a Japan where a handsome young newspaperman rescues a cute innocent teenage boy from a stalker, and they fall in love. Their relationship is tested when the boy semi-accidentally becomes a sought-after model, the star of famous "Pajama Boy" ads, and all Tokyo goes crazy. Old flames, jealous rivals, and a hypocritical family threaten to drive the gay couple apart. Welcome to the universe of American author Ginger Mayerson's The Pajama Boy, where two genres--Japanese yaoi and American romance--get a refreshing twist.

Mayerson even works in a satire of yaoi when an American producer comes to Japan to make a yaoi film starring the "Pajama Boy" model. The Japanese and American characters alike consider the genre and the project to be vile trash. Mayerson suggests, "Can you imagine an avaricious American producer who says, I don't understand this but I'm going to make money off it?"

To be fair we must add Mayerson hasn't written a perfect novel. Into the final thirty pages are crammed the film project, a murder mystery, AIDS, out-of-character personality and career changes, and the passage of several years. It's as if the author feared leaving a plot twist unturned. The overall result, however, is still a groundbreaking work that breathes fresh life into both yaoi and gay romance.

Mayerson demonstrates some of her finest prose here, creating a total environment, a total ambiance, in the way the characters relate to each other, and in the way little details and subplots nudge the main story along. She compares her style to looking into a lacquered box--it looks like you're looking into something.

Japan may be the birthplace of yaoi but the genre has gone global in the twenty-first century. Mayerson has used the trend to create new romantic, erotic literature for a crossover audience. She also runs Wapshott Press, where she specializes in making feminist, gay, and erotic literature available to a wider audience.

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Created Apr 22, 2019 at 3:20pm • Submit your own review...