Estrangement and Repair

Washington shows that familial love survives most reliably when it stops pretending that biology guarantees understanding. The mother arrives in Tokyo expecting that closeness will produce confession, but her son treats questions as pressure, so time together exposes old injuries instead of resolving them. Flashbacks remind the reader that the mother has built her adult life through departures and reinventions, and those moves shape her belief that care is proven by coming home.

Repair becomes possible only when both characters loosen their grip on the roles they think they must play. The son’s resistance is not simply stubbornness; the novel frames it as a refusal to return to a household where love is attached to conditions and where harm has been normalized. Memories of Chris surface as an explanation for why certain topics, including sexuality and safety, cannot be discussed without triggering fear...