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Harmless Like You: A Novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
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 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, which asks—and ultimately answers—how does a mother desert her son?
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“Shifts in time and viewpoint present listening challenges, but easily identifiable characters and clear and crisply paced performances from both narrators provide skillful guidance…Buchanan’s gifts for lyrical description and nuanced character development, ably presented by Zeller and Ochlan, create an appealing audiobook.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“Buchanan’s prose is lyrical and evocative… [She] reminds us, the ethereal dreams of the 1960s shaped the all-too-solid contours of the world we inhabit today.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“Worth reading for the beauty and originality of the prose, for the questions Buchanan raises about art and heritage, and for the characters who are sometimes as maddening as they can be magnificent.”
— Boston Globe -
“Yuki’s story feels compellingly immediate, as prickly and unpredictable as its protagonist.”
— Washington Post
Awards
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One of NPR’s Great Reads Selections
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
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Winner of a Betty Trask Award
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Winner of the 2017 Authors' Club Best First Novel Award
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About Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is an American and British author whose first novel, Harmless Like You, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an NPR Great Read selection, and winner of the Author’s Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Award. She earned a BA degree from Columbia University and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and received an Asian American Writers’ Workshop Margins Fellowship.
About the Narrators
P. J. Ochlan is an Audie Award–winning, multiple Earphones Award–winning, and Voice Arts Award–nominated narrator of hundreds of audiobooks. His acting career spans more than thirty years and has also included Broadway, the New York Shakespeare Festival under Joseph Papp, critically acclaimed feature films, and television series regular roles.
Emily Woo Zeller is an artist, actor, dancer, choreographer, and voice artist who has won Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2018. She began her voice-over career by voicing animation in Asia. AudioFile magazine named her one of the Best Voices of 2013 for her work in Gulp. Other awards include the 2009 Tristen Award for Best Actress as Sally Bowles in Cabaret and the 2006 Roselyn E. Schneider Prize for Creative Achievement.