It takes extensive puppeteering to get Jeff Backhaus’s debut novel where he wants it to go. The first thing that “Hikikomori and the Rental Sister” must do is come up with an American hermit and agoraphobe with a set of traits that are much more common in Japan. This book needs a man who has withdrawn from society and will not leave his room, although Mr. Backhaus cannot replicate the subtle ways Japanese society enables traumatized young adults to try to erase themselves that way.  So his New York City hikikomori, to use the Japanese term for such a recluse, is a none-too-subtle hideaway named Thomas Tessler. And he is not squirreled away in his parents’ home, as a young Japanese adult might be; he has locked himself in a bedroom in the apartment he shares with his wife.  Why? Because they have lost a child, and Thomas blames himself. Many American novels deal with this form of family catastrophe without going to such logistical extremes.  Perhaps Thomas is also sick of his wife, Silke. All we know about her is that she “returns after a hard day at the skyscraper office,” wearing high heels that make hostile clicking sounds on the floor. Silke has tried to help Thomas every way she can, but even when she cooks for him, she can’t get him to open up.  “I see you liked your eggs,” she says of his empty tray.  “I ate my eggs,” he replies. So much for small talk.  This impasse gives Mr. Backhaus the chance to invoke an Asian “rental sister,” who specializes in coaxing shut-ins back to life. An American rental sister would be likelier to call herself an outreach counselor, the linguistic equivalent of stomping in muddy hiking boots through a Japanese teahouse. Such a term would entirely miss the kind of erotic masochism on which Mr. Backhaus’s book depends. And rental sister is such a suggestive euphemism. She may be for rent, and she may want to soothe, but she is most definitely not her client’s sister.  Nor is she a prostitute, so here comes more of Mr. Backhaus’s manipulation. His book introduces Megumi, a 22-year-old Korean-Japanese woman who fled to New York to escape the horrible fact that her own brother had become a hikikomori. What a motive that gives Megumi. What a mitzvah it would be if she, who couldn’t cure her brother, can rescue a stranger.  Anyone who falls for the soft-core suggestiveness of this romantic parable is liable to have a favorite detail. Megumi’s work history provides a good one. She was innocently earning money by selling her used panties to dirty old men, but she realized that this career path led nowhere. So when the tearful blond Silke showed up, begging to hire help for her husband, Megumi figured she’d give it a try.  Thomas spends the first part of the book torn between self-flagellation and self-pity. (“I am the dog that has been digging holes in the lawn, the one who can’t raise his eyes.”) He may enjoy his abjection too much to let some rental sister come and spoil it. But when Megumi arrives and slips a handwritten note under his door, he very much admires her “gentle strokes.” We know this gentle stroking will not stop at the written word.  Thanks to her, Thomas’s crazy old habits — sneaking out in the middle of the night to stock up on enough frozen food to feed a prisoner — start to fall away. And Megumi is much more fun than a plain old captive: she makes origami birds, tosses snowballs at Thomas’s window, helps him shave and listens to him describe the proper way to make schnitzel. And yes, she teaches him that he can begin to start to almost learn to love again.  Mr. Backhaus is so intent on this main story that he leaves the secondary plot entirely fallow. Thomas’s marriage to Silke and the memory of their dead son are of almost no consequence. He does stage a moment of wild, fiery calamity between the two parents, now childless, but this high drama reveals nothing about who they are or why they’re still stuck together.  “Hikikomori and the Rental Sister” is more memorable for its gently pervy ambitions and heavy-breathing romanticism than for its imagery. (“Who am I, what is my guilt next to that, next to the giant mountains and trees?”) Though it does sound at times as if Thomas would enjoy being “reduced to a pebble beneath this girl’s foot,”even its masochism is weak tea.  And lest you suppose that Megumi will go on to a long, happy career in rental sistering, Mr. Backhaus yanks hard on one more puppet string. This will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for her. Then she will go back to being a little older, a little wiser and no less dull than she was when this colorless book began.
âHikikomori and the Rental Sisterâ is about a married New Yorker who has locked himself in a bedroom in his apartment and the Asian ârental sisterâ hired by his wife to coax him out.