Thank you to NetGalley and Farrah, Straus & Giroux for the ARC and the opportunity to read and review before publishing. Palaver follows the Texas-born estranged son of a Jamaican immigrant as he leaves his family behind and makes a new life for himself in Tokyo, Japan. While going through a rocky period in his relationship with a married Japanese man, his mother unexpectedly arrives in Tokyo with her own emotional baggage. The story meanders through past and present and the reader visits the mother’s childhood in Jamaica and her own family struggles, the son’s various friends and lovers in Tokyo, and the awkward but good-hearted attempts of the two to reconcile their differences and similarities into a better life for them both. I’m not sure this book really did anything for me, overall. I neither liked nor disliked it. The lack of quotation marks around the dialogue was mildly irritating, and more than that, it served to disconnect me from the scenes, as though the characters weren’t speaking in the moment and I was only reading an echo of what they said. This might work for some styles, but Washington’s prose wasn’t quite delicate enough to pull it off. There were also so many characters and scene jumps that, while I found the cast likable and interesting enough, I never knew any of them well enough to really be invested. That said, this book has atmospheric vibes that are easy to sink into, particularly for anyone who can relate to the experience of leaving home and creating a new life in a foreign place. The son’s life in Tokyo feels like a misty lingering in time and space with very little movement, and I think it will appeal to a limited, specific audience. ——— Is it queer? Yes, with gay, trans, and poly characters. Is it diverse? Yes, this features characters from all over the world. How long did it take? I spent about 5 hours reading this book.

I’ve been hearing about this book for a very long time and finally got around to reading it. I’ll admit it exceeded my expectations — early on, it had a strong male-centric vibe that I found irritating and, to be fair, never fully left. It’s also too long, and there were a number of scenes that were over-the-top and made Vis feel more like a video game character than the protagonist of a novel. That said, overall I really enjoyed this book. The Hierarchy is a solid if heavy-handed metaphor for our current capitalist predicament, and I like that the story approaches this in a fairly realistic way. Vis is in survival mode, and while a lot of this is thematically very YA, the one place where it does feel adult is the way in which Vis faces the hopelessness of his situation and that one teenager, no matter how talented he is — seriously Vis’s talents are way overdone, he’s literally better than everyone at everything haha — can still be no more than a victim or a cog in the machine (and yes I’m thinking of the Suus episode, the absolute highlight of this story). The main weakness for me was that Vis’s primary motivator is a threat dangling over his head, and I don’t think duress is ever a particularly inspiring driver of plot; the sort of “I have to do this or I’ll be killed/imprisoned/etc.” is less interesting to me than a character acting through their own desires or beliefs. And because of this, I also found elements of the ending rather easy to guess. Still, I was intrigued enough that I likely will be picking up the sequel when it comes out, if only because I live for the moment when X happens (on Goodreads the spoiler is blanked but you can guess from context if you know) and it hasn’t happened yet, so I have to assume it will in a future installment (it better)! ——— Is it queer? Sadly, not only is this book not queer, it barely even passes the Bechdel test. Is it diverse? Not really? I think Vis is supposed to be a bit darker-skinned that the other characters, and I love the portrayal of Suus, but I don’t think this story displays diversity with any sort of intentionality. The characters all look similar enough that they can lie about where they’re from and/or their ethnic background can easily be unknown. How long did it take? Too long. Around 22 hours. Yes I’m a slow reader, and yes I’m often eating soup and/or covered in cats while reading, which can be a distraction and make me even slower, but still. This didn’t need to be as long as it is. (less)