This is Not Just Any Novel, This is an S&M Novel

Have you seen the movie Secretary? It's this one.

I loved it. An exploration of an S&M relationship that manages to be both tender and moving without shying away from the unpleasant aspects of that sort of set up.

Hotel Iris by Yoko Agawa looks at similar themes but it's a book, not a movie. Don't want you getting confused.

Mari is a teenage girl who helps her widowed mother to run a seaside hotel in Japan. One night there is a fight between an elderly guest and the prostitute he has taken to his room. When the guest shouts "Shut up, whore" at the fleeing woman, Mari finds herself aroused by his voice and dominant matter.

A chance meeting with the same man a few days later leads to a bizarre not-quite-sexual relationship developing between the two, something they carry out in secret over many weeks.

It is an interesting examination of what can lead people to explore this sort of lifestyle - the desires and urges, the pleasure in pain - but it never really catches fire. It isn't dark enough and it isn't, well, erotic, enough to hit home.

A good read while it lasted but not one to linger.