Devastated by the death of his young son, for which he feels responsible, Thomas Tessler has cloistered himself in his bedroom for nearly three years. His wife Silke is quietly going mad in the apartment outside of Tessler’s door. She pleas with Thomas, leaves him notes, prepares meals for him and invites him to dinner, yells at him to come out, but except for late night forays to a nearby grocery store for food, he ignores her increasingly desperate pleas. Thomas is shattered, desperate and alone. He has become what the Japanese call hikikimori – a man withdrawn from the world.
Rare in our culture, the phenomenon of hikikimori is not uncommon in Japan where hundreds of thousands of people – some estimates range up to a million – disappear into their rooms and homes, often for years. Many wander the streets at night, looking for food, taking walks. The hikikomori are almost all males. In Japan, women known as “rental sisters” try and lure them out of their hiding and back into the world. Silke, still much in love with Thomas, finds and hires Megumi, a “rental sister” recently arrived in the New York from her own devastating experience with a hikikomori in Japan – her beloved brother.
“Hikikomori and the Rental Sister,” a novel (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) by Jeff Backhaus, is the story of these three broken people, suddenly thrown together in this Manhattan apartment. Backhaus takes this haunting idea and moves it to Manhattan, a bold idea that works surprisingly well.
Silke understands the risk the “rental sister” poses to her relationship with her husband. The only way “rental sisters” can get hikikomori to re-enter the world is to establish close, sometimes intimate relationships with them, earning their trust. She has no other choice. After rejecting Megumi as a “pest,” Thomas decides to trust his “rental sister.” Megumi has been burying her pain and sorrow – she failed to save her brother – in New York nightclubs and fleeting relationships.
Selke is going to pieces, altering between grief and rage and closed off from Megumi’s efforts to save her husband. Thomas is barely able to function, wracked with guilt and loss. He is barely alive spending his days sketching and staring out the window at the scene of his son’s accident.
The novel tells the story of Megumi’s loving effort to save Thomas, the love all three grapple with, the awful position Silke finds herself in, and her dedication to her husband and their marriage. The book is beautiful, lyrical. The writing is spare and quite lovely. The story is touching, even enthralling, one of those masterpieces of minimalism. This is a book that reinforces the old writing adage that less is more. The story combines elements of the East and the West, and explores the human capacity to heal, even after great sorrow. It is a tender story about healing and love. I loved it.
Request. If you choose to buy this or any of the books I recommend, please consider buying it from Battenkill books (519 677-2515 or [email protected] or www.battenkillbooks.com) or your local independent bookstore. If you have an e-reader you should of course feel free to purchase the book that way.