While this book was a little difficult to get into, I'm glad I stuck with it! This is a beautiful story about a mother and son and their journey back to each other.

This novel navigates between the nostalgia and the selfcare. A son and his mother, they do not have a very good relationship, they have a past and both of them were damaged, and carry their own luggage on their backs. Now that the son lives in Tokyo he's trying to found himself, and in a moment of weakness reach to his mom, but regrets it, now the mother travels to Tokio, to find out what is happening with his son but he's not expecting her.

This is the second Bryan Washington novel that I read, and overall I really enjoy how he builts the enviorement of the story, and how the characters gravitates between each other, The mother and the son have a very hard dynamic, that sometimes feels toxic, the comments and attitudes that are exchanged makes me anxious. It is a slow book, so don't expect a lot to happen.

At the end I enjoyed how The Son finds his found family in Tokyo and how he discovers more about himself and his mother and understand her more. The Mother for me was my favorite, because that even she knew how difficul it will be to recontruct his relationship with The Son she is persistent, and also how she found herself with this new connection with a new man.

if you're looking for a comfort but direct to the heart story this is the one.

I received an ARC through NetGalley for an honest review.

Unfortunately, this was a DNF @ 55% for me.

This was my first Washington and initially I was intrigued by the Mother and Son dynamic and just how Queer this novel is, but there was just something that just wasn't hitting for me or hooking me into the characters.

The story is told from the perspective of Mother and Son in the present in Japan and in the past in Jamaica and Canada for the Mother and America for the Son. It explores their difficult relationship and how their history effected them.

I can't tell if there's something a little hollow about the writing, whether I'm just hollow and autistic, or if the depersonalised nature of the characters, literally Mother and Son, and Washington's minimalist prose and punctuation that just didn't work for me.

There's a clear love for Japan in the writing and photos that are included. I just wish I could get more into the story, but it's just not for me.

I started this book at least five times…I could not get into it. It is very literature book clubby so that might be a better audience than than this kinda everyday fiction, true crime podcast enthusiast…all books have an intended audience.

I read this while traveling in Japan and felt Washington’s portrayal of Tokyo, and the complex mother-child relationship, was beautiful. Really grateful for the advance copy so I could read this while I was in the country. And I loved the photographs interspersed with the writing. This is the first book I’ve read by Washington… was drawn in by the location, but will look for his other novels.

“But it takes so long to build something, and no time at all to destroy it, you know?”

Palaver is about an unnamed son, living in Tokyo, who is unexpectedly visited by his estranged mother from the U.S., ten years after they last saw each other. Her arrival disrupts his carefully kept distance from the past, as he juggles a secret relationship with a married man and long nights at a local gay bar. While the son resists reconnection, his mother quietly begins building a life of her own in Japan, forming a tentative friendship with a neighborhood bistro owner. As they share space and memories, both are pushed to confront old wounds and consider what reconciliation might look like.

I’ll start by saying I enjoyed this, and a lot more than I expected to after starting it. Palaver is a slow, dual-POV character-driven story of quieter moments and delicate relationships evolving over time. As the story bounces between past and present for both characters, we’re drip-fed events in the past that led to the relationship being what it is today. I enjoy stories where the author respects the reader’s intelligence and leaves some dots for us to join ourselves. The relationship between mother and son is complicated and raw. Both have made mistakes, and both are frightened about the vulnerability needed to put them right. You find yourself routing for and against both characters at various points which make the wins in this story feel earned and meaningful.
I also enjoyed immersing myself in Japanese culture. I’ve never visited the country myself (yet!) but you can tell the author has a fondness and respect for the country and its people. I also loved the pictures of Japan interspersed among the story.

Palaver is also wonderfully and unashamedly queer - with all the colour and darkness that our community experiences. There’s a messy but honest authenticity to the gay experience the son lives through; and as a queer reader I found that hooked me in. I think readers, especially those in the LGBTQIA+ community, will connect with this story; alongside those who know what it’s like to feel lost, directionless and have complicated relationships with others. This won’t be a book for everyone, and I can imagine unless this book is FOR you, it won’t be to many tastes.

As a final aside - this is another books that doesn’t punctuate speech. While not a problem for me, I’m aware this is an immediate dealbreaker for some so one to be aware of.

Ultimately, this was an enjoyable book I found myself eager to return to between reading sessions. It hasn’t changed my life, and isn’t one I’ll likely reread, but was an enjoyable and engaging reading experience for the time I had it.

Thank you to FSG and NetGalley for this Advanced Reader Copy of Palaver by Bryan Washington - at the time of writing (May 2025) due for publication in November 2025.

Before my review, I would like to thank NetGalley and Farrah, Straus & Giroux for the ARC and the opportunity to read and review it before publishing.

