The Shut Ins by Katherine Brabon is a novel that explores solitude from multiple perspectives, through the shared feeling of loneliness and longing from its characters. In this masterful piece of contemporary fiction, each of them come to the realisation that the lives they are living are not what they truly desire.
Katherine Brabon (Photo by Marcin Wojcik).
Mai and Hikaru were old school friends who grew up in the city of Nagoya, Japan. In their youth, Hikaru was an outsider who was often teased and ridiculed by his peers, yet he and Mai had a connection and an understanding of one another. They would often walk to school together, explore deserted construction sites, and find small ways to escape their everyday lives.
However, when Hikaru turned eighteen he disappeared, and it is only when Mai has a chance encounter with Hikaru’s mother years later that she learns that he has become a recluse, unable to leave his room and function in the real world with the common people. This is what is known as a Hikikomori – someone who pulls inwards and confines themselves to their room or house for years.
In an attempt to help her son who is seen to have dishonoured her, Hiromi Sato hires Mai to write letters to him, hoping that this will encourage him to come out of isolation and back to the real world. This is known as a ‘rental sister’, someone who is employed to coax young men who have withdrawn from society. In time, this gives Mai a sense of purpose that she has been lacking in her own life.
Mai is a newlywed who feels restricted by her marital life with J, a hardworking salaryman with the very conservative desire for Mai to be a more traditional and devoted wife. J wishes for nothing more than for his wife to happily bear children and satisfy his needs. Mai, however, feels that she is different from the other wives she has met, and does not have the same aspirations to give up work and be bound to a house that does not feel like a home, and to have children.
Ultimately, this story of reconnection is profound in the way it scrutinises traditional stances on familial obligation and female guilt. The relationships between mothers and daughters are prominently featured throughout this novel, where daughters constantly feel like they are failing their mothers, and mothers feel as though they have failed at being mothers.
Mai no longer wishes to live the life that she has built to satisfy the demands of her parents, and feels a quiet guilt at not being able to mould herself into the role they laid out for her. Is it any wonder that she would want to disappear, in the same way Hikaru made himself disappear?
—The Shut Ins by Katherine Brabon (Allen & Unwin) is out now.
The Shut Ins
Mai and Hikaru went to school together in the city of Nagoya, until Hikaru disappeared when they were eighteen.
It is not until ten years later, when Mai runs into Hikaru's mother, Hiromi Sato, that she learns Hikaru has become a hikikomori, a recluse unable to leave his bedroom for years. In secret, Hiromi Sato hires Mai as a 'rental sister', to write letters to Hikaru and encourage him to leave his room.
Mai has recently married J, a devoted salaryman with conservative ideas about the kind of wife Mai will be...
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Comments
July 21, 2021 at 3:00 pm
While I agree with Renae’s comments, I think that both J’s and Hikaru’s behaviours are not helpful to Mai or to the other women in the novel. I really enjoyed reading the book.