Here on The Steady Read, I have made my fondness for Japanese writers very clear, but something is different about today’s book. Despite its title, Yuki chan in Brontë Country is a British novel, written by a White male, who managed to capture some of Japanese fiction’s quirkier elements within his story, which gave it a intermittently modern, familiar, and sometimes cosy feel when it was at its best. Yet, I must admit that it does not hold a candle to the best Japanese fiction I have read.
This peculiar novel follows Yukiko, a fashion student from Japan, as she flies to England to visit her resident sister, Kumiko. Before long, Yukiko ventures off on her own to Harworth, retracing and recreating her dead mother’s decade-old photographs from a trip to Brontë Country, a decision that does not impress her sister.
But readers can understand Yukiko’s odd nature, having spent roughly half her life feeling her dead mother’s presence and desperately wanting to understand her strange passing. After she slips away from Kumiko, Yukiko’s trip to England transforms from a simple social call into a delusional venture into spiritual investigation as she stops by various tourist hotspots or gets lost looking for the more obscure locations her mother photographed or may have witnessed.
The premise is something I enjoy about this book, mainly because it has cute, touching, and sentimental elements to splinter the undeniable sadness and grief that drives the protagonist forward. Although the gloom always lingers in the subtext of everything that Yukiko does, the author never attempts to beat you over the head with it and demand that you feel bad for her. It’s a natural, emotional response on the part of the reader, so long as they can become invested in Yukiko’s grief.
Yukiko is a big highlight of this work, and her character is what draws the sympathy more than anything else. Jackson writes her with a childishness and naïvety that makes her seem vulnerable and requires dependency on other people—yet, the need for a lone young woman to constantly seek assistance from strangers whilst lacking basic English proficiency fuels the concern readers form for the protagonist. There is a simultaneous desire to see Yukiko find whatever she is looking for on this excursion to Harworth, but a resistance in wanting her to continually roam the countryside on her own or consistently be alone and needing strangers to assist.
However, under all that, Yukiko is a sad and quite paranoid woman who believes almost anything, no matter how absurd or unfounded it is. Regarding her sadness, it often appears when she is alone at night, dragging herself into miserable reminiscence or recalling various things she has read or watched in years prior, now trying to find meaning in them. Many of her memories involve snow, or showcase her fascination with snow and how it forms, likely exaggerated by how her maddened mother died out in the freezing cold when Yukiko was only a young girl.
Although his protagonist is far from the most complex or intriguing character, Jackson manages to create this circle of misery within her, a continual longing and curiosity that is spurred both by her still existent childhood wonder, but also by the shadow her mother’s death placed over her teenage and adult life, alongside the isolated maturity an absent mother introduces. It is simple and effective, often coming through in all Yukiko does, where she is first aloof and determined, then reflective and regretful, about her activities in Harworth. Perhaps that saddest part is knowing the protagonist is unlikely to find solace or answers on this trip; we just watch her grief continue.
In my opinion, novels that can blend cute and cosy elements (the sweet) with a deeply entrenched sadness (the bitter) are always hard not to get hooked on. They have such a sickening, yet gripping, ability to make you read on and on. I would love the say this always happens, but Jackson’s novel eroded my investment as a reader, proving that not all bittersweet novels can hook their readership.
Somewhere around pages 100–125, I simply lost interest in Yuki chan in Brontë Country. Having started it in late January 2025, thinking it would be a suitably wintery book thanks to its cover, I had intended to finish it sometime in February. Instead, this novel sat within my view for months and took me around half a year to finish reading, which I did across a few final days in July. There was something about the ongoings at the midpoint that caused me to grow exhausted with this story, despite how much I loved Yukiko and her strange nature, alongside the premise and not-too-fast pace of the plot.
Pinning down what exactly caused my disinterest was hard. At first, I thought it was because of how little was actually occurring within the plot—Yukiko goes somewhere, takes photographs, looks around and speculates, then causes some sort of trouble or invites a strange interaction, never really learns anything more about her mother, rinse and repeat—but that wasn’t it, at least not entirely.
My disinterest peaked when Denny, a blonde-haired and energetic girl, was introduced to the story. Denny marks a shift from a woman’s lonesome and highly personal venture around a foreign country to a more chaotic, generic piece of writing. The story now had to jolt itself from slightly slow progression to a faster pace, yet the writing style never agreed on this, always feeling more long-winded than necessary, especially when everything that occurs after the midpoint of the novel takes place across Yukiko’s final days in Harworth. Equally, with Denny being involved, it becomes a triangle for us readers, no longer an exclusive adventure with Yukiko. Denny now calls the shots and guides her, rather than us observing Yukiko make her own way around Brontë Country, which is what facilitated a lot of the natural flow and events prior to the midpoint.
I enjoyed when the story slowed down with Yukiko and Denny, allowing them to interact or share time together, which brought back that sense of naturalness and reactivity from the earlier chapters. Yet, these slower moments in the latter half of the story seem to come at a cost, because there were many more time skips and scenes that felt like they had not been fully refined. It was as though some greater part was missing, akin to a puzzle with a piece or two that have been lost to time, still serviceable but unable to be enjoyed due to the incomplete nature of the picture.
