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Harmless Like You
“This brilliant debut novel by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is cause for celebration.”—Lorrie Moore
Written in startlingly beautiful prose, Harmless Like You is set across New York, Connecticut, and Berlin, following Yuki Oyama, a Japanese girl fighting to make it as an artist, and Yuki’s son Jay who, as an adult in the present day, is forced to confront his mother’s abandonment of him when he was only two years old.
The novel opens when Yuki is sixteen and her father is posted back to Japan. Though she and her family have been living as outsiders in New York City, Yuki opts to stay, intoxicated by her friendship with the beautiful aspiring model Odile, the energy of the city, and her desire to become an artist. But when she becomes involved with an older man and the relationship turns destructive, Yuki’s life is unmoored. Harmless Like You is a suspenseful novel about the complexities of identity, art, adolescent friendships, and familial bonds that asks—and ultimately answers—how does a mother desert her son?
313 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 11, 2016
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October 20, 2018
Update: Kindle download special today for $2.99. I ‘still’ remember details of this literary fiction like I read it yesterday. I thought it was fascinating.... worth reading.
Read other reviews if considering it.
Great deal and book though in my opinion!
I’m in ‘aw’. The mystique and aesthetics’s of this artistically written novel is
exquisite. I've an enormous amount of respect for author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.
The talent - skill - intelligence- focus - and gracefulness- that Rowan wrote this novel
looks at how grief ....[those inner sorrows not easy to shake]....get passed down through generations.
The heart of this story explores the life of Yuki Oyama, Japanese-American. Yuki was just a child when she came to New York with her parents.
Yuki's parents valued the Japanese customs -but felt Yuki had more educational advantages in America. So when her parents return to Japan- Yuki stayed with a friend Odile Graychild and Odile's mother Lillian, who was a writer who worked from home.
The girls friendship changed throughout their High School year -from hanging out together to Yuki being treated like any other lackey. Granted Odile was more rough around the edges from the day they met even before Yuki moved into her home --teaching her how to steal, drink at bars, pick up men, but they were 'girlfriend buddies' for better or worse--until Odile was simply was more interested in her own plans.....namely a "Trench-Coat" photographer who was dark and dash ....with career promises for Odile. Odile became glimmering - wanting to be a model - but untouchable as much of a friend to Yuki.
Lillian never went to college - and Odile had no plans either. Yuki was raised to value education and college. Just before her parents went back to Japan, she had promised her mother that she would make something beautiful for herself in America....and her mother would see it had been worth it for her to stay in the US without them.
It doesn't take long until we see the influence Odile's family is having on her. Yuki begins to question why she should go to college at all.
Yuki is very observant, she notices everything around her. Yet... I often wondered about her interpretations of her observations. She's a fascinating character.
When Lillian's boyfriend Lou hits her she thought: "Lou wasn't so bad. Even the fights seemed all part of Lillian's grand-pose. No one's life was in danger. If anything tragedy was in the pose".
Yuki was lonely as a child - was a little less lonely when she first became friends with Odile... but was soon lonely again. As lonely as Yuki was - it seemed she was more comfortable with loneliness than happiness. It was her most familiar feeling.
Throughout the book their are lots of signs where this is true:
At one point she says:
"I wonder how it was possible to be lonely when you had so many voices in your head".
Another time - she said: "I went to school only because being ignored in the apartment was too lonely".
Later Yuki takes a job working for Lou, Lillian's boyfriend, a journalist, at "The Paper's",
She works the reception desk. The other copy girls don't like her - perhaps jealous as they might have wanted that position - but point is -- she is lonely again.
She say: "I'm trying to choose between being ignored at high school and being ignored in an office". Point is... being ignored seems to be the only option she sees.... or in my opinion most 'comfortable' with.
Yuki develops a crush on Lou, her friend's mother's older boyfriend. The go to lunch - movies - dinners - and eventually becomes his girlfriend and moves in his apartment.
Yuki watched Lou hit Lillian-- did she really think it would be different with her?
"She had no friends-- she didn't need to hide the wounds. But each time her eyes caught the marks, an inky ribbon of loss unpooled in her throat. She covered the bruises with bangles".
What Yuki wanted most in life is to be an artist. "Yuki wanted her name in a white square on the wall in the Whitney Museum. She wanted it so much she might double over and be sick. It was if all former desires, for boys, for friendships, for peace, were pooling on the floor. She thought, is this what they mean by ambition".
We know at the start of the book that Jay is Yuki's son, and that she left him when he was 2 years old....but then while Yuki's life is being
scrutinized we are also getting smidgens of Jay's life - in the future...her adult son.
Jay is half Japanese, and half French Canadian. Mimi his wife is half Chinese and half grab-bag Caucasian.
Jay's a peach of a husband to his pregnant wife:
"During the pregnancy, my dick went limp at the sight of my wife, and her teeth bared when I walked in the room. We avoided our friends. They'd once said we made them believe in romance. Let them stay true believers"
As a teenager Jay was "subjected" to enough psychiatry to know the hatred of his wife's pregnancy was fear". His mother left him when he was two years old, and now he was going to be a father.
Jay's father died... who took care of his wrinkly-bald cat, Celeste because his wife
Mimi didn't want the cat. He's worried of who will care for Celeste now that his father has passed.Jay's extremely attached to Celeste-- a little less so with his new little baby girl, Eliot.
Jay says: "I never knew what to do when it was my turn to stare at Eliot's night terrors.
I'm sorry you're a baby, but you'll get over it".
Jay needs to go to Berlin because his father left a house for Yuki....
It's during this section - towards the end...where many of the questions not only come to together - but for me tears were streaming down my face.
THIS BOOK IS MY TOP CHOICE FOR A BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION.
I'll be recommending it to our Bay Area Book Club.
There are many themes to be explores - discuss -- One that stands out for me is the influence on the American culture in general. I've many European friends - friends from India - Asian friends - etc. I can't say, I'm proud of many of the influences we pass on....from over indulgence with our foods, drinking, drugs, television, respect for hard work, and basic respect!
But even if we cleaned up our American bad habits - that doesn't take away from the
difference a family makes. The emotions of feeling alone in the world - disconnected - unworthiness- etc. these emotions get passed down.
I'd give this book more than 5 stars if I could for the power of thought -
For the importance and potential difference this novel can make. It's a novel to study- examine.... and perhaps look at ways we 'as a global community ' might be able to break some of these patterns that 'are' harmful for you and me'.
Thank you 'very much', to W. W. Norton & Company and Rowan Hisyo Buchanan.
Read other reviews if considering it.
Great deal and book though in my opinion!
I’m in ‘aw’. The mystique and aesthetics’s of this artistically written novel is
exquisite. I've an enormous amount of respect for author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan.
The talent - skill - intelligence- focus - and gracefulness- that Rowan wrote this novel
looks at how grief ....[those inner sorrows not easy to shake]....get passed down through generations.
The heart of this story explores the life of Yuki Oyama, Japanese-American. Yuki was just a child when she came to New York with her parents.
Yuki's parents valued the Japanese customs -but felt Yuki had more educational advantages in America. So when her parents return to Japan- Yuki stayed with a friend Odile Graychild and Odile's mother Lillian, who was a writer who worked from home.
The girls friendship changed throughout their High School year -from hanging out together to Yuki being treated like any other lackey. Granted Odile was more rough around the edges from the day they met even before Yuki moved into her home --teaching her how to steal, drink at bars, pick up men, but they were 'girlfriend buddies' for better or worse--until Odile was simply was more interested in her own plans.....namely a "Trench-Coat" photographer who was dark and dash ....with career promises for Odile. Odile became glimmering - wanting to be a model - but untouchable as much of a friend to Yuki.
Lillian never went to college - and Odile had no plans either. Yuki was raised to value education and college. Just before her parents went back to Japan, she had promised her mother that she would make something beautiful for herself in America....and her mother would see it had been worth it for her to stay in the US without them.
It doesn't take long until we see the influence Odile's family is having on her. Yuki begins to question why she should go to college at all.
Yuki is very observant, she notices everything around her. Yet... I often wondered about her interpretations of her observations. She's a fascinating character.
When Lillian's boyfriend Lou hits her she thought: "Lou wasn't so bad. Even the fights seemed all part of Lillian's grand-pose. No one's life was in danger. If anything tragedy was in the pose".
Yuki was lonely as a child - was a little less lonely when she first became friends with Odile... but was soon lonely again. As lonely as Yuki was - it seemed she was more comfortable with loneliness than happiness. It was her most familiar feeling.
Throughout the book their are lots of signs where this is true:
At one point she says:
"I wonder how it was possible to be lonely when you had so many voices in your head".
Another time - she said: "I went to school only because being ignored in the apartment was too lonely".
Later Yuki takes a job working for Lou, Lillian's boyfriend, a journalist, at "The Paper's",
She works the reception desk. The other copy girls don't like her - perhaps jealous as they might have wanted that position - but point is -- she is lonely again.
She say: "I'm trying to choose between being ignored at high school and being ignored in an office". Point is... being ignored seems to be the only option she sees.... or in my opinion most 'comfortable' with.
Yuki develops a crush on Lou, her friend's mother's older boyfriend. The go to lunch - movies - dinners - and eventually becomes his girlfriend and moves in his apartment.
Yuki watched Lou hit Lillian-- did she really think it would be different with her?
"She had no friends-- she didn't need to hide the wounds. But each time her eyes caught the marks, an inky ribbon of loss unpooled in her throat. She covered the bruises with bangles".
What Yuki wanted most in life is to be an artist. "Yuki wanted her name in a white square on the wall in the Whitney Museum. She wanted it so much she might double over and be sick. It was if all former desires, for boys, for friendships, for peace, were pooling on the floor. She thought, is this what they mean by ambition".
We know at the start of the book that Jay is Yuki's son, and that she left him when he was 2 years old....but then while Yuki's life is being
scrutinized we are also getting smidgens of Jay's life - in the future...her adult son.
Jay is half Japanese, and half French Canadian. Mimi his wife is half Chinese and half grab-bag Caucasian.
Jay's a peach of a husband to his pregnant wife:
"During the pregnancy, my dick went limp at the sight of my wife, and her teeth bared when I walked in the room. We avoided our friends. They'd once said we made them believe in romance. Let them stay true believers"
As a teenager Jay was "subjected" to enough psychiatry to know the hatred of his wife's pregnancy was fear". His mother left him when he was two years old, and now he was going to be a father.
Jay's father died... who took care of his wrinkly-bald cat, Celeste because his wife
Mimi didn't want the cat. He's worried of who will care for Celeste now that his father has passed.Jay's extremely attached to Celeste-- a little less so with his new little baby girl, Eliot.
