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goodem9199's review against another edition
5.0
After reading lots of YA and kids stuff, which I love, it was not too bad to get into bed with a grown up book. This is an odd story. Really odd. Man loses young son and locks himself in the bedroom for 3 years. Odder yet is that his wife sticks around cooking dinner for herself and talking to him through the door. At times she's shouting, at times she's bringing home a tumble buddy to try and make him jealous enough to come out and fight for her. Apparantly, in Asian cultures, people with agorophobia are fairly common. Common enough that they have both a name (hikikomori) and a solution (rental sisters.) A rental sister is someone who will sit outside said door and talk to the shut-in until they emerge. So, for reasons I find too strange to explore, this man's wife hires a young, nubile Asian woman to sit outside and lure her husband out. Instead she makes her way in and they get it on. Now. If I still have your interest, bear with me. Backhaus' writing is flawless. Seriously beautiful stuff. There is a paragraph in which he describes the moment just before his son is hit by a car and all of the things that he did in that moment...and it is breathtaking. I kid you not. Really. The emotions that the wife experiences are so precise and so crushing that it blew my mind. I empathized with every character in this book. It's one of those times where you come out the other end of a story and realize that you lived through each person inside of it.
This is some good stuff. Now go read it.
This is some good stuff. Now go read it.
jrcronewillis's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
colorfulleo92's review against another edition
2.0
Couldn't see the deeper meaning of this book. Its just seemed to me to be a vaile man's fantasy. A depressed man who lived the last few years locked up in a room cheats with his wife with the Rental Sister his wife just hired. Didn't like the way wrote the characters and the whole story seemed of for me. Not my thing.
crhbrault's review against another edition
4.0
This book was...different. Not good nor bad just different. The premise intrigued me, the plot was a tad slow until about 2/3 through, but it was a worthwhile read that makes you think a lot about the choices we make and how we hide ourselves away, and why.
fallingletters's review against another edition
4.0
Originally posted 11 May 2014 on Falling Letters.
***
Wavering between 3 and 4 stars, I'm giving this one the benefit of the doubt as it has enough prominent 1-star reviews.
I added Hikikomori and the Rental Sister to my TBR list after stumbling across the book at the library. I can't recall why I initially added it, but I picked it up this month expecting a darkly humorous tale. The story's immediate poignancy prompted me to reread the back description - I wonder how I ever expected a black comedy!
Thomas, an American hikikomori, has been living in his bedroom for three years, a behavior prompted by the death of his son. Silke, Thomas' wife, hires a young Japanese woman, Megumi, as a last resort to bring Thomas out of his hikikomori state. Megumi has experience with hikikomori, as her younger brother was one. The narration alternates between Megumi and Thomas, with Megumi's narration being in third person and Thomas' in first person. The hikikomori concept does not function merely as a gimmick. Backhaus uses the condition to explore the more universal conditions of love and grief. The book focuses on the relationships between Thomas, Silke and Megumi, and how those relationships are shaped by their experiences with grief and their love (or lack of love) for one another. I enjoy books in which character relationships really carry the story. I also like Backhaus' prose - clean, succinct, certainly contemporary but not too stylized. Some compare him to Murakami or Ishiguro, I would say Backhaus falls between the two. He infuses both the plot and the prose with melancholic sadness, but that sadness does not engulf in the story. The characters find healing in their own ways.
I particularly like that Megumi is a fully developed character, and that the reader learns as much about her as they do about Thomas. She helps Thomas and he helps her. She has her own motivations beyond Thomas. She's not just a device to swoop in and transform Thomas' life - or is she?
Please Note: The next paragraph discusses to what extent Megumi's character is problematic, thus necessitating spoilers. Skip to The Bottom Line to avoid.
