Asahi and her husband Muneaki are in their late twenties. The marriage, already quietened into routine, is disrupted suddenly when they’re forced to move out of the city. Both have work there, but Asa’s is low-paid and impermanent, ‘not the kind of job that’s worth holding on to’. Muneaki’s salary, though, is vital; if they want to keep it, he must accept a transfer. Luckily, his parents live no distance from the new workplace and own an empty house right next door to the family home. While a rental agreement has to be made for tax purposes, rent will never actually be paid. Muneaki will have a more convenient commute to his new office and Asa can take on the role of a proper housewife, someone who, as her best friend at work says enviously, is ‘living the dream’. She’ll be ‘free to look after the house’. She can bake. She can ‘do a little gardening’. What could be more perfect? There are issues, of course…

Read the rest of my review of Hiroko Oyamada’s weird & engrossing novella “The Hole” in this month’s Literary Review.