” The effect is one of closeness; her writing style holds you near. Sometimes it feels like a cool hand against a fevered brow – other times, like a snake closing in around your neck”—The Independent
The Sleep Watcher is a taut and vicious thrum of a novel, deceptively pretty and mesmerising as the calm before a storm. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan cuts close to the bone with her insights on family and secrecy, trust and power, and the dangerous, double-edged keenness of intimacy — C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold
When she is sixteen, Kit suffers a summer of peculiar sleeplessness that isn’t quite what it seems. Her body lies in bed while she wanders through her family home, the streets of her run-down seaside town and into the houses of friends and strangers. Unseen and unheard, she witnesses her parents and their fracturing relationship. Her home thrums with quiet violence that she can no longer ignore. With this secret knowledge it becomes impossible not to react and a single choice soon changes everything.
The Sleep Watcher is a moving portrait of family, danger and guilt, captured through the strange summer heat of adolescence.
‘An exquisite rendering of love, sadness, and misunderstanding . . . I want to share this book with everyone I know.’ The Paris Review
‘A poetic, hypnotic exploration of mental health’ Stylist
‘Buchanan is a novelist of talent and grace’ Scotland on Sunday
Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she’s not about to jump but they don’t believe her. Her husband, Oscar is called to pick her up.
Oscar hopes that leaving New York for a few months will give Mina the space to heal. They travel to London, to an apartment wall-papered with indigo-eyed birds, to Oscars oldest friends, to a canal and blooming flower market. Mina, a classicist, searches for solutions to her failing mental health using mythological women. But she finds a beam of light in a living woman. Friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina’s complicated love is tested.
Announces a startling talent’ Guardian
‘Stylishly written . . . exceptional’ Literary Review
‘A refreshing, bold book’ Sunday Telegraph
HARMLESS LIKE YOU is set across New York, Berlin and Connecticut, following the stories of 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 his mother who abandoned him when he was only two years old.
A novel about the complexities of identity, art, adolescent friendships and familial bonds, offering an exploration of love, loneliness, and reconciliation.
WINNER OF THE AUTHORS’ CLUB FIRST NOVEL AWARD AND A BETTY TRASK AWARD
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 BOOKS ARE MY BAG BREAKTHROUGH AUTHOR AWARD
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 JHALAK PRIZE
‘Slick and intelligent’ Stylist
‘This brilliant debut novel is cause for celebration’ Lorrie Moore
It’s always wonderful to order from your local independent bookseller. If you’d like to order online in the USA, I recommend you order from https://bookshop.org and in the UK from https://www.hive.co.uk/ .
If you want a signed or dedicated copy, you can order it from either Pages of Hackney or Burley Fisher Books. Just let the bookseller know and I’ll pop by.