Megumi does have as much of a story as Thomas does. The reader hears from her perspective, learns her back story and comes to understand her as a whole character, rather than merely a device in Thomas' story. However, if you look at her role in the book: she enters Thomas' life, quickly engages in a sexual relationship with him, thereby rescuing him from his hikikomori state, and then returns back to Japan, allowing Thomas to return to his old life. Although Backhaus develops Megumi's character, she still functions as a device to rescue to Thomas. When I first finished the book, I thought Megumi and Thomas' roles in each others lives were balanced, but now I find that harder to argue. Additionally, Megumi is a young, sexy, Japanese woman written by a white man. Such a character could easily go wrong, and I still think Megumi could have been written a lot worse than she was. But the nature of the plot still subjects her to some Orientalism, no matter how much I tried to explain it away to myself in an attempt to justify my liking of this book. The Japanese woman rescues the American man, due to her Japanese-ness. I liked Megumi. She felt like a real person to me. The story felt real to me, I believed it could happen. Yet by making Megumi the white man's saviour, Backhaus reduces her character to 'the Other', the fantasized woman from a land far away. If you've read the book, please share your thoughts on Megumi - this was a difficult paragraph for me to sort out and I'm sure my opinion of the book could benefit from mutual discussion.
The Bottom Line: Backhaus explores the relationships between love and grief in this quiet, flowing tale. The story stood out to me in its balance of perspectives and its contemporary prose, but Megumi's role in the story remains problematic. I would like to read more by this author - hopefully he grows in his portrayal of race.
***
Wavering between 3 and 4 stars, I'm giving this one the benefit of the doubt as it has enough prominent 1-star reviews.
I added Hikikomori and the Rental Sister to my TBR list after stumbling across the book at the library. I can't recall why I initially added it, but I picked it up this month expecting a darkly humorous tale. The story's immediate poignancy prompted me to reread the back description - I wonder how I ever expected a black comedy!
Yet she stays, yet she comes down the hall, yet she believes in me. She thinks I'm the same man she married. And maybe I am, and maybe that's the problem, that I always have been this man and always will be. (14)
Thomas, an American hikikomori, has been living in his bedroom for three years, a behavior prompted by the death of his son. Silke, Thomas' wife, hires a young Japanese woman, Megumi, as a last resort to bring Thomas out of his hikikomori state. Megumi has experience with hikikomori, as her younger brother was one. The narration alternates between Megumi and Thomas, with Megumi's narration being in third person and Thomas' in first person. The hikikomori concept does not function merely as a gimmick. Backhaus uses the condition to explore the more universal conditions of love and grief. The book focuses on the relationships between Thomas, Silke and Megumi, and how those relationships are shaped by their experiences with grief and their love (or lack of love) for one another. I enjoy books in which character relationships really carry the story. I also like Backhaus' prose - clean, succinct, certainly contemporary but not too stylized. Some compare him to Murakami or Ishiguro, I would say Backhaus falls between the two. He infuses both the plot and the prose with melancholic sadness, but that sadness does not engulf in the story. The characters find healing in their own ways.
I did not come inside one day, shut the door, and never decide to come out. I needed a day to grieve. Then a week. A month. Tired, I took a nap. When I woke it was dark. The walls were high. There was no way out. (34)
I particularly like that Megumi is a fully developed character, and that the reader learns as much about her as they do about Thomas. She helps Thomas and he helps her. She has her own motivations beyond Thomas. She's not just a device to swoop in and transform Thomas' life - or is she?
Please Note: The next paragraph discusses to what extent Megumi's character is problematic, thus necessitating spoilers. Skip to The Bottom Line to avoid.