I gave up on reading the book with my eyes at 57% of the way and then just used the audio feature to speed through the rest. My rating is 2.7 to 3 stars. However, this is a good book and would resonate with many people. I chose this book because of the cover and did not know anything about the author and his work; I liked the depiction of a distracted family dynamic, living life abroad, and being a gay man in a foreign country. It's an important story that should be discussed, and the book has a very creative storyline. However, the writing style didn't particularly work for me as it was hard to focus on understanding a clean and concise plot. Most of the time, the absence of quotation marks confused me about who was talking. I also felt that too many characters came and went, and I lost track of who was who. Sometimes, I found the side characters interesting but then found that they never came up again or were only there briefly to move the story along. I felt there wasn't any depth in character development between the Mother and Son, which I would have liked to see happen more fluently throughout the story. I felt as though this was telling the lives of the Son and Mother but not showing us the growth of this family throughout this book.

This one is bleak and bitter right off the bat. My first experience with Byan Washington and I can see how his narrative voice is very specifically Black and queer. It's unusual for me but I immediately felt more for the mother than the son, even though I know the place where the son's pained edge comes from. Their attempts to repair the relationship feels stilted and often bad faith and incidental. And yet there's something intentional about this happening in Japan, in a place where they're both in AND out of there element on multiple levels. Wouldn't say this was enjoyable or profound, but something about it felt essential to witness and understand. Perhaps I need to revisit this in audiobook form to hear the author's intended tone.

I honestly think this is such a beautiful story about two people who you'd expect to know each other so well who don't. Who are like strangers and yet they're not. They discover things they'd never known about the other while also realising that life keeps moving forward, things happen, people come and go and the right people really do find you when you least expect it. It's about family that you are born with and the family you choose. It's about changing perspectives. Effort to change those perspectives. It's resonated with me because of my own journey and I've truly loved every minute of this book!

This was truly a beautiful novel. Reading about the family dynamics and the relationship between the son and the mother carried me through such a range of emotions that I was so impressed with. Washington crafted a story that touches on so many facets of the human experience, from lighthearted and funny to nostalgic and traumatic. The way that queerness was highlighted here too was great, and the found family aspect combined with the biological family relationships paralleled so well.

This book follows the strained relationship between a mother and her son. It’s a slice-of-life kind of book about their dynamic in Japan (which I found insightful as someone who lives in Japan). I think this book had a lot of potential, and I did enjoy it, but a few things fell a little flat to me (personally).

What I liked:
☆ The writing style! While I can understand why someone may not like it, in terms of visuals and lack of actualised chapters, but it worked well for me. I particularly liked how the mother and the son were always referred to as just that.
☆ The insights into daily life and relationships.
☆ The photos of Japan! It really set the scene for me.
☆ Lots of beautiful and moving quotes/moments - “When I realized I’d watched the neighbors’ kids grow up”.

What I didn’t like so much:
☆ I think the struggles with mental health and queerness could have been explored even further.
☆ Lots of side characters, which is fine but I got confused often. I felt like we were expected to know who everyone was as soon as they were introduced, so maybe some more background for those side characters would have been nice.
☆ I did enjoy the cuts between the past and the present, however they came at quite random points and I think it got a bit confusing to keep up with at times (especially because there weren’t traditional ‘chapters’ in this book).
☆ I could probably have overlooked these other points I disliked. However, the NUMBER ONE THING that stopped me from giving this book a 4 star was how much cursing was in this book! It got to a point where it just became frustrating to read the word ‘fuck’ over and over again. During dialogue it was used fine, but it would have been nice to paraphrase at others points, so it didn’t feel overused.

Thank you so much for the ARC!

2.5/5
Really wanted to enjoy this based on the premise but sadly I found the characters hard to connect with. Some of the flashbacks to their past and interactions between characters gave them dimension, but unfortunately I just found myself waiting for the novel to end as I ended up not caring much about the emotional journeys these characters went on.
Thank you for the eARC Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Bryan Washington, and Netgalley.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for providing me this digital ARC to read and review, and thank you Bryan Washington for this touching story.

Palaver is story about an estranged family relationship between a mother and a son. The son moved away due to various problems, yet still called the mother when he was feeling at his lowest, causing the mother to make an impulsive trip to japan for two weeks.

This story is funny, touching, sad and bittersweet. It shows certain type of estrangement, where both parties don't understand each other and have definitely hurt each other, yet still yearn and want to care for one another, and I think this element is depicted quite well in this novel. The son is cold and distant towards the mother, but slowly warms up to her and even treats her to the sights of japan. The mother slowly tries to understand the son and his lifestyle, even giving him her approval.

What I think is interesting about this story structure, is that the mother and the son don't really interact that often in the book. We often see the mother in her individual ventures in japan, while the son is out partying in every queer bar imaginable. We meet a named cast of characters that both teach something to the main characters individually, allowing them the room to grow towards each other, and honestly I eat this up. The son finds what it means to be home and the mother finds what it means to be a mother. Both clearly deal with ghosts from the pasts based on the fragments of memories shown to us, which is then sometimes connected to the present story.

