昔、ある月刊誌で書評を頼まれたことがある。
Some time ago, I was asked to do a book review by a certain monthly magazine.
Am I correct in my understanding that when a passive verb conjugation takes an object then you get the indirect/adversative passive?
And further, am I right in thinking that this generally means that the person is unhappy about what's happening?
So does this sentence have more of the feel of "I had a book review imposed on me" rather than "I was asked to do a book review"?
Aside: Why is the agent marked with で rather than に?
Answer
This sentence has definitely no regrettable feeling. An example where a passive verb has a negative touch:
私は彼女にピザを食べられた。
Here are three objects involved: The victim (me), the performer (her/girlfriend) and the object (pizza). Assumed, we change the sentence a little:
私は彼女に食べられた。
Do you see how the meaning is changed completely? That's an indicator for the first sentence being a passive sentence with a negative feeling. Let's see now how this works with another verb, like 頼む:
私は彼女に書評を頼まれた -> 私は彼女に頼まれた
The first sentence means "I was asked by my girlfriend to do a book review". But even if you take the object away, in both sentences you are asked by your girlfriend to do something (and you are not suddenly eaten up by her!).
Coming to your last question, why で and not に: You are not asked by the 月刊誌. で marks a context, and what is a proper context for being asked to write a book review? Yes, into where are you supposed to write the book review? Into the monthly magazine.
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