Jay says: "I never knew what to do when it was my turn to stare at Eliot's night terrors.
I'm sorry you're a baby, but you'll get over it".
Jay needs to go to Berlin because his father left a house for Yuki....
It's during this section - towards the end...where many of the questions not only come to together - but for me tears were streaming down my face.
THIS BOOK IS MY TOP CHOICE FOR A BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION.
I'll be recommending it to our Bay Area Book Club.
There are many themes to be explores - discuss -- One that stands out for me is the influence on the American culture in general. I've many European friends - friends from India - Asian friends - etc. I can't say, I'm proud of many of the influences we pass on....from over indulgence with our foods, drinking, drugs, television, respect for hard work, and basic respect!
But even if we cleaned up our American bad habits - that doesn't take away from the
difference a family makes. The emotions of feeling alone in the world - disconnected - unworthiness- etc. these emotions get passed down.
I'd give this book more than 5 stars if I could for the power of thought -
For the importance and potential difference this novel can make. It's a novel to study- examine.... and perhaps look at ways we 'as a global community ' might be able to break some of these patterns that 'are' harmful for you and me'.
Thank you 'very much', to W. W. Norton & Company and Rowan Hisyo Buchanan.
February 28, 2017
If she didn’t burn, she’d rot.
When Jay was only two years old, his mother walked out on him and his father. Thirty-three years later, he's feeling the strong urge to flee after the birth of his own child. The death of his father forces him to confront the mother who has always been a mystery to him. Why would a mother abandon her child? Is Jay destined to abandon his own family?
Life would’ve been easier if she’d had a sister. If there’d been someone with whom living wasn’t an act of translation
1968-1983: Yuki is adrift. At sixteen-years-old, after years of being "Yucky Yuki," she finally has a friend. Unfortunately, her family is planning to return to Japan soon. She asks her parents to let her stay in New York with her new friend Odile and they agree, with very little pushback. Yuki was already lonely and depressed, but she loses her only anchor when her parents leave her behind. She can’t find a place where she belongs. Living in New York for most of her life has made her too American for Japan, yet she is still too Japanese for the Americans. She desperately wants to be an artist but isn't very talented. She floats through life, latching onto whoever shows her interest. She is highly susceptible to toxic relationships. Her friendship with Odile sparks fast, but burns out just as quickly. Yuki's first boyfriend is abusive, but she can't bring herself to leave; he's the only person who's exclusively hers and she can't imagine anything better for herself. Even her one chance at a healthy relationship is a giant misstep, destined to fail from the beginning. The only time she feels alive is when she’s hurting.
When I was a kid, I used to ask Dad, was it my fault Mommy left? He always said she’d just been an unhappy person. My old psychiatrist said it was ridiculous to blame my two-year-old self. I believed her, until I had a baby of my own.
2016: As the son Yuki left behind, Jay has many unresolved issues. He's unable to find his footing as a father. The pregnancy and birth of his child has altered his relationship with his wife and he feels a strong impulse to run. In addition to the stresses of becoming a father, his own father's death has left him without a parent to turn to for support. However, his mother is still living. Jay’s father willed his home to Yuki, so Jay has to locate her to sign the paperwork. Jay is apprehensive about meeting the mother he doesn’t remember, but whose abandonment influenced his life. His biggest comfort is an ugly cat that he refuses to abandon despite his wife's wishes. Will meeting his mother give him closure or confirm a genetic compulsion to run?
Yuki suspected all men of having some measure of violence. Some clubbed you with silence, and some relied on their fists. Feeling [his] fury, she was relieved, no longer becalmed in false gentleness.
The chapters alternate between Yuki's coming-of-age tale and Jay's struggle to come to terms with his mother's abandonment, until they finally meet in Yuki's Berlin apartment. Harmless Like You is about home, belonging, identity, and the importance of family bonds. There are no explosive revelations, but the inner turmoil of the characters is fascinating. Yuki is so passive, but I was riveted by her story. Anyone who has ever felt like an outsider will see a sliver of themselves in Yuki. During my reading I was anxious to find out why Yuki ran away and if Jay would follow the same course, but most of all I was curious to see if Yuki ever found what she was looking for.
Someday, she might be able to hold these photographs up as a lasting record of herself. People would look at them and recognise not her flat face or limp hair, but her true self, the Yuki behind the pupils. The Yuki who was the see-er not the seen.
---------
I received this book for free from Netgalley and W. W. Norton & Company in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It's available now!
(Shout out to Elyse for encouraging me to read this one!)
February 3, 2020
In 1968, Yuki is 16 years old and she lives on the edge of the Village in NY. At school she has no friends and feels she does not fit in. Mathematics is a struggle and her Saturday Japanese classes are even more of a struggle. Art is the only class she looks forward to.
One day she meets Odile at school, Odile is also a loner and they become friends.
That same year Yuki’s parents decide to move back to Tokyo, but Yuki decides to stay in New York and moves in with Odile and her mother.
In 2016 gallery owner Jay becomes a father, his emotions are mixed, he loves his wife but has a feeling of dread about his newborn child. Later that year he will finally meet his mother, who abandoned him when he was two years old.......her name is Yuki Oyama and she has been living as an artist in Berlin.
Beautifully written, Harmless Like You explores fractured families, abandonment, violent relationships, the fear of commitment and the overriding strength of ones inner goals.
Fabulous read.
One day she meets Odile at school, Odile is also a loner and they become friends.
That same year Yuki’s parents decide to move back to Tokyo, but Yuki decides to stay in New York and moves in with Odile and her mother.
In 2016 gallery owner Jay becomes a father, his emotions are mixed, he loves his wife but has a feeling of dread about his newborn child. Later that year he will finally meet his mother, who abandoned him when he was two years old.......her name is Yuki Oyama and she has been living as an artist in Berlin.
Beautifully written, Harmless Like You explores fractured families, abandonment, violent relationships, the fear of commitment and the overriding strength of ones inner goals.
Fabulous read.
dnf
December 29, 2016I’ve been wanting to read this one ever since I saw that gorgeous cover back in the summer, and now it’s finally in my hands!!! I seemed to be drawn to the cover because it reminded me of one of my favorite paintings by Henrietta Harris:
Source
I was familiar with Buchanan's writing when I first read her haunting short story featured here. And I was once again more than impressed with her honest and compelling writing in Harmless Like You.
Just to throw in a few quotes that I loved:
“‘Shinyū?’ Yuki had never heard the word before. Her Japanese was like that—things about which her parents did not speak did not exist.”
“‘You should travel. The world is huge.’
She couldn’t tell him that she felt small enough, so she slugged her second mimosa.”
“She was gone, but never missing.”
“‘My math teacher used to say the universe is made of infinite mysteries. Like all the digits of pi — no matter how many you find there’ll always be more. Every time we ask a question, we get more questions.’”
And then on talking about painting a naked woman in her Life Drawing class:
“‘If she had seen the woman on the street, Yuki thought, she would not have seen her at all. It was only gripped by the burnt wood that she was able to know the woman.’”
OK, now to the blurb.
Set across New York, Berlin, and Connecticut, this follows the stories of Yuki Oyama, a Japanese girl fighting to make it as an artist, and Yuki’s son Jay, who, as an adult in the present day, is forced to confront the mother who abandoned him when he was only two years old.
‘My son?’
Yes. Yes. Yes.
‘Where is he?’
I was truly excited when I first started this, however, the more I read, the more I realized that this novel was starting to feel a little like A Little Life; a lot of darkness thrown in with little to no light, which I'm not really ready to go through again. I really tried picking it up multiple times, but each time it came back to the same result and empty feeling inside. I also wasn’t overly attached to any of the characters, though I can’t quite place why. (But the fact that they're set out to be unlikable characters is huge factor to consider, since those are usually a hit-or-miss with me.) (Mostly miss.) As a result, I had no motive to get to the end, so I ended up skim-reading the second half of the book.
Just a list of things that happened that left me feeling extremely somber and then some:
• Yukiko's parents move back to Japan and leave her in America for her education.
• Yuki moves in with her then new friend Odile & mother, Lillian.
• Yuki dropping her education.
• Lillian being abused by her boyfriend, Lou.
• Yuki starves herself, which physically hurt me to read.
• Switching to present day, Jay cheated on his wife while she was pregnant. (I was seething with rage over this one.)
• Jay's dad dies while driving down to visit his newborn granddaughter, Eliot.
• Meanwhile in 1970, Yuki's trying to win over Lillian's abusive boyfriend and feels victorious for a hot minute when she succeeds in having “a person of her very own.”
• I can't even remember one positive thing happening over the course of what I read in the first half.
So maybe I'll pick this up again and finish it properly when I'm in the mood for a colder read, but for now A Little Life has ruined that for the next few books.
no rating for now
*Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Harmless Like You, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission!*
This review and more can be found on my blog.
Source
I was familiar with Buchanan's writing when I first read her haunting short story featured here. And I was once again more than impressed with her honest and compelling writing in Harmless Like You.
Just to throw in a few quotes that I loved:
“‘Shinyū?’ Yuki had never heard the word before. Her Japanese was like that—things about which her parents did not speak did not exist.”
“‘You should travel. The world is huge.’
She couldn’t tell him that she felt small enough, so she slugged her second mimosa.”
“She was gone, but never missing.”
“‘My math teacher used to say the universe is made of infinite mysteries. Like all the digits of pi — no matter how many you find there’ll always be more. Every time we ask a question, we get more questions.’”
And then on talking about painting a naked woman in her Life Drawing class:
“‘If she had seen the woman on the street, Yuki thought, she would not have seen her at all. It was only gripped by the burnt wood that she was able to know the woman.’”
OK, now to the blurb.
Set across New York, Berlin, and Connecticut, this follows the stories of Yuki Oyama, a Japanese girl fighting to make it as an artist, and Yuki’s son Jay, who, as an adult in the present day, is forced to confront the mother who abandoned him when he was only two years old.
‘My son?’
Yes. Yes. Yes.
‘Where is he?’
I was truly excited when I first started this, however, the more I read, the more I realized that this novel was starting to feel a little like A Little Life; a lot of darkness thrown in with little to no light, which I'm not really ready to go through again. I really tried picking it up multiple times, but each time it came back to the same result and empty feeling inside. I also wasn’t overly attached to any of the characters, though I can’t quite place why. (But the fact that they're set out to be unlikable characters is huge factor to consider, since those are usually a hit-or-miss with me.) (Mostly miss.) As a result, I had no motive to get to the end, so I ended up skim-reading the second half of the book.
Just a list of things that happened that left me feeling extremely somber and then some:
• Yukiko's parents move back to Japan and leave her in America for her education.
