"In Harmless Like You , Rowan Hisayo Buchanan tells the parallel stories of Yuki, a Japanese teenager living on her own in 1960s’ New York, and Jay, her abandoned son who, in the 1980s, questions the family life he’s chosen. With luminous prose, unflinching honesty, and compelling narrative drive, Buchanan examines Yuki and Jay’s respective quests for companionship and safety and meaning, all the while asking, What is home? What does the face of love look like? To what extent should we honor the artistic and creative? Which is more dangerous: loneliness or intimacy? At once harrowing and reassuring, rash and generous, impetuously youthful and imbued with the wisdom that comes with perspective and distance, Harmless Like You is a stunning debut that reads like the work of a seasoned novelist."
"Moving from Manhattan to Berlin, from the Vietnam War to the new millennium, Buchanan's debut explores the thin line between attachment and abandonment, love and pain, selfishness and sacrifice. With kaleidoscopic prose and characters all too human, Harmless Like You is an unforgettable debut, as rich in darkness and light as it is in color."
"Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is only 26 and [Harmless Like You ] is a stunning debut that would make a writer four times her years proud."
"This elegant and moving novel burns slowly, building in intensity as it develops to explore the subjects of identity, alienation and desire."
"Harmless Like You is a beautifully written, many-layered novel that, at its core, tells the personal story of a mother and a son—a struggling artist and the child she left behind in pursuit of that art."
"The brilliant debut novel by Rowan Buchanan is cause for celebration."
"Buchanan’s prose is lyrical and evocative.… After all, Buchanan reminds us, the ethereal dreams of the 1960s shaped the all-too-solid contours of the world we inhabit today."
New York Times Book Review
"Buchanan’s prose is visceral, startling and mind-bendingly gorgeous. . . .worth reading for the beauty and originality of the prose, for the questions Buchanan raises about art and heritage, and for the characters who are sometimes as maddening as they can be magnificent."
"[Buchanan] find[s] ways of depicting difference, painting characters from numerous races and cultures.… Her ways of infusing a character’s culture have more to do with habits and perspective than with pigeonholes, making this the rare debut that does not smack of received knowledge."
"Shuttling deftly between mother and son, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's passionate, gorgeously-written debut novel investigates harmlessness and harm, power and vulnerability, free will and fate."
"In Harmless Like You … characters look for ways to reconcile themselves with their histories, though in vastly different and sometimes opposing ways."
"Rowan Hisayo Buchanan writes with beauty and sensitivity about what it means to be an artist, a parent, and an outsider in a foreign culture."
New York Journal of Books
"Buchanan's prose is lyrical and evocative… [She] reminds us, the ethereal dreams of the 1960s shaped the all-too-solid contours of the world we inhabit today."
The New York Times Book Review
"A relentlessly honest book, capturing some of the ugliest and under-represented facets of life, in rich, elegant prose."
"The kind of novel our century deserves—a brilliantly conceived, beautifully written transnational novel about multiracial identity, motherhood, the struggle to be an artist, and the struggle to belong to your family. This marks the debut of an important new voice in fiction."
"Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s debut is a beautifully textured novel. . . Yuki’s story feels compellingly immediate, as prickly and unpredictable as its protagonist."
"This is a book I’ve been waiting for since before its author was born. And yet I could never have predicted it. It is a book about beauty and belonging, suffering and being lost, a book that takes into account history, the implications of separation and disorientation. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan cleaves to her idiosyncrasies, foregoing whitewash in favor of her own glittering vision. She is “the seer, not the seen.” The result is a gift—unassuming, elegant, vividly prismatic. Not since Sigrid Nunez’s A Feather on the Breath of God has a book shone such a moving light on multiracial, interracial, and transnational relationships. Regardless of your flesh tone, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s study of color—its history, its strangeness, its allure, and its consequences—will dazzle you."
"Harmless Like You is a refreshing, bold book about understatement."
"[T]here are so many mature notions of patience, sacrifice, and terrible sadness that it’s startling to realize how young the author of the book is."
Los Angeles Review of Books
This debut audiobook features a unique look at characters who are simply trying to figure out who they are and how they might find some purpose and joy in life. Shifts in time and viewpoint present listening challenges, but easily identifiable characters, and clear and crisply paced performances from both narrators provide skillful guidance. Narrator Emily Woo Zeller captures the angst of young Japanese transplant Yuki, who struggles to fit into the New York City art scene and then into the suburban world of a housewife in the 1960s and ‘70s. P.J. Ochlan's portrayal of Yuki’s son, Jay, is a bit wooden initially but gains intensity and animation as family challenges cause him to mature. Buchanan's gifts for lyrical description and nuanced character development, ably presented by Zeller and Ochlan, create an appealing audiobook. M.O.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
2016-12-26
