Yuki Chan in Brontë Country by Mick Jackson, book review

This is a far sadder book than the comedic elements might have suggested

The Japanese protagonist intersperses a rather boring coach ride to the Yorkshire Moors with her 'zany, cute and interesting' projects (Corbis)

There is a kind of subgenre in contemporary English-language fiction which combines bitter-sweet comedy with eerie fabulism, even if the book is predominantly realist in temperament. I'm thinking of writers like Dan Rhodes, Magnus Mills, Patrick De Witt or Edward Carey. Mick Jackson, author of the Booker-shortlisted cult classic The Underground Man would be another point in such a constellation. His new novel is a work of perishing charm. The eponymous heroine has taken a trip to Haworth along with rather more elderly Brontë aficionados, but for different reasons. She has with her five photographs from when her mother made a similar trip, and hopes that her unique form of psychic detective work will bring some form of closure to the relationship.

The shifts in tone are what distinguishes this as a work of real craft. At first, there is a vein of twee whimsy, as our Japanese protagonist intersperses a rather boring coach ride to the Yorkshire Moors with her "zany, cute and interesting" projects, to borrow a phrase from theorist Sianne Ngai. These include a proposal for underground airports, daywear for astronauts and how to deal with the Beautiful Decrepit Future. There is outright satire in the culture clash of Japanese tourists and Brontë industry: Yukiko's first impression is "how very brown everything is … London and Leeds had nothing like this level of brownness. Perhaps it is brought on by local industry. Or some rural, Northern mould". Then it morphs into slapstick. As Yukiko tries to align her mother's five photographs with local landmarks, she variously slips, trips, freezes, tumbles and is even bitten by a dog.

She is assisted in her quest by Denny, a local girl who seems a little like a contrivance to advance the plot, although there is a genuinely uncanny scene where Yukiko forces Denny to engage in a form of Ouija, Kokkuri-San. Their tentative friendship is left unresolved and abandoned; but this elegiac turn is actually rather affecting. It transpires this is a far sadder book than the comedic elements might have suggested. The more eclectic elements – spiritual photo- graphy, the science of snowflakes, diving virtuosi – are beautifully aligned by making links to historical Japanese pioneers and enthusiasts. This was not just a "fish out of water" scenario. Although hikikomori is now taken to mean a kind of reclusive agoraphobia, Yuki displays all the symptoms of its literal meaning, "pulling inward, being confined", despite having crossed half the globe in her desperation to make sense of things. Although a ghostly possibility shivers over the pages this is a book about grief first and foremost. When Yuki realises that she "couldn't countenance a permanent separation" from her mother, it is both delusional and utterly true.

That a whimsical comedy can transmute into an elegiac exercise in the futility of pursuing catharsis is no small achievement. That it is both funny and plangent is another. At one point Yukiko muses on snowflakes that they are "merrily eccentric and silent as the grave". That, in critical terms, is what we call a metatextual wink, since it is a perfect description of this strange, silly, sombre novel.

Faber & Faber, £12.99. Order at £10.99 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop