Harmless Like You Audiobook By Rowan Hisayo Buchanan cover art

Harmless Like You

A Novel

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Harmless Like You

By: Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan, Emily Woo Zeller
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About this listen

Written in startlingly beautiful prose, Harmless Like You is set across New York, Berlin, and Connecticut, 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 the mother who abandoned him when he was only two years old. The novel opens when Yuki is 16 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, which asks - and ultimately answers - how does a mother desert her son?

©2016 Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books Coming of Age Genre Fiction Literary Fiction United States World Literature
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Great story of inner demons. Could do without the F word used a million times.

Would read this author again.

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What a stunning experience. I listened to this entire book in the space of about two days. I almost put it aside at one point, because it awakened memories long buried and a sense of dread. In the end, there was a bitter-sweet resolution to the generational angst that left a sense of hope. I thought the voice of Jay sounded a little pugnacious, but I was able to get used to it. I listened to this book at about 1.2x speed, so maybe that enhanced the clipped, angry sounding voice. Buchanan has really tapped into some fundamental human truths with this novel.

profoundly moving

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A very descriptive story with artistic imagery, fitting to the art aspect. A glimpse of the inner workings of two people. Sad but felt real.

A glimpse at how others think & feel

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Somewhere 2/3 through the book, I started to realize that I can no longer connect with the characters. It took me some time to figure out why. the author is very skilled with the language that entices you enough to want to hear more, but being a painter and a mother I realized eventually that there was not enough substance. The flavorful sentences and unique perspectives lacked depth of thoughts and experiences. My analogy would be that The book offered incredible writing about the outward beauty- colors, shapes and smell of a cake without cutting into it and adding taste to the content.

Well written with enticing and vivid language but

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While this book was well written, I really really didn’t like it. It had very vivid and disgusting descriptions, again very well written, but to make matters worse the characters were unlikable and miserable. I definitely could have skipped this one.

Miserable experience

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