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Review | Book review: Harmless Like You is marked by its sensuousness
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan creates a serious, sad and beautifully written first novel, set in New York in 1968 and about one woman’s burning need to be an artist

By Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Sceptre
Harmless Like You is the first novel by 26-year-old Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, who describes herself as a “Japanese, British, Chinese, American … fiction writer, illustrator, teacher and list-maker”. I don’t know how good her lists are, but if they are anything like her prose they should be quite something. Our heroine, in 1968 New York, is 16-year-old Yuki. On the first page she passes a hot-dog-eating flasher, before meeting her friend Odile.


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