• Yuki moves in with her then new friend Odile & mother, Lillian.
• Yuki dropping her education.
• Lillian being abused by her boyfriend, Lou.
• Yuki starves herself, which physically hurt me to read.
• Switching to present day, Jay cheated on his wife while she was pregnant. (I was seething with rage over this one.)
• Jay's dad dies while driving down to visit his newborn granddaughter, Eliot.
• Meanwhile in 1970, Yuki's trying to win over Lillian's abusive boyfriend and feels victorious for a hot minute when she succeeds in having “a person of her very own.”
• I can't even remember one positive thing happening over the course of what I read in the first half.
So maybe I'll pick this up again and finish it properly when I'm in the mood for a colder read, but for now A Little Life has ruined that for the next few books.
no rating for now
*Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Harmless Like You, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission!*
This review and more can be found on my blog.
Read
February 7, 2017I've been taking my time over this one, even though I'm reading it for a book prize, because the prose requires attention, and because I can't help lingering over some of the linguistic effects. The author writes with a painterly eye; every sentence is suffused with light and shade and colour. And yet it's a downplayed, subtle effect - no splashy, trying-too-hard, budget creative-writing class style, but the real thing, spare and lovely and luminous. The story is emotionally challenging, dealing less with standard plot than with a series of interconnected stories, with their heart, the central figure of Yuki and her search for identity. It's troubling, sad, complicated. Yuki is a complex, ambivalent figure, whose motives are often confused, and whose voice is plaintive, clear and authentic. The secondary characters, too, stand out sharply, unexpectedly. Don't expect easy conclusions here, or heartwarming relationships, or comforting reinforcements of familiar stereotypes: much of the novel is pretty bleak, and yet every word rings true.
February 23, 2022
(Review originally published on my blog, August 2016)
In 60s/70s Manhattan, Yukiko Oyama is a lonely girl, caught between two cultures; she feels ugly, and her peers either bully or ignore her. Opting to stay in New York rather than move back to Japan with her parents, she falls into an unequal friendship, then an abusive relationship – then marriage to a man who loves her, about whom she is ambivalent. All the while she strives and struggles to realise her ambition as an artist, something she feels destined to do but can find no obvious way to achieve. In the second strand of the story, set in present-day Berlin, Yukiko's estranged son Jay is forced to visit her after the death of his father.
The story is told backwards. We know at the beginning that Yukiko has become an artist, though we don't know when, or how, or exactly what she's achieved. We also know she abandoned Jay when he was very young. As Yukiko's story progresses through her life from childhood to motherhood, we come to understand how she reached this point, and how her actions have shaped Jay.
Harmless Like You might easily be dismissed as middle-of-the-road literary fiction, and in having a creative type as its protagonist, it's certainly no different from many first novels. But I can't remember ever having read a book of this sort with a protagonist quite like Yukiko: someone who has a consuming creative impulse, not just a desire to create art but a feeling that she must, that it's who she is at her essence, but experiences a lifelong struggle with expressing/channeling it, and lacks any immediately recognisable talent. Yukiko does achieve a modicum of success, but it doesn't make her famous or wealthy or influential, and her route to that success is a slow, hard slog, punctuated by long dormant periods and failures. In general, she is a rich and nuanced character who I felt fiercely attached to from the start. Her cultural displacement, her destructive streak of self-hatred, her furious, thwarted ambition – all are powerfully portrayed.
With Yukiko so vivid and lifelike, perhaps it's unsurprising that Jay is a little more... wobbly. He's a self-described 'asshole' who says unpleasant things about women's bodies pretty often, and at times it does feel like the author is laying the Horrible Sexist Man shtick on a little too thick (while also wanting the reader to like him, as demonstrated by the fact that the other major aspect of his character is how much he adores his cat – the lovely Celeste, an important character in her own right). He's still interesting, there's just a self-consciousness in the way he's written that isn't there with Yukiko at all.
Despite a bit of unevenness, I really enjoyed Harmless Like You. It's emotive, sometimes moving, but doesn't provide any proper answers for what ails its characters. Small connections are made, people promise to be better, but none of that secures a happy ending for anyone in this (really rather bleak) story. As such, it achieves a clever balance: there's a degree of harsh realism, but as a whole, the book remains quite gentle and enjoyable to read.
I received an advance review copy of Harmless Like You from the publisher through NetGalley.
In 60s/70s Manhattan, Yukiko Oyama is a lonely girl, caught between two cultures; she feels ugly, and her peers either bully or ignore her. Opting to stay in New York rather than move back to Japan with her parents, she falls into an unequal friendship, then an abusive relationship – then marriage to a man who loves her, about whom she is ambivalent. All the while she strives and struggles to realise her ambition as an artist, something she feels destined to do but can find no obvious way to achieve. In the second strand of the story, set in present-day Berlin, Yukiko's estranged son Jay is forced to visit her after the death of his father.
The story is told backwards. We know at the beginning that Yukiko has become an artist, though we don't know when, or how, or exactly what she's achieved. We also know she abandoned Jay when he was very young. As Yukiko's story progresses through her life from childhood to motherhood, we come to understand how she reached this point, and how her actions have shaped Jay.
Harmless Like You might easily be dismissed as middle-of-the-road literary fiction, and in having a creative type as its protagonist, it's certainly no different from many first novels. But I can't remember ever having read a book of this sort with a protagonist quite like Yukiko: someone who has a consuming creative impulse, not just a desire to create art but a feeling that she must, that it's who she is at her essence, but experiences a lifelong struggle with expressing/channeling it, and lacks any immediately recognisable talent. Yukiko does achieve a modicum of success, but it doesn't make her famous or wealthy or influential, and her route to that success is a slow, hard slog, punctuated by long dormant periods and failures. In general, she is a rich and nuanced character who I felt fiercely attached to from the start. Her cultural displacement, her destructive streak of self-hatred, her furious, thwarted ambition – all are powerfully portrayed.
With Yukiko so vivid and lifelike, perhaps it's unsurprising that Jay is a little more... wobbly. He's a self-described 'asshole' who says unpleasant things about women's bodies pretty often, and at times it does feel like the author is laying the Horrible Sexist Man shtick on a little too thick (while also wanting the reader to like him, as demonstrated by the fact that the other major aspect of his character is how much he adores his cat – the lovely Celeste, an important character in her own right). He's still interesting, there's just a self-consciousness in the way he's written that isn't there with Yukiko at all.
Despite a bit of unevenness, I really enjoyed Harmless Like You. It's emotive, sometimes moving, but doesn't provide any proper answers for what ails its characters. Small connections are made, people promise to be better, but none of that secures a happy ending for anyone in this (really rather bleak) story. As such, it achieves a clever balance: there's a degree of harsh realism, but as a whole, the book remains quite gentle and enjoyable to read.
I received an advance review copy of Harmless Like You from the publisher through NetGalley.
September 17, 2017
What makes a person an artist? What motivates a young woman to become one? How much does a sense of being on the periphery--on the outside looking in, so to speak--have to do with it? Does one gain identity through making art, or is a strong sense of self a prerequisite for making it? Is an artist's (or would-be artist's) personal identity generally stronger or weaker than than that of a person without artistic ambitions? Can you be a visual artist if you are not particularly observant or aware? These are some of the many questions Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's debut novel raised for me.
HARMLESS LIKE YOU begins in Berlin. Brooklyn art dealer and gallery owner, Jay Eaves, has traveled there to notify aging artist Yukiko "Yuki" Oyama that her husband Edison Eaves has recently died and left Yuki the house in Connecticut. (Kindness can kill a person. Edison swerved to avoid killing a deer and lost his own life--but Jay leaves this detail out.) Yuki just needs to sign for the deeds. Jay will facilitate the sale of the house, should she desire that. But where is her son? Yukiko asks him. Jay, it turns out, is that son, and this is their first meeting in the 33 years since Yuki fled the family home.
HARMLESS LIKE YOU proceeds to tell, in alternating segments, the backstories of Yuki and her son. Yuki's narrative is the main one. It unfolds in the detached third person, beginning when she is sixteen. Jay's sections, which are shorter, are told in the first person and focus on the months leading up to his trip to Berlin, including the birth of his daughter and his father's accidental death. The author's decisions about point of view are telling. Both characters are remarkably unlikable, but Jay at least appears to have a self to speak from; Yuki, maybe not.
When Yuki's story proper begins, she has been living in New York for ten years with her parents. Her father is a rather stern Japanese-American businessman who, having spent part of his Second-World-War childhood in a Japanese-American internment camp, now identifies as Japanese, not American. Her mother is a traditional Japanese homemaker. The war has left its mark on her as well; she appears to suffer from PTSD. Yuki attends an American high school where she is a friendless, indifferent student. Her father hopes that she will become a doctor, but she dreams of being a visual artist, an idea which horrifies her parents. Through works of art, she believes, she can leave a lasting record of herself. "People would look at them and recognize not her flat face or limp hair, but her true self, the Yuki behind the pupils. The Yuki who was the see-er not the seen." ( p. 170) She has to downplay this goal in order to get her father to let her stay on in America when his company calls him back to Japan.
Early sections of the novel focus on Yuki's strange relationship with the amoral Odile, who is rumoured to have been expelled from a ballet school after an affair with a teacher. Odile "befriends" Yuki on a fire escape where both outcasts seek refuge during lunch break at school. She quickly introduces Yuki to her favourite pastime: happy-hour pickup and pickpocketing at local bars. On one of these outings, both girls meet males who will be pivotal in their lives. One will encourage Odile to pursue a modelling career (at a price); the other will, apparently selflessly, encourage Yuki in her art. For a time, Yuki lives with Odile and her mother, Lillian, a writer of cheesy romances. After Odile leaves home for a modelling career, however, Yuki quits school to work as a receptionist at a newspaper, eventually moving in with an older, abusive newspaper journalist (Lillian's boyfriend). The author dedicates considerable time to exploring this classic domestic abuse situation and Yuki 's efforts at making art in the midst of it. Yuki will go on to marry her kind friend, Edison (a successful architect), but it is not so much the stereotypical married life in the suburbs that oppresses her as Yuki's own internal dysfunction-- exacerbated by post-partum depression. She cannot thrive in a supportive environment.
Buchanan's novel is an unusual concoction. The cover image alone (a fairly conventional portrait of a young Asian girl whose eyes are obscured by a splotch of indigo paint) suggests that the reader will encounter a protagonist who feels herself to be anonymous, a nonentity. The angry streak of dark paint across an otherwise orderly painting also hints at the disruptive, even violent, impulse to self-sabotage that characterizes the central figure. In short, HARMLESS LIKE YOU reads like A PORTRAIT OF THE (FAILED) ARTIST AS A DEPRESSED YOUNG WOMAN. Though rich and well-written with much to puzzle over, Buchanan's novel is unrelentingly sordid and bleak.