Spoiler
Megumi does have as much of a story as Thomas does. The reader hears from her perspective, learns her back story and comes to understand her as a whole character, rather than merely a device in Thomas' story. However, if you look at her role in the book: she enters Thomas' life, quickly engages in a sexual relationship with him, thereby rescuing him from his hikikomori state, and then returns back to Japan, allowing Thomas to return to his old life. Although Backhaus develops Megumi's character, she still functions as a device to rescue to Thomas. When I first finished the book, I thought Megumi and Thomas' roles in each others lives were balanced, but now I find that harder to argue. Additionally, Megumi is a young, sexy, Japanese woman written by a white man. Such a character could easily go wrong, and I still think Megumi could have been written a lot worse than she was. But the nature of the plot still subjects her to some Orientalism, no matter how much I tried to explain it away to myself in an attempt to justify my liking of this book. The Japanese woman rescues the American man, due to her Japanese-ness. I liked Megumi. She felt like a real person to me. The story felt real to me, I believed it could happen. Yet by making Megumi the white man's saviour, Backhaus reduces her character to 'the Other', the fantasized woman from a land far away.
The Bottom Line: Backhaus explores the relationships between love and grief in this quiet, flowing tale. The story stood out to me in its balance of perspectives and its contemporary prose, but Megumi's role in the story remains problematic. I would like to read more by this author - hopefully he grows in his portrayal of race.
keppyboone's review against another edition
2.0
This book was well written, and able to hold my attention, but as someone else said it was more of a grown man's fantasy woman than a hikikomori and a "secret sister". I'm not shocked by the sex or anything like that, I just thought it would be more like a geisha situation instead of basically a prostitute. I didn't hate the book, but it definitely isn't a favorite.
stevienlcf's review against another edition
2.0
Backhaus takes a Japanese social phenomenon, hikikimori, where a young man withdraws from society and becomes a recluse, and transplants it to New York. Thomas Tessler has sequestered himself for the past three years in the spare bedroom in the apartment he shares with his wife, Silke, as he grieves the death of their young son. Silke, who apparently has been able to carry on -- Thomas hears her heels clicking across the floor when she "returns after a hard day at the skyscraper office" -- hires a young Korean-Japanese woman, Megumi, who sold her panties and prostituted herself with the hope of getting her hikikomori brother out of his room and with her to America or Australia "where being half Korean didn't matter," to rescue her husband. Megumi achieves success in getting Thomas to leave his room for more than midnight forays to the market for frozen food, and their relationship, not surprisingly, deepens.
I would have liked to feel compassion for these characters, but Backhaus gives us little information, particularly about Silke and her marriage to Thomas before their devastating loss, that there is no emotional connection for the reader. Other than a brief digression where we learn about Thomas and Silke's first road trip as a couple, we are kept in the dark as to Silke's motivation for remaining loyal to Thomas, when he has abandoned her to deal with their shared grief alone.
I would have liked to feel compassion for these characters, but Backhaus gives us little information, particularly about Silke and her marriage to Thomas before their devastating loss, that there is no emotional connection for the reader. Other than a brief digression where we learn about Thomas and Silke's first road trip as a couple, we are kept in the dark as to Silke's motivation for remaining loyal to Thomas, when he has abandoned her to deal with their shared grief alone.
lisaeirene's review against another edition
4.0
For three years Thomas has hid in his bedroom following the tragic death of his young son. His wife is at the end of her rope. She tries to coax him out. She occasionally feeds him to try and get him out of the room but he won't talk to her and only leaves in the middle of the night to go to a nearby Bodega to buy frozen food he keeps in his room. The grief has paralyzed him.
As a last resort, his wife hires Megumi, a young immigrant from Japan who is hiding from her own grief after her brother dies. Megumi manages to get Thomas out of the room and slowly he returns to life and faces the grief he's been hiding from.
The book is about grief and how a married couple finds their way back to each other in a different way. It was a really touching read and I liked it a lot.
As a last resort, his wife hires Megumi, a young immigrant from Japan who is hiding from her own grief after her brother dies. Megumi manages to get Thomas out of the room and slowly he returns to life and faces the grief he's been hiding from.
The book is about grief and how a married couple finds their way back to each other in a different way. It was a really touching read and I liked it a lot.
asummerholiday's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0