I think this story is sweet and realistic. I feel like there's still a lot of healing left between these two characters, but this was the first step.

Now as much as I love the story, the writing style wasn't for me. It was very fractured and confusing, which might make sense thematically, but it kept putting me out of the loop. Sometimes we would suddenly dive into a past memory, or we would swap povs in the middle of a chapter with no mention. It was also difficult to follow time-wise, especially when it comes to the son's pov, because some of his memory segments are not chronological. (maybe it is, but the Taku arc was quite confusing). For me personally, this writing kept putting me out of the flow.

All in all, it's a nice story. I did like it, 3.5 stars :)

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC!!

“Palaver” is a reflective and emotionally layered novel centered on Chris, the main narrator, and his found family in Tokyo. The unexpected arrival of his mother adds depth to the story, highlighting the tension and nuance of his relationship with his blood family. Told through dual POVs and a shifting timeline between past and present, the narrative explores identity, belonging, and the weight of personal history. While the pacing is uneven and slows in parts, Washington’s gift for crafting authentic, multifaceted characters remains evident. I especially appreciated the meditative tone of the story and its richly drawn Japanese setting.

Palaver by Bryan Washington is a beautifully written, emotionally rich exploration of connection, longing, and the complexity of human relationships. Washington’s prose is poetic yet accessible, weaving together personal stories with broader themes of identity, intimacy, and the spaces between us. Each page feels deeply personal, as if the characters are sharing their truths with you, making their struggles and joys all the more real. This is a compelling, thought-provoking read for anyone who enjoys character-driven narratives that speak to the heart.

"Palaver" by Bryan Washington has a theme and concept I really appreciate, but the execution didn’t fully land for me. The connection between the characters often felt a bit random, and there were so many missed chances for deeper, more vulnerable conversations that could’ve added more emotional weight. Side characters were thrown into the main plot in a way that felt a little chaotic, making it hard to follow at times. I did enjoy the short chapters and dialogue-heavy writing, but overall it lacked flow, clear pacing, and the depth I was hoping for.

I enjoyed the insights into certain parts of daily 'slice of life' in Japan, but felt as if there were too many characters, that some of the characterisations were done clumsily. Was something of a struggle to get through, but would be interested to see what the author writes next.

Palaver is a deeply moving exploration of familial bonds, identity, and the emotional landscapes of love and loss. At its core is the poignant relationship between a son and his mother—complex and tender. The relationship of the son and another man is also deeply complex and fascinating and really evolves throughout the novel. The son and the mother are only referred to as such. I’m a huge fan of Bryan Washington’s work and this feels like a natural evolution from his previous works.

3.75⭐
"And to think the they, too, were living their lives alongside him the whole time."

This was my first time reading a work by Bryan Washington ("Lot," "Memorial," "Family Meal") and I was quite impressed with this work. Told from the alternating focuses on a mother and her son, this story spans various locations - from Jamaica to Toronto, from Texas to Tokyo - and weaves a narrative of interconnectedness. When the mother shows up at her son's doorstep in Tokyo, the two begin to reconcile their unresolved emotional business and attempt to find a path forward.

Rather than prioritizing plot, I felt like this work focused on creating an atmospheric tale of generational conflict. Not only does Washington provide thought-provoking and gutting commentary on identity, but further evolves this when taking into consider where we are in the world. Is our self determined by where we are, where are from, or where we are going? What's more, this book also gives a new, fresh take on the discussion between birth family vs. found family and queer belonging.

The beginning was slow and steady, which is refreshing; however, there was a point where there didn't seem to be enough information given and it felt as though I was begging for context. The backstories do get fleshed out, but I felt they came a little too late for me. I was engaged, though not as engaged and enwrapped as I could have been.

Overall, though, a great addition to Washington's oeuvre and one that will tug at your heartstrings and excite your wanderlust.

Huge thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for early access to this title!

Short summary –
Palaver is a quietly powerful novel that drifts between continents and generations, following the journey of a Texas-born son of a Jamaican immigrant as he seeks belonging far from home—in the neon solitude of Tokyo. As he navigates the emotional landmines of an affair with a married Japanese man, his life is upended by the surprise arrival of his estranged mother, carrying her own unresolved past. What unfolds is a tender, richly layered narrative that slips through time and memory, exploring the mother’s Jamaican childhood, the son’s search for identity among Tokyo’s eclectic expat and queer circles, and the slow, sometimes clumsy process of healing between them. With a lyrical, meandering style that mirrors the emotional landscapes it explores, Palaver is a heartfelt meditation on culture, distance, family, and the complicated love that binds us.

I enjoyed this and this was the first for me from this author. There were parts where I cried, and the characters you can tell he created and crafted with great tenderness and care. I would read more from him in the future!