Towards the end of the book when Jay is reunited with his mother in Berlin, the two bond in an extremely disturbing scene that involves small animals. That scene and much of the imagery employed by the author made this book an uncomfortable read for me. Early in the novel, Yuki attends an art exhibit which includes an installation comprised of a pile of dirt, leaves, and worms glistening under the white lights. The worms turn out not to be earthworms, but maggots "the colour of smokers' eyeballs: yellow-white and glossy with a sick sort of life." (page 70) The daytime sky is once described as "mucus yellow"; a pastrami sandwich "oozes cheese like pus," and sex is always a four-letter word. I could go on . . .
Although I found the novel slow to get started and the characters unsympathetic and even repellant, the writing in HARMLESS LIKE YOU is assured and the story is interesting. Having said that, I cannot recommend the novel, which is a long ways from Keats's "thing of beauty" and "a joy forever". I know life is not all "sweetness and light" but this was a little too dark for my tastes.
HARMLESS LIKE YOU begins in Berlin. Brooklyn art dealer and gallery owner, Jay Eaves, has traveled there to notify aging artist Yukiko "Yuki" Oyama that her husband Edison Eaves has recently died and left Yuki the house in Connecticut. (Kindness can kill a person. Edison swerved to avoid killing a deer and lost his own life--but Jay leaves this detail out.) Yuki just needs to sign for the deeds. Jay will facilitate the sale of the house, should she desire that. But where is her son? Yukiko asks him. Jay, it turns out, is that son, and this is their first meeting in the 33 years since Yuki fled the family home.
HARMLESS LIKE YOU proceeds to tell, in alternating segments, the backstories of Yuki and her son. Yuki's narrative is the main one. It unfolds in the detached third person, beginning when she is sixteen. Jay's sections, which are shorter, are told in the first person and focus on the months leading up to his trip to Berlin, including the birth of his daughter and his father's accidental death. The author's decisions about point of view are telling. Both characters are remarkably unlikable, but Jay at least appears to have a self to speak from; Yuki, maybe not.
When Yuki's story proper begins, she has been living in New York for ten years with her parents. Her father is a rather stern Japanese-American businessman who, having spent part of his Second-World-War childhood in a Japanese-American internment camp, now identifies as Japanese, not American. Her mother is a traditional Japanese homemaker. The war has left its mark on her as well; she appears to suffer from PTSD. Yuki attends an American high school where she is a friendless, indifferent student. Her father hopes that she will become a doctor, but she dreams of being a visual artist, an idea which horrifies her parents. Through works of art, she believes, she can leave a lasting record of herself. "People would look at them and recognize not her flat face or limp hair, but her true self, the Yuki behind the pupils. The Yuki who was the see-er not the seen." ( p. 170) She has to downplay this goal in order to get her father to let her stay on in America when his company calls him back to Japan.
Early sections of the novel focus on Yuki's strange relationship with the amoral Odile, who is rumoured to have been expelled from a ballet school after an affair with a teacher. Odile "befriends" Yuki on a fire escape where both outcasts seek refuge during lunch break at school. She quickly introduces Yuki to her favourite pastime: happy-hour pickup and pickpocketing at local bars. On one of these outings, both girls meet males who will be pivotal in their lives. One will encourage Odile to pursue a modelling career (at a price); the other will, apparently selflessly, encourage Yuki in her art. For a time, Yuki lives with Odile and her mother, Lillian, a writer of cheesy romances. After Odile leaves home for a modelling career, however, Yuki quits school to work as a receptionist at a newspaper, eventually moving in with an older, abusive newspaper journalist (Lillian's boyfriend). The author dedicates considerable time to exploring this classic domestic abuse situation and Yuki 's efforts at making art in the midst of it. Yuki will go on to marry her kind friend, Edison (a successful architect), but it is not so much the stereotypical married life in the suburbs that oppresses her as Yuki's own internal dysfunction-- exacerbated by post-partum depression. She cannot thrive in a supportive environment.
Buchanan's novel is an unusual concoction. The cover image alone (a fairly conventional portrait of a young Asian girl whose eyes are obscured by a splotch of indigo paint) suggests that the reader will encounter a protagonist who feels herself to be anonymous, a nonentity. The angry streak of dark paint across an otherwise orderly painting also hints at the disruptive, even violent, impulse to self-sabotage that characterizes the central figure. In short, HARMLESS LIKE YOU reads like A PORTRAIT OF THE (FAILED) ARTIST AS A DEPRESSED YOUNG WOMAN. Though rich and well-written with much to puzzle over, Buchanan's novel is unrelentingly sordid and bleak.
Towards the end of the book when Jay is reunited with his mother in Berlin, the two bond in an extremely disturbing scene that involves small animals. That scene and much of the imagery employed by the author made this book an uncomfortable read for me. Early in the novel, Yuki attends an art exhibit which includes an installation comprised of a pile of dirt, leaves, and worms glistening under the white lights. The worms turn out not to be earthworms, but maggots "the colour of smokers' eyeballs: yellow-white and glossy with a sick sort of life." (page 70) The daytime sky is once described as "mucus yellow"; a pastrami sandwich "oozes cheese like pus," and sex is always a four-letter word. I could go on . . .
Although I found the novel slow to get started and the characters unsympathetic and even repellant, the writing in HARMLESS LIKE YOU is assured and the story is interesting. Having said that, I cannot recommend the novel, which is a long ways from Keats's "thing of beauty" and "a joy forever". I know life is not all "sweetness and light" but this was a little too dark for my tastes.
September 25, 2017
Harmless Like You sounded right up my street - a highly-praised tale of dysfunctional families, the heartache of loneliness and salvation through art. But despite its frequently beautiful sentences, this novel just left me cold.
The story follows the fortunes of two main characters: Yuki, a 16-year-old daughter of Japanese parents in New York of the 1960s, and in the present day, her estranged son Jay, who has recently become a father himself. We learn that Yuki was lonely teenager, isolated by her ethnicity and shy manner. But she finally makes a friend in the striking Odile and moves in with the girl's family when her parents return to their homeland. There she develops a keen interest in art but also becomes involved in an abusive relationship. For his own part, Jay is also struggling. His marriage is under strain and his father Edison recently died in an accident. In his will, Edison left the house to Yuki, so this offers a chance for Jay to travel to Berlin and meet the woman that abandoned him as a baby all those years ago.
This is Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's debut novel and her writing shows signs of real promise. On the first page Jay prepares to meet his mother on a bright Berlin day as the "sun buttered the sidewalk." Later on, a nervous Yuki reacts to her first kiss: "Her life had been a solitary amble. Tonight, it was sprinting, tripping over its own feet." The prose is often expressed in bright colours, to reflect Yuki's artistic eye: her bare, freezing knees are "vermilion as the Red Delicious apples that sat in the kitchen uneaten."
But it is a hard novel to like. I couldn't warm to either protagonist - Yuki is self-destructive and ungrateful, Jay cares more about his cat than his own child. And certain plot points made no sense to me: The writing in Harmless Like You is undoubtedly elegant (especially in the lyrical descriptions of art) but with the story's unsympathetic characters, I found it a bit of a chore to finish.
The story follows the fortunes of two main characters: Yuki, a 16-year-old daughter of Japanese parents in New York of the 1960s, and in the present day, her estranged son Jay, who has recently become a father himself. We learn that Yuki was lonely teenager, isolated by her ethnicity and shy manner. But she finally makes a friend in the striking Odile and moves in with the girl's family when her parents return to their homeland. There she develops a keen interest in art but also becomes involved in an abusive relationship. For his own part, Jay is also struggling. His marriage is under strain and his father Edison recently died in an accident. In his will, Edison left the house to Yuki, so this offers a chance for Jay to travel to Berlin and meet the woman that abandoned him as a baby all those years ago.
This is Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's debut novel and her writing shows signs of real promise. On the first page Jay prepares to meet his mother on a bright Berlin day as the "sun buttered the sidewalk." Later on, a nervous Yuki reacts to her first kiss: "Her life had been a solitary amble. Tonight, it was sprinting, tripping over its own feet." The prose is often expressed in bright colours, to reflect Yuki's artistic eye: her bare, freezing knees are "vermilion as the Red Delicious apples that sat in the kitchen uneaten."
But it is a hard novel to like. I couldn't warm to either protagonist - Yuki is self-destructive and ungrateful, Jay cares more about his cat than his own child. And certain plot points made no sense to me: The writing in Harmless Like You is undoubtedly elegant (especially in the lyrical descriptions of art) but with the story's unsympathetic characters, I found it a bit of a chore to finish.
April 1, 2017
Review to follow.
April 9, 2018
Harmless Like You is the multigenerational story of Yuki, growing up in New York in the 1960s, and her son, Jay, who she abandoned as a baby. Their stories move forward together in parallel timelines, one beginning in 1968 and one beginning in 2016, culminating in a reunion that we know is coming ever since the prologue. In the meantime we explore the reasons that led to Yuki's abandonment of Jay, and how Jay has learned to cope with her desertion, especially as he now has a newborn infant himself.
I have a lot of thoughts about this book - not all of them good, despite the 4 star rating. I'll start with the downsides: (1) The book begins with a very hasty plot point which to me reeks of a plot device (Yuki's parents agreeing to let her live in New York at 16 years old with a friend they'd only met once, while they go back to Japan to live - there are absolutely reasons for a family to do something this radical, but those reasons go mostly unexamined here). (2) It took me ages to get invested in Yuki - I think the third-person POV really serves to hold her at an arm's length from the reader. (3) The resolution is a bit too neat, and there's some abrupt character development at the end which to me felt unearned.
But when it's good, it's great. When Yuki's personality begins to develop (starting with a really beautiful and heartrending scene where she sees an exhibit at the Whitney and is overcome with sadness), she's a wonderful and complex protagonist, whose journey is at times devastating. What surprised me though is how utterly brilliant I found Jay's character to be. Here we have a pair of characters who don't want to be parents, but they each find themselves in that role anyway. Jay is not a particularly palatable character - he loves his bald cat more than his newborn baby - and while some readers may think he's a monster, Hisayo Buchanan doesn't pass judgement in a way that I found sort of refreshing.
This is one of those books where I think I liked the overall impression it left me with more than I liked reading the book itself. It's the kind of book that elucidates harsh truths about parenthood, growing up, art, and identity, and it leaves you feeling sort of sad and hollow - but for whatever reason, that's a feeling I like. This is one of those thought-provoking books whose characters will probably stay with me.