Denny is a character that, despite her backstory remaining mostly unknown, does garner sympathy and add to the story as time goes on. Although her loud personality contrasts Yukiko’s, they both harbour an internal loneliness and gentler side, but are somewhat reluctant to show it to each other, creating nuance and prickling in their growing trust. Despite being new acquaintances, there is a sense they are already good friends, which is touching, if a little unrealistic.
It just saddens me that almost everything after Denny’s introduction is of lesser quality. I enjoyed the hollow and quite sad ending that at least capitalised on our investment in Yukiko and her lonely life, alongside what we learn of her blonde friend, through a sort of snubbing of the reader and any optimistic expectations. But I also recognise it basically refused to resolve anything about Yukiko’s friendship with Denny, or much about her mother and the whole quest in Harworth. The author simply swept the remaining crumbs from his hands and ended his book quite abruptly.
Post-Denny, and prior to the ending, the story is rhythmic and gripped by an even greater element of predictability when it comes to story beats, despite how chaotic and unpredictable Denny is supposed to be. Instead of being about Yukiko’s subdued grief, the story devolves more into mischief, with Denny making rash decisions to help Yukiko achieve what she wants to, with minimal consequences beyond avoidable injuries and social embarrassment. The risks are heightened, and the absurdness cranked up, yet the stakes feel lower than ever, because there is now familiarity and ease of dependency within Harworth for Yukiko.
After finishing Jackson’s novel, I can say that Denny was undoubtedly a good addition to the story, and probably introduced needed companionship. Yet, I think the author fumbled her impact on the story, because it is clear she is always aiming to help Yukiko from the get-go (we never learn why), even if she seems reckless, rides a motorbike, and carries around a pellet gun. She’s supposed to be a sweetheart and a punk?
It quickly becomes obvious that Denny is the ‘don’t judge me by my cover’ archetype, which destroys a lot of her minimal character development, because leaving her mysterious or hard to figure out could have created an undercurrent of doubt within Yukiko or us readers, which would have stopped the stakes from nosediving. The only element of Denny that is truly mysterious is why she wants to be bother with Yukiko in the first place, either she is just that outgoing, has an immediate crush or fascination with this Japanese girl, or is simply bored.
Overall, the writing in Yuki chan in Brontë Country is solid enough if you don’t linger on it for too long. However, pay attention and you notice how often it drags or stalls when unnecessary, often to detail minimal things or go on a strange tangent about something retro or quirky. The instances where the author attempted to employ absurdist humour or quirky witticisms rarely stuck the landing, which also bloated the word count. Even if these humours are representative of Yukiko’s thoughts when she looks at something she finds foreign or fascinating, they only suggested that Jackson is not all that great at comedy and did little to expand on her character beyond affirming she has a slightly quirky or divergent outlook on life.
I appreciate that these stalling or unfunny moments, at the very least, broke up the drabness of the ‘and then, and then, and then’ present tense narration style, but they had a habit of making me feel like I’m reading a book for younger readers. However, the contrasting use of swearing also placed doubts on that, so I ended up unsure of who this novel is aimed at, because it’s neither boyish nor feminine, and it straddles a line between mature and immature. It is the epitome of general fiction and seems unclear of who it is appealing to, leaving it in a literary limbo—this is probably why it has a fairly bipolar reception from readers on community review websites.
As a complete package, this novel still felt of okay quality, despite its flaws. For fans of literary history, the most major flaws will not come from its writing, but rather the various errors and pieces of misinformation about the Brontë family that are hard to excuse on Jackson’s part. If you can ignore these, and learn to live with the slightly odd writing, then it is what I would call a solid read for those not entirely worried about real-world accuracy. I know I should be harsher, yet I cannot feel compelled to be.
If there is one compliment I can give it, I was strangely invested by the end, and went from feeling the novel was too long to wishing it had an epilogue so we could know more about Yukiko and Denny’s lives after the Harworth trip. Leaving the reader wanting is a sign of impactful writing… the irony being that the writing is not spectacular, but the limited characters seem to be enough of a hook, despite their lack of development in various areas.
I think Yuki chan in Brontë Country is decent for anyone who enjoys a straightforward read with elements of fun and melancholy, and still softly recommend it despite my months-long struggle to finish it. I am happy I read it, and glad I did not abandon it.
Yukiko and Denny are pleasant characters that I wish we could have learned more about, and are the only part I really care to recall. This is probably why I feel there are elements of Jackson’s novel that could have been improved, cut, or expanded on to create a more gripping work, plus those factual errors about the Brontës should really have been spotted and addressed by the author or any of his helpers at Faber & Faber.
Nonetheless, an entertaining read if you can get through it in a few days, and a struggle if you set it aside like I did back in January. Sadly, it just needed more refinement to pull itself out of ‘tolerable-to-perfectly-average’ territory and rid itself of being a little scatterbrained or all over the place.
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