PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a Japanese-British-Chinese-American writer. She has a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is currently working on a PhD at the University of East Anglia. Her writing has appeared in, among other places, Granta, Guernica and The Harvard Review and she received a Margins fellowship for the Asian American Writers Workshop. She has lived in London, New York, Tokyo, Madison and Norwich.rowanhisayo.com
Impressive ... Rowan Hisayo Buchanan [is] a 27-year-old with a very big literary career in front of her ... Slick and intelligent... it's the subtle brilliance of Buchanan's back-to-front tale that really left me reeling. Stylist Elegant, accomplished debut... Although this is a dark novel, it is also as rich and vivid as the chapter headings' descriptions of paint colours Express This beautiful novel explores creativity and the complicated relationships between parents and children. Psychologies This elegant and moving novel burns slowly, building in intensity as it develops to explore the subjects of identity, alienation and desire. Fanny Blake, Daily Mail Harmless Like You is a refreshing, bold book about understatement. Sunday Telegraph It's pretty rare that a book takes my breath away. But I guarantee Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's beautiful debut, Harmless Like You, will do just that ... in its purest sense, Harmless Like You is a novel about art and abandonment but, far more than that, it's an engrossing human story of two people who can't find themselves, let alone each other; about what love looks like to different people, and how you learn to give it or feel it. Or, indeed, don't. Buchanan nails decades-long loneliness in a way that will leave your heart hurting. Sam Baker, The Pool Combines a wry, sardonic voice with an assured knack for comic set-pieces. TLS Stylishly written ... exceptional Literary Review Harmless is a relentlessly honest book, capturing some of the ugliest and under-represented facets of life, in rich, elegant prose ... it perfectly describes how life isn't easy, without lowering itself to useless, cliched platitudes. Hisayo Buchanan managed to produce a genuinely captivating narrative out of an unfortunate series of events. Irish Independent A serious, sad and beautifully written debut. South China Morning Post A well written, unique and engrossing debut novel ... a great achievement The Bookbag ***** This is a book I've been waiting for since before its author was born. And yet I could never have predicted it. It is a book about beauty and belonging, suffering and being lost, a book that takes into account history, the implications of separation and disorientation. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan cleaves to her idiosyncrasies, foregoing whitewash in favor of her ownglittering vision. She is the seer, not the seen. The result is a gift-unassuming, elegant, vividly prismatic. Not since Sigrid Nunez's A Feather on the Breath of God has a book shone such a moving light on multiracial, interracial, and transnational relationships. Regardless of your flesh tone, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's study of color-its history, its strangeness, its allure, and its consequences - will dazzle you. JENNIFER TSENG, author of Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness A beautiful novel of loneliness, sadness, identity, and love. Ola Reads Books The book has a youthfulness that only a fresh-faced debut novelist can produce. Country Life