I have a lot of thoughts about this book - not all of them good, despite the 4 star rating. I'll start with the downsides: (1) The book begins with a very hasty plot point which to me reeks of a plot device (Yuki's parents agreeing to let her live in New York at 16 years old with a friend they'd only met once, while they go back to Japan to live - there are absolutely reasons for a family to do something this radical, but those reasons go mostly unexamined here). (2) It took me ages to get invested in Yuki - I think the third-person POV really serves to hold her at an arm's length from the reader. (3) The resolution is a bit too neat, and there's some abrupt character development at the end which to me felt unearned.
But when it's good, it's great. When Yuki's personality begins to develop (starting with a really beautiful and heartrending scene where she sees an exhibit at the Whitney and is overcome with sadness), she's a wonderful and complex protagonist, whose journey is at times devastating. What surprised me though is how utterly brilliant I found Jay's character to be. Here we have a pair of characters who don't want to be parents, but they each find themselves in that role anyway. Jay is not a particularly palatable character - he loves his bald cat more than his newborn baby - and while some readers may think he's a monster, Hisayo Buchanan doesn't pass judgement in a way that I found sort of refreshing.
This is one of those books where I think I liked the overall impression it left me with more than I liked reading the book itself. It's the kind of book that elucidates harsh truths about parenthood, growing up, art, and identity, and it leaves you feeling sort of sad and hollow - but for whatever reason, that's a feeling I like. This is one of those thought-provoking books whose characters will probably stay with me.
February 22, 2017
It is always such a fantastic surprise when a book turns out to be something much more than I thought it would be. Harmless Like You is one of those books. I had thought it would be another tale of a young woman who doesn’t fit in as a youth and then struggles in the big city throughout her adulthood. This was so much more.
Yuki Oyama is a young Japanese American who has been living in the US since she was very young. She has never felt as though she fit in ANYWHERE. When we meet her she is in high school and has no friends, no outside interests. She finally meets Odile, another girl who feels that she doesn’t belong, and they become friends. Odile has dreams of becoming a model. She also has a lot of dangerous and illicit activities that she starts to share with Yuki.
During her senior year in high school Yuki’s father is transferred back to Japan and Yuki somehow talks her parents into letting her stay behind with Odile and her mother to complete her high school education and go on to college. Let’s just say that things don’t work out as they were supposed to. The girls friendship breaks up, Odile flees to be with a man she knows and Yuki makes some very bad decisions.
The novel is also told from the viewpoint of Jay, a young father struggling with the change in his marriage that a new baby brings. He is the owner of a successful art gallery. He knows who his mother is because he has done his research, although she left when he was just 2 years old. Jay’s father has just died and he must go to Japan, find this woman and deliver the deed to the house, get the papers signed, etc. He is anxious to meet his biological mother.
Without going into the plot, there are other reviews on here for that, I want to concentrate on the writing. Buchanan writes about the importance of “home”, somewhere where a child and/or adult can be themselves, feel comforted and grounded and supported. Yuki never had that sense of home even while living with her parents, her father was a busy man and she didn’t really have a connection with her mother. Odile has a self absorbed mother who writes romance novels and continues to have self destructive relationships. Both Yuki and Jay were their parents only child and the book touches upon that subject also. Something that was intriguing but also scary was the insertion of the issue of domestic violence in the book. Buchanan handled it masterfully, I was able to understand why someone might put up with being in an abusive relationship because they feel this person is the only one who will have them. Many people who live with abuse have a very low opinion of themselves and their worth. Finally it is Yuki’s art that directs the way that she lives her life.
Though a bit of a slow start this book is worth the wait. Once I got into the characters I was hooked.
One technique that the author used that I enjoyed was the description of a particular color at the beginning of the chapters told from Yuki’s viewpoint.
Examples of this: “1982, Vermillion. In medieval times made with mercury and sulphur. Why were the brightest paints also poisons?”
“1975, Caput Mortum. A purple-brown. Literally: dead head. Amed for the color of dried blood but it does well for painting of old fruit and fading bruises. The name may also refer to worthless remains”. The color descriptions also seemed to be distinctly chosen to highlight something that was going on in Yuki’s life, as in the color that could be used to paint “fading bruises”, again touching upon domestic abuse.
In my excitement about this book I forgot to add that this is a debut novel, wonderful!!!
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher and NetGalley, thank you.
Yuki Oyama is a young Japanese American who has been living in the US since she was very young. She has never felt as though she fit in ANYWHERE. When we meet her she is in high school and has no friends, no outside interests. She finally meets Odile, another girl who feels that she doesn’t belong, and they become friends. Odile has dreams of becoming a model. She also has a lot of dangerous and illicit activities that she starts to share with Yuki.
During her senior year in high school Yuki’s father is transferred back to Japan and Yuki somehow talks her parents into letting her stay behind with Odile and her mother to complete her high school education and go on to college. Let’s just say that things don’t work out as they were supposed to. The girls friendship breaks up, Odile flees to be with a man she knows and Yuki makes some very bad decisions.
The novel is also told from the viewpoint of Jay, a young father struggling with the change in his marriage that a new baby brings. He is the owner of a successful art gallery. He knows who his mother is because he has done his research, although she left when he was just 2 years old. Jay’s father has just died and he must go to Japan, find this woman and deliver the deed to the house, get the papers signed, etc. He is anxious to meet his biological mother.
Without going into the plot, there are other reviews on here for that, I want to concentrate on the writing. Buchanan writes about the importance of “home”, somewhere where a child and/or adult can be themselves, feel comforted and grounded and supported. Yuki never had that sense of home even while living with her parents, her father was a busy man and she didn’t really have a connection with her mother. Odile has a self absorbed mother who writes romance novels and continues to have self destructive relationships. Both Yuki and Jay were their parents only child and the book touches upon that subject also. Something that was intriguing but also scary was the insertion of the issue of domestic violence in the book. Buchanan handled it masterfully, I was able to understand why someone might put up with being in an abusive relationship because they feel this person is the only one who will have them. Many people who live with abuse have a very low opinion of themselves and their worth. Finally it is Yuki’s art that directs the way that she lives her life.
Though a bit of a slow start this book is worth the wait. Once I got into the characters I was hooked.
One technique that the author used that I enjoyed was the description of a particular color at the beginning of the chapters told from Yuki’s viewpoint.
Examples of this: “1982, Vermillion. In medieval times made with mercury and sulphur. Why were the brightest paints also poisons?”
“1975, Caput Mortum. A purple-brown. Literally: dead head. Amed for the color of dried blood but it does well for painting of old fruit and fading bruises. The name may also refer to worthless remains”. The color descriptions also seemed to be distinctly chosen to highlight something that was going on in Yuki’s life, as in the color that could be used to paint “fading bruises”, again touching upon domestic abuse.
In my excitement about this book I forgot to add that this is a debut novel, wonderful!!!
I received an ARC of this book from the publisher and NetGalley, thank you.
June 9, 2018
3.5****
July 11, 2018
Second read: July 2018
So Harmless Like You is the next reading group pick, and it just so happens that I’ve already read it, about 18 months ago. However, 18 months is a pretty long time, and a lot can change - I know that I’ve most definitely changed. So I thought it deserved a reread.
My first note is that my rating hasn’t changed. It’s still a solid 4-star read for me, but maybe for different reasons than before. Although it’s a piece of literary fiction, the writing is relatively simple, so it’s very easy to get swept up into the story. Now that I’ve read a lot more novels in this genre, I think I appreciate the simplicity a lot more - it turned out to be quite a refreshing read. It was also nice to read it in the context of the reading group, because the past few novels have been quite challenging - I’m almost relieved to have found something so enjoyable.
My second note is that my feelings for the characters haven’t altered between reads. Despite Yuki’s flaws - for she is a VERY flawed character - I really empathise with her, and found her narrative a lot more interesting to read than Jay’s. Jay bothers me a lot, and I’m not particularly sure why, as I think he is definitely more redeemable than Yuki. Maybe it’s his self-centredness? Aside from Edison, the men in this novel are very blunt, with harsh exteriors that are hard to crack. I felt a lot more sympathy for Mimi, Odile and Yuki.
My third note is again about the portrayal of domestic abuse. I stick with what I said before, in that it’s a quietly powerful presentation. The violence isn’t an immediate shock - it builds and builds and builds until you can see how their relationship is defined by his volatility and mood swings. It was very easy to feel disgust towards Lou, and I know that my opinion of him hasn’t changed one little bit.
Overall, I still really enjoy this novel, and think it’s a beautiful piece of prose. You know, I’ve actually considered donating this book several times - each time I put it in the donation bag, and a few days later I will pull it back out again. I’m glad I kept it.
First read: December 2016
This is a book that makes you feel. It speaks to your soul, in the eye-opening way that literary fiction does. When I was reading it, although I couldn't relate to the characters, I felt like there was a mirror reflecting back on my own life. It's one of those stories that make you ponder your existence, and I really enjoyed it.
Also as a quick note - really interesting portrayal of domestic abuse. It's not graphic, but the emotional repercussions are clear, especially the effect on mental wellbeing. It subtly shows how life-changing it can be.
So Harmless Like You is the next reading group pick, and it just so happens that I’ve already read it, about 18 months ago. However, 18 months is a pretty long time, and a lot can change - I know that I’ve most definitely changed. So I thought it deserved a reread.
My first note is that my rating hasn’t changed. It’s still a solid 4-star read for me, but maybe for different reasons than before. Although it’s a piece of literary fiction, the writing is relatively simple, so it’s very easy to get swept up into the story. Now that I’ve read a lot more novels in this genre, I think I appreciate the simplicity a lot more - it turned out to be quite a refreshing read. It was also nice to read it in the context of the reading group, because the past few novels have been quite challenging - I’m almost relieved to have found something so enjoyable.
My second note is that my feelings for the characters haven’t altered between reads. Despite Yuki’s flaws - for she is a VERY flawed character - I really empathise with her, and found her narrative a lot more interesting to read than Jay’s. Jay bothers me a lot, and I’m not particularly sure why, as I think he is definitely more redeemable than Yuki. Maybe it’s his self-centredness? Aside from Edison, the men in this novel are very blunt, with harsh exteriors that are hard to crack. I felt a lot more sympathy for Mimi, Odile and Yuki.
My third note is again about the portrayal of domestic abuse. I stick with what I said before, in that it’s a quietly powerful presentation. The violence isn’t an immediate shock - it builds and builds and builds until you can see how their relationship is defined by his volatility and mood swings. It was very easy to feel disgust towards Lou, and I know that my opinion of him hasn’t changed one little bit.
Overall, I still really enjoy this novel, and think it’s a beautiful piece of prose. You know, I’ve actually considered donating this book several times - each time I put it in the donation bag, and a few days later I will pull it back out again. I’m glad I kept it.
First read: December 2016
This is a book that makes you feel. It speaks to your soul, in the eye-opening way that literary fiction does. When I was reading it, although I couldn't relate to the characters, I felt like there was a mirror reflecting back on my own life. It's one of those stories that make you ponder your existence, and I really enjoyed it.
Also as a quick note - really interesting portrayal of domestic abuse. It's not graphic, but the emotional repercussions are clear, especially the effect on mental wellbeing. It subtly shows how life-changing it can be.
September 26, 2016
Trigger warning: domestic abuse.
I'm really conflicted.
This book felt real and raw and human and it made me want to make art even if I suck at it.
At the same time, though, it left me with nothing.
I'll probably remember some details: why it's called Harmless Like You, the art, the bald cat. But that's it.
I didn't see any of the "startlingly beautiful prose" but I agree that there was a lot of potential.
I'm interested in reading more from this author whenever she comes out with something new.
I'm really conflicted.
This book felt real and raw and human and it made me want to make art even if I suck at it.
At the same time, though, it left me with nothing.
I'll probably remember some details: why it's called Harmless Like You, the art, the bald cat. But that's it.
I didn't see any of the "startlingly beautiful prose" but I agree that there was a lot of potential.
I'm interested in reading more from this author whenever she comes out with something new.
March 31, 2017
A powerful debut, the story of Yuki, an aspiring artist, a teenager in late-60s NYC without her Japanese parents. She struggles to make art and relationships; decades later, her abandoned son tracks her down in Germany. The earlier narrative was spellbinding: Yuki vividly, lovingly alive on the page; the adult son's character, however, never rang true, rendering that third of the tale less compelling. I loved Yuki; loved most of this novel a lot!
March 13, 2018
In late-1960s New York City, Yuki Oyama makes a fateful decision: instead of going back to Japan with her parents, she’ll stay here and live with a friend. She pursues her art – sketching and photography – and takes up with a man who hits her. For years she puts up with the abuse, until the future father of her son takes her away to a safe little home in Connecticut. But instead of blossoming here, she stagnates, and eventually runs away.
In alternating sections we hear from Jay, Yuki’s abandoned son, who owns an art gallery and in 2016 is having trouble adjusting to fatherhood. His ‘postpartum’ depression mirrors Yuki’s in an ironic but rather amusing way. He has little affinity for this baby, preferring to spend time with his 17-year-old diabetic, hairless cat, Celeste. “Looking at Eliot made me queasy. She really was a little leechling, all squishy, wet flesh. … She was a machine that turned milk into tears. I couldn’t imagine her as a person.” After his father’s death, Jay decides to find his mother in Berlin. Maybe he’ll never get the answer he wants to “why?”, but it’s worth a try.
These two main characters are easy to relate to – at least, they were for me. They’re the kind of people who get stuck and turn passive, unsure how to change their lives for the better and just letting things happen to them until they hit a crisis point and make a desperate bid for freedom. (“Every day, [Yuki] woke up in a second-hand life, one cut and measured for somebody with sturdier bones.”) Buchanan writes beautifully about everything from color to mental illness, and she gives a clear sense of what it’s like to live between races and countries. Her sentences are peppered with wonderful images and sharp asides. I’d recommend this novel to readers of Mira T. Lee, Tom Rachman, and Hanya Yanagihara.
Favorite lines:
“What bemused her was this God’s all-powerfulness. Life seemed to her like so many signatures scribbled on a bathroom wall, not one vast mural.”
“Yuki promised herself she’d make something beautiful here and her mother would see that it had been worth it.”
“Why did the male IQ divide rather than multiply in groups?”
“Yuki wondered if there was one shining moment when you knew that someone wasn’t worth saving.”
“Why was it that when a fist slammed into your face, it was a jump-start, but heartbreak was a leak in the gas tank?”
In alternating sections we hear from Jay, Yuki’s abandoned son, who owns an art gallery and in 2016 is having trouble adjusting to fatherhood. His ‘postpartum’ depression mirrors Yuki’s in an ironic but rather amusing way. He has little affinity for this baby, preferring to spend time with his 17-year-old diabetic, hairless cat, Celeste. “Looking at Eliot made me queasy. She really was a little leechling, all squishy, wet flesh. … She was a machine that turned milk into tears. I couldn’t imagine her as a person.” After his father’s death, Jay decides to find his mother in Berlin. Maybe he’ll never get the answer he wants to “why?”, but it’s worth a try.
These two main characters are easy to relate to – at least, they were for me. They’re the kind of people who get stuck and turn passive, unsure how to change their lives for the better and just letting things happen to them until they hit a crisis point and make a desperate bid for freedom. (“Every day, [Yuki] woke up in a second-hand life, one cut and measured for somebody with sturdier bones.”) Buchanan writes beautifully about everything from color to mental illness, and she gives a clear sense of what it’s like to live between races and countries. Her sentences are peppered with wonderful images and sharp asides. I’d recommend this novel to readers of Mira T. Lee, Tom Rachman, and Hanya Yanagihara.
Favorite lines:
“What bemused her was this God’s all-powerfulness. Life seemed to her like so many signatures scribbled on a bathroom wall, not one vast mural.”
“Yuki promised herself she’d make something beautiful here and her mother would see that it had been worth it.”
“Why did the male IQ divide rather than multiply in groups?”
“Yuki wondered if there was one shining moment when you knew that someone wasn’t worth saving.”
“Why was it that when a fist slammed into your face, it was a jump-start, but heartbreak was a leak in the gas tank?”
June 15, 2017
4.5 stars...I fell heart over brain into the beautiful ache of this novel – the language, the vulnerability, the very slow unfolding of the story. Just, wow!
This is a book about loneliness, about that desire to find someone else to fulfill what seems to be missing. "All girls and women must have the same tender places that she did, under the shoulder blades, the sternum, just above the ears. Probably their eyes hurt when they were tired and when eating alone at a cafe full of couples. So why was it so hard to speak, to say anything meaningful?" Buchanan strikes just the right tone, making me feel Yuki inside my soul.
But this book is about so much more – art, motherhood, identity and even abuse. Buchanan isn’t afraid to tell the truth in uncomfortable ways or to question traditional values. “Why was it that when a fist slammed into your face, it was a jump-start, but heartbreak was a leak in the gas tank? ... He would never hit her again. A strange thought. She couldn't tell the shape of it yet, whether it was good or bad."
I could have read on and on.
This is a book about loneliness, about that desire to find someone else to fulfill what seems to be missing. "All girls and women must have the same tender places that she did, under the shoulder blades, the sternum, just above the ears. Probably their eyes hurt when they were tired and when eating alone at a cafe full of couples. So why was it so hard to speak, to say anything meaningful?" Buchanan strikes just the right tone, making me feel Yuki inside my soul.
But this book is about so much more – art, motherhood, identity and even abuse. Buchanan isn’t afraid to tell the truth in uncomfortable ways or to question traditional values. “Why was it that when a fist slammed into your face, it was a jump-start, but heartbreak was a leak in the gas tank? ... He would never hit her again. A strange thought. She couldn't tell the shape of it yet, whether it was good or bad."
I could have read on and on.
November 12, 2016
Harmless Like You is a dual POV literary fiction novel. We’re introduced to Japanese-American Yuki in 1968 when she is 16years old and has not one friend in New York City. Her parents have moved back to Tokyo and she decides to stay and live with her friend, aspiring model Odile. The book alternates to the year 2016, where gallery owner Jay - whose father has recently died - is accepting his role as a new father. He believes that he is a happily married man, but it’s the year that he will finally confront his mother Yuki, who abandoned their family when he was two years old.
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan explores the blurred boundary between love and pain, selfishness and sacrifice. This novel highlights that the meaning of ‘home’ is complicated and that by starving for a sense of connection, our main character Yuki has actually detached herself from her roots. She’s strayed so far from what she envisioned herself being, that the sacrifices she made almost seem to have been made without real intention to do so. Yuki does not seem to be in control of herself, and she does not seem able to climb out of the painful hole that she finds herself in when she enters an abusive relationship. She is also a deeply lonely character who strives for artistic fulfilment.
Harmless Like You explores the notion that children can inherit identity from their parents. Pain travels through the generations in this novel. Jay, having been abandoned by his mother when he was two years old, is finding fatherhood travelling and his marriage even more so. He loves his wife, but he is not attentive or present, much like his mother Yuki.
This novel is unflinchingly honest and captures some of the ugliest aspects of life that a person can experience. Harmless Like You highlights the messier side of life - both Yuki and Jay struggle with fidelity, and at one point, Jay wonders if he loves his child at all. He wonders what it would be like if he just dropped her.
Both characters are looking for fulfilment in life, and this resulted in Yuki abandoning her child. It almost seems like Jay is thinking the same thing. By delving into Yuki’s past, we come to understand her as a character and the need she has for artistic fulfilment, and how that trumps her being a parent to Jay. The separate stories from her life allow the reader to see why she left her husband and son and why she never came back.
Harmless Like You is an elegant and moving novel that explores the difficulty of life, love and family. It’s extremely well-written and beautifully eloquent and Rowan leaves more unsaid that said. The reader comes to understand the complicated relationships between parents and children, and how actions can cause unintended consequences.
http://jessjustreads.com
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan explores the blurred boundary between love and pain, selfishness and sacrifice. This novel highlights that the meaning of ‘home’ is complicated and that by starving for a sense of connection, our main character Yuki has actually detached herself from her roots. She’s strayed so far from what she envisioned herself being, that the sacrifices she made almost seem to have been made without real intention to do so. Yuki does not seem to be in control of herself, and she does not seem able to climb out of the painful hole that she finds herself in when she enters an abusive relationship. She is also a deeply lonely character who strives for artistic fulfilment.
Harmless Like You explores the notion that children can inherit identity from their parents. Pain travels through the generations in this novel. Jay, having been abandoned by his mother when he was two years old, is finding fatherhood travelling and his marriage even more so. He loves his wife, but he is not attentive or present, much like his mother Yuki.
This novel is unflinchingly honest and captures some of the ugliest aspects of life that a person can experience. Harmless Like You highlights the messier side of life - both Yuki and Jay struggle with fidelity, and at one point, Jay wonders if he loves his child at all. He wonders what it would be like if he just dropped her.
Both characters are looking for fulfilment in life, and this resulted in Yuki abandoning her child. It almost seems like Jay is thinking the same thing. By delving into Yuki’s past, we come to understand her as a character and the need she has for artistic fulfilment, and how that trumps her being a parent to Jay. The separate stories from her life allow the reader to see why she left her husband and son and why she never came back.
Harmless Like You is an elegant and moving novel that explores the difficulty of life, love and family. It’s extremely well-written and beautifully eloquent and Rowan leaves more unsaid that said. The reader comes to understand the complicated relationships between parents and children, and how actions can cause unintended consequences.
http://jessjustreads.com
Read
August 16, 2022Wow, this novel.
Yuki Oyama’s father’s job sends the family to Manhattan. Yuki feels stuck between two cultures, but doesn't want to leave New York when it’s time for her family to return to Japan. She convinces her parents to allow her to stay in America with a friend to further her education. Her friend is beautiful and beside her Yuki feels ugly. Her friend’s mother has an abusive boyfriend and in time Yuki develops a crush on him. She soon becomes entangled in a relationship with this older man. Yuki fights to succeed as an artist as her identity is threatened by this consuming relationship.
Jay, a new father, struggles with the topography of his new life as a parent. His mother abandoned him and his father when he was young. Now he has his own child and isn’t connecting to her like he should. His father dies and Jay’s wife wants him to get rid of his beloved hairless cat now that his father isn’t able to do so. And there is the issue of his father’s estate as his father is still legally married to his mother, Yuki Oyama.
Harmless Like You is a dual point of view novel that explores love, loss, identity, and art. Its prose is breathtaking at times; I wanted to highlight so many passages for their beauty and poignancy. There is a lot of rawness to this work as well, including a very cutting portrayal of domestic violence within a relationship. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s debut novel is certainly noteworthy and would make an excellent book club pick.
Yuki Oyama’s father’s job sends the family to Manhattan. Yuki feels stuck between two cultures, but doesn't want to leave New York when it’s time for her family to return to Japan. She convinces her parents to allow her to stay in America with a friend to further her education. Her friend is beautiful and beside her Yuki feels ugly. Her friend’s mother has an abusive boyfriend and in time Yuki develops a crush on him. She soon becomes entangled in a relationship with this older man. Yuki fights to succeed as an artist as her identity is threatened by this consuming relationship.
Jay, a new father, struggles with the topography of his new life as a parent. His mother abandoned him and his father when he was young. Now he has his own child and isn’t connecting to her like he should. His father dies and Jay’s wife wants him to get rid of his beloved hairless cat now that his father isn’t able to do so. And there is the issue of his father’s estate as his father is still legally married to his mother, Yuki Oyama.
Harmless Like You is a dual point of view novel that explores love, loss, identity, and art. Its prose is breathtaking at times; I wanted to highlight so many passages for their beauty and poignancy. There is a lot of rawness to this work as well, including a very cutting portrayal of domestic violence within a relationship. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s debut novel is certainly noteworthy and would make an excellent book club pick.
August 15, 2016
One of the reasons why my book blog is called LonesomeReader is I want it to be an ongoing exploration of what loneliness means. People who can be termed as introverted or shy have a tendency to feel greater degrees of loneliness as they aren’t able to easily connect to others or socialize as naturally as more extroverted groups. Many who feel this way think of themselves as indistinct and unnoticed, standing on the sidelines or a wallflower. “Harmless Like You” begins with Yuki, an adolescent girl living in New York City in the late 1960s. She’s someone who often holds her feelings inside, but they seep out in creative ways through different artistic mediums with how she experiences colour and sees the world in a distinct way. The novel flips between the decades of Yuki’s development as a person and artist and a time in 2016 when a young man named Jay travels to Germany to inform his estranged mother Yuki about his father’s death and the house that was left to her. Their stories combine to form a powerfully emotional tale about family connections, self esteem and personal expression.
Read my full review of Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan on LonesomeReader
June 22, 2016
This is a superb book.
It is about a young Japanese artist trying to find a home in 1970s New York and her son's journey several decades later to find her. I laughed. I cried. I pondered deep into the night about what it meant to belong and how it felt to be broken. And above all I wondered at how beautifully it was told.
Take, for example, the tiny openings to each chapter that describe the origins of various colours of paint:
"Umber from Umbria, as in the raw earth of Italian mountains. It is the colour of a fur coat rarely worn, the oak bar in the Plaza, coffee dried to the bottom of a cup."
Such a simple idea but so brilliantly executed, setting each chapter firmly in the context of the art world, either from the aspirant artist's the embittered salesman's perspective. Yet each hints at a darker undertone - why is the fur coat rarely worn, the coffee left in the bottom of the cup? Because Harmless, for all its wit and artistic glamour, is dark. Deliciously so.
Artists and their interns, soldiers and their sweethearts, photographers and their muses, all the characters both major and minor are memorable. Each one is examined and delicately dissected until by the end all that is left is a mess of parts good and evil, pathetic and heroic, beautiful and ugly. The victims are as guilty as the abusers are innocent.
Because that is the author's real success. It is not the cut of the dialogue. Nor is it the visceral power of the moments of brutality. It is her ability to capture, and perhaps even celebrate, the futility we all feel from time to time in simply being.
And all this from a debut novelist.
It is about a young Japanese artist trying to find a home in 1970s New York and her son's journey several decades later to find her. I laughed. I cried. I pondered deep into the night about what it meant to belong and how it felt to be broken. And above all I wondered at how beautifully it was told.
Take, for example, the tiny openings to each chapter that describe the origins of various colours of paint:
"Umber from Umbria, as in the raw earth of Italian mountains. It is the colour of a fur coat rarely worn, the oak bar in the Plaza, coffee dried to the bottom of a cup."
Such a simple idea but so brilliantly executed, setting each chapter firmly in the context of the art world, either from the aspirant artist's the embittered salesman's perspective. Yet each hints at a darker undertone - why is the fur coat rarely worn, the coffee left in the bottom of the cup? Because Harmless, for all its wit and artistic glamour, is dark. Deliciously so.
Artists and their interns, soldiers and their sweethearts, photographers and their muses, all the characters both major and minor are memorable. Each one is examined and delicately dissected until by the end all that is left is a mess of parts good and evil, pathetic and heroic, beautiful and ugly. The victims are as guilty as the abusers are innocent.
Because that is the author's real success. It is not the cut of the dialogue. Nor is it the visceral power of the moments of brutality. It is her ability to capture, and perhaps even celebrate, the futility we all feel from time to time in simply being.
And all this from a debut novelist.
October 17, 2016
There's so much beauty and tragedy in this book. Its characters are broken and damaged and lonely. But Buchanan perfectly balances beauty with tragedy and lets the light in. This book revolves around teenage Yuki trying to find her place in 1960s/70s America and Jay the (now adult) son she abandoned when he was two years old. Yuki is lonely, she is lost, she is disconnected. Jay is adrift and terrified of the parent he is proving to be after the birth of his daughter. Can you inherit the drive to run from familial responsibilities? Can you connect with the mother who abandoned you? Where is home and how do you get there? How much can you sacrifice before you lose yourself? Should you put down your 19-year-old diabetic therapy cat? Just some of the questions this book poses. It's a hugely impressive debut.
Read
March 1, 2017A young Japanese woman struggling to be an artist in NYC must make tough decisions about her future. Yuki Oyama thinks she’s on the way to living her dreams in the Big Apple, but a destructive relationship forces her to choose between her son and her career. Told between Yuki’s past and her son’s present, Harmless Like You is a powerful debut novel.
Backlist bump: Shelter by Jung Yun
Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/listen/shows/allt...
Backlist bump: Shelter by Jung Yun
Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/listen/shows/allt...
April 17, 2019
Que história bonita e bem escrita.
December 30, 2016
I received this book through a GoodReads giveaway.
(I'm undecided about trigger warnings, but I feel I should note this book contains domestic abuse, eating disorders, sexual assault involving minors, and animal abuse.)
The book follows two timelines: in the first, Yuki, a Japanese immigrant and now American citizen, remains in New York when her parents return to Japan. She quits school to work for a newspaper and finds herself in an abusive relationship with her guardian's abusive ex-boyfriend; in the second, Jay, the son she abandoned, wrestles with his father's sudden death and the will left that bequeaths his childhood home to his mother. The two characters are forced to meet with Jay must bring the deed in person for his mother to sign. (Side note - this "requirement" is glossed over and I have no idea if this was fictionalized or not. Either way, it felt like a very cheap way to force Jay to meet his mother. In real life, there would be so many other options and the story would never happen.)
I chose to give the book 2 stars because I felt like each strand of the plot explored important and interesting themes of identity and family. But other than that, I found little enjoyable about the book.
The first half was incredibly slow, and the entire novel was filled with over-wrought prose. Bizarre and flowery metaphors were dumped throughout and were ridiculous to the point that while I can remember the second half of the metaphor, I have no idea what it was being used to illustrate. Maybe I'm falling prey to stereotypes, but it made a lot more season when I read the author bio and saw she has an MFA in writing, because this seems like the pretentious writing such programs would teach.
And while the book sought to tackle heavy topics, they seemed thrown in for shock value rather than thoroughly explored, or even thought-out by the author. The worst example for me (I won't count as a spoiler because it has no relevance to the plot) was when Yuki suddenly develops anorexia because her best friend already has a severe undiagnosed case of it. I wanted to throw my book out the window and yell, "That's not how this works! That's not how any of this works!" Pretty much all of the other things I listed above in my trigger warning were dealt with in a similar fashion.
The final straw was that the only likeable characters seemed to be Yuki's husband and Jay's wife, and both of them are constantly crapped on their respective spouses.
The concept of this book is interesting, but it could've been executed so much better. Unless your interest in the ideas of cultural identity and belonging is strong enough to overcome these problems, I would give this one a pass.
(I'm undecided about trigger warnings, but I feel I should note this book contains domestic abuse, eating disorders, sexual assault involving minors, and animal abuse.)
The book follows two timelines: in the first, Yuki, a Japanese immigrant and now American citizen, remains in New York when her parents return to Japan. She quits school to work for a newspaper and finds herself in an abusive relationship with her guardian's abusive ex-boyfriend; in the second, Jay, the son she abandoned, wrestles with his father's sudden death and the will left that bequeaths his childhood home to his mother. The two characters are forced to meet with Jay must bring the deed in person for his mother to sign. (Side note - this "requirement" is glossed over and I have no idea if this was fictionalized or not. Either way, it felt like a very cheap way to force Jay to meet his mother. In real life, there would be so many other options and the story would never happen.)
I chose to give the book 2 stars because I felt like each strand of the plot explored important and interesting themes of identity and family. But other than that, I found little enjoyable about the book.
The first half was incredibly slow, and the entire novel was filled with over-wrought prose. Bizarre and flowery metaphors were dumped throughout and were ridiculous to the point that while I can remember the second half of the metaphor, I have no idea what it was being used to illustrate. Maybe I'm falling prey to stereotypes, but it made a lot more season when I read the author bio and saw she has an MFA in writing, because this seems like the pretentious writing such programs would teach.
And while the book sought to tackle heavy topics, they seemed thrown in for shock value rather than thoroughly explored, or even thought-out by the author. The worst example for me (I won't count as a spoiler because it has no relevance to the plot) was when Yuki suddenly develops anorexia because her best friend already has a severe undiagnosed case of it. I wanted to throw my book out the window and yell, "That's not how this works! That's not how any of this works!" Pretty much all of the other things I listed above in my trigger warning were dealt with in a similar fashion.
The final straw was that the only likeable characters seemed to be Yuki's husband and Jay's wife, and both of them are constantly crapped on their respective spouses.
The concept of this book is interesting, but it could've been executed so much better. Unless your interest in the ideas of cultural identity and belonging is strong enough to overcome these problems, I would give this one a pass.
August 27, 2016
Harmless Like You is an good debut novel.
The main character is Yukiko Oyama, the daughter of a Japanese executive who's working in the 60's New York. Yukiko is a teenager and feels split in two between her Japanese heritage and living in America. She feels horribly lonely, ugly and stupid.
She's not a "good Japanese" and definitely not an American, as she doesn't look like anyone else. She is either bullied or completely ignored at school.
Odille is the new kid at school. She's blonde, very slim and very beautiful. She's worldly and sophisticated. They become friends. Well, friends is a broad term, they hang out together, Odille is the leader who teaches Yuki to dress, drink and takes her to bars, where they meet men. They're the most unlikely of pairs. Being outliers has brought them together. But there isn't much complementarity or sharing or secrets. It's a very strange relationship. But the only one Yuki has ever had with another girl.
Through the years, we see Yuki being left by Odille, who moves to Italy to model; Yuki getting a job as a receptionist, and Yuki moving in with a man twenty years older, who has a temper and doesn't shy from hitting her. It was heartbreaking to read Yukiko's justifications and her ability to let it slide. Her self-confidence was so low, she wondered why would anyone choose her.
Yuki's only ambition, aspiration is to become an artist. She really needs to be one. She's not terribly talented, she doesn't know which way to go. She takes some classes, where she reacquaints herself with Edison, whom she had met years before. Edison is a nice man, who cares for Yuki and through the years becomes her somewhat secret, supportive friend.
I'm trying really hard not to give away too much. Although, ultimately, this is not necessarily a novel where lots of things happen.
This novel is about belonging, or better said not belonging anywhere, about loneliness, low self-esteem, depression, finding your calling, making bad choices or just doing the best you can with what you've got.
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a competent writer who managed to bring to life a very un-interesting and hard to love character. I liked that Yuki was extremely ordinary and unsophisticated, and, sorry!, awfully blank. We rarely read about such characters. Not everyone is interesting, spirited, or gifted, so I liked this realistic aspect of the book.
In conclusion, I liked Harmless Like You, but I didn't love it.
3.5 stars
Cover: 4 stars
The main character is Yukiko Oyama, the daughter of a Japanese executive who's working in the 60's New York. Yukiko is a teenager and feels split in two between her Japanese heritage and living in America. She feels horribly lonely, ugly and stupid.
She's not a "good Japanese" and definitely not an American, as she doesn't look like anyone else. She is either bullied or completely ignored at school.
Odille is the new kid at school. She's blonde, very slim and very beautiful. She's worldly and sophisticated. They become friends. Well, friends is a broad term, they hang out together, Odille is the leader who teaches Yuki to dress, drink and takes her to bars, where they meet men. They're the most unlikely of pairs. Being outliers has brought them together. But there isn't much complementarity or sharing or secrets. It's a very strange relationship. But the only one Yuki has ever had with another girl.
Through the years, we see Yuki being left by Odille, who moves to Italy to model; Yuki getting a job as a receptionist, and Yuki moving in with a man twenty years older, who has a temper and doesn't shy from hitting her. It was heartbreaking to read Yukiko's justifications and her ability to let it slide. Her self-confidence was so low, she wondered why would anyone choose her.
Yuki's only ambition, aspiration is to become an artist. She really needs to be one. She's not terribly talented, she doesn't know which way to go. She takes some classes, where she reacquaints herself with Edison, whom she had met years before. Edison is a nice man, who cares for Yuki and through the years becomes her somewhat secret, supportive friend.
I'm trying really hard not to give away too much. Although, ultimately, this is not necessarily a novel where lots of things happen.
This novel is about belonging, or better said not belonging anywhere, about loneliness, low self-esteem, depression, finding your calling, making bad choices or just doing the best you can with what you've got.
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a competent writer who managed to bring to life a very un-interesting and hard to love character. I liked that Yuki was extremely ordinary and unsophisticated, and, sorry!, awfully blank. We rarely read about such characters. Not everyone is interesting, spirited, or gifted, so I liked this realistic aspect of the book.
In conclusion, I liked Harmless Like You, but I didn't love it.
3.5 stars
Cover: 4 stars
February 7, 2020
Harmless Like You is the debut novel of Japanese-British-Chinese-American author, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, and tells the story of Yuki Oyama, a young Japanese-American woman, and her son, Jay, as he finally confronts the mother who abandoned him as a two year old.
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The story considers many themes: identity, creativity, friendship, family, love, domestic abuse and loneliness.
Yuki who has spent most of her life living in America with her Japanese parents, struggles with a sense of identity and when, at the age of 16, her parents decide to move back to Japan they allow Yuki to remain in America and move into the home of her (relatively new) friend, Odile.
.
Soon after her parents departure, Yuki determines that she wants to be an artist and I found this aspect of the story- Yuki’s relationship with her art- to be a refreshing change from the narrative of ‘character blessed with a natural gift and the ability to effortlessly create spectacular works of art’. Yuki feels she must create art but this doesn’t mean she finds this easy, nor that she is particularly gifted in any recognisable way.
.
Yuki is forever on the periphery and carries a persistent sense of loneliness. Her characterisation is excellent and she feels real in all of her complexity. There is less of the novel devoted to Jay’s experience but he, like his mother, seems to move through the world with a perpetual weight on his shoulders.
Interestingly, I felt there was only one character that could really be described as likeable. The others, Yuki and Jay included, fell somewhere between trying and absolutely despicable but that’s not to say they don’t garner sympathy.
.
Harmless Like You is written in a way that feels deliberately slow-paced and melancholic and, although it felt a little too slow at times, the prose is quietly beautiful and brimming with the kind of imagery you’d hope for in a novel that considers art and the artist.
.
The story considers many themes: identity, creativity, friendship, family, love, domestic abuse and loneliness.
Yuki who has spent most of her life living in America with her Japanese parents, struggles with a sense of identity and when, at the age of 16, her parents decide to move back to Japan they allow Yuki to remain in America and move into the home of her (relatively new) friend, Odile.
.
Soon after her parents departure, Yuki determines that she wants to be an artist and I found this aspect of the story- Yuki’s relationship with her art- to be a refreshing change from the narrative of ‘character blessed with a natural gift and the ability to effortlessly create spectacular works of art’. Yuki feels she must create art but this doesn’t mean she finds this easy, nor that she is particularly gifted in any recognisable way.
.
Yuki is forever on the periphery and carries a persistent sense of loneliness. Her characterisation is excellent and she feels real in all of her complexity. There is less of the novel devoted to Jay’s experience but he, like his mother, seems to move through the world with a perpetual weight on his shoulders.
Interestingly, I felt there was only one character that could really be described as likeable. The others, Yuki and Jay included, fell somewhere between trying and absolutely despicable but that’s not to say they don’t garner sympathy.
.
Harmless Like You is written in a way that feels deliberately slow-paced and melancholic and, although it felt a little too slow at times, the prose is quietly beautiful and brimming with the kind of imagery you’d hope for in a novel that considers art and the artist.
August 14, 2020
Harmless Like You is a book I won through a Goodreads giveaway, which although rather marvellous, hasn't influenced my review in any way. Luckily though, I adored this book.
Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint exactly why you like a book, especially when you don't want to spoil the content for any future readers. All I know for sure is that this book just clicked with me, and the character of Yuki I felt deep in my marrow, and she'll stay with me for a long time. The strength of this book is definitely in its emotive writing, rich characters, complex relationships, and a quietly confident narrative.
Part of the beauty of this read for me was going on a journey with the characters as I read it, something this author does particularly well. Her characterisation is so skilful, so brilliant, I loved it even when I didn't love the characters. Each character is deep, flawed, authentic, and each with a certain tragic beauty.
Exquisitely done. I will read anything Rowan Hisayo Buchanan publishes. It's mind-blowing to think this is her first novel. I can't wait to see what's next!
Sometimes it's hard to pinpoint exactly why you like a book, especially when you don't want to spoil the content for any future readers. All I know for sure is that this book just clicked with me, and the character of Yuki I felt deep in my marrow, and she'll stay with me for a long time. The strength of this book is definitely in its emotive writing, rich characters, complex relationships, and a quietly confident narrative.
Part of the beauty of this read for me was going on a journey with the characters as I read it, something this author does particularly well. Her characterisation is so skilful, so brilliant, I loved it even when I didn't love the characters. Each character is deep, flawed, authentic, and each with a certain tragic beauty.
Exquisitely done. I will read anything Rowan Hisayo Buchanan publishes. It's mind-blowing to think this is her first novel. I can't wait to see what's next!
December 3, 2016
A stunning debut. Harmless Like You is about loneliness and belonging (or not belonging) and what we inherit from our parents, even in absentia. It's about Yuki, a Japanese girl who's lived in America for so long that Japan doesn't feel like home but neither does New York, who longs to be an artist. It's about Jay, the son Yuki left behind, who runs an art gallery and has a child of his own and wonders if his disconnect with the baby is his mother's legacy. The idea of nothingness and how it affects more than one person or even generation is explored so well.
This is a quiet, compelling book about longing, loneliness and legacy.
This is a quiet, compelling book about longing, loneliness and legacy.
March 16, 2017
It's hard to review this book. It's full of imagery and unusual comparisons that make it really enjoyable to read. The author's view of the world is refreshing. There is much discussion of art and artists, which is something that I like. You watch the main character go from one painful transition to another without ever really empathizing with her because she creates all of her problems for herself by trying to pursue her dreams through actions she intends to make her life easier.
The writing is a richly-layered observation of feelings that keeps you emotionally invested through the end.
The writing is a richly-layered observation of feelings that keeps you emotionally invested through the end.
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