Bryan Washington’s Palaver is a quietly emotional story that explores family relationships between a mother and son, chosen communities, and the complexities of living between cultures. While it took time to fully engage with the narrative, the novel gradually found its footing.

Palaver was a bit of a slow burn for me. At first, I wasn’t totally sure where it was going, but the story grew on me—especially the relationship between the main character and his mom, if a little frustrating at times. There was something really honest about the way their dynamic unfolded, even if not everything was fully explained.

What I liked:

The mother-son stuff really hit me the more I read. Their scenes together felt raw and real, and I appreciated how their connection slowly started to rebuild.

The second half of the book worked better for me overall. The writing flowed more naturally, and the relationships in Japan—especially at the bar—felt more lived-in and meaningful.

What didn’t work as well:

The flashbacks and memories sometimes popped up out of nowhere and didn’t always seem connected to what was happening in the moment, which threw me off. They did give some additional background but not specifically for the mother son dynamic and I felt these moments affected the pacing in parts

Early on, some of the dialogue—especially between friends—felt a bit stiff or unnatural. Thankfully, that smoothed out as the story went on.

The lack of quotation marks when the characters are speaking really threw me off and took some getting used to.

By the end, I think the message is about finding your own version of family, even when the one you were born into doesn’t quite work. It wasn’t perfect, but Palaver had a quiet depth that stuck with me.

This novel felt very personal, poignant, esoteric. The first pages depict stills of the city of Tokyo, where “the son,” a protagonist who never gains a name, lives and has for the decade preceding the novel’s events. I enjoyed having the photographs as part of the experience in setting the scene throughout the story.
A Houston transplant, this novel depicts this gay man’s journey of self discovery and found family. And even that feels too simple. “The mother” makes an impulsive trip out to Japan to see him for the first time since that decade passed. To spend significant time with him after they hadn’t even called in years.
This novel not only is about the importance and beauty in found family- it’s about the growth individuals in a traditional [biological] family might undergo to find one another again. To rebuild a new relationship on authenticity, honesty, and the acceptance of imperfection we experience as part of the human condition. And there’s witty banter between the mother and the son, as well as between the son and his friends and lovers, adding a fun element to the otherwise serious and heavy energy the themes within the novel present. It explores the experience of sonder, a revelation in just how complex every individual human experience holds. There is much to the world and every individual human’s experience within it.
This book is fun. It’s serious. It’s beautiful. And it’s tragic. Though it was somewhat on the shorter side- the ebook was 204 pages- it packs an impact. I would still leave my rating at 4 out of 5 stars, though I would recommend it as strongly as my 5 star reads. I have my own nitpicky issues, which include:
-I have a lack of understanding for the narrative choice to give every character but the two protagonists a name. Why is this? There’s difficulty in defining the balance between a personalization and depersonalization of the characters’ experience through this choice.
-A rather minor character toward the end of the novel feeds a cat milk. This character is described to be a veterinary assistant and good with animals… but cats shouldn’t really have milk! A quick Internet search would show it is not recommended in a veterinary sphere, and this stereotypical “cats love milk” thing is a bit outdated (unlike much of the novels more important themes of subverting norms). I just found that bit annoying.
I am grateful to NetGalley for providing me the opportunity to read and review this ARC, and of course, a thank you to Bryan Washington’s publishers for this, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

The main storyline of this book is the visit of the mother to her estranged son, who lives in Tokyo, interwoven with flashbacks to the mother's childhood in Jamaica and the son's life in Tokyo. While other characters have names, the main characters are only referred to as "the mother" and "the son", and this relationship forms the trunk of the book, as we slowly fill in the gaps of their roots. I was somewhat surprised by the way the relationship develops and feel that the reader ends up knowing the characters better than they know each other. But I enjoyed the narration style, the cast of supporting characters, and the setting; in particular, the look at Tokyo's multicultural queer community. The book ends up being a sort of narrative meditation on the many ways we love people, in actions more than words.

This was my first book of Bryan Washington’s and my first time reading a book with writing like this. It was so interesting and I quite enjoyed the almost stream of consciousness like format.

The novel details the complicated relationship between a gay son and his almost apathetic (or so it seems) Jamaican mother, during her unexpected visit to his place in Tokyo after not having contact for more than a decade.

The visit comes years after the son’s escape from his stale relationship with his family, and after his father died and his dictionary definition of a cis straight man is preferred by their mother.

The son upon moving to Tokyo was able to find comfortability or at least routine in his queer life, he “enjoyed how his hyper-visibility folded into anonymity” in the bustling city.

When his mother arrives, the story covers their walking on eggshells type of relationship. It shifts back and forth between different time periods such as when the son lived back home, before the mom moved to Texas where the son grew up, and when her best friend and brother succumbed to the reality of AIDS. Then always coming back to the present day with her in Tokyo.

I think the complicated relationship between the son and mother stems from many things: the harsh expectations of immigrant families in America and the mother’s past interactions with queerness. She was hesitant to accept her sons sexuality because of her brothers experience.

Throughout the ups and downs of the mother’s visit she ultimately came to feel neutral about the sons colorful life in Tokyo.

What a realistic and intimate story.

Thank you #NetGalley #Palaver

i really liked washington’s prior works, but this one fell a little flat for me. i’m not sure whether i buy his portrayal of japan – i don’t think one needs to live in a place to accurately describe it, but i do think it lacked nuance and depth in many ways.

I really loved the atmosphere in this one. However there were some characters I wished stuck around more. Throughout. The plot dragged a little and made the reading time just a bit longer than usual. But still an enjoyable read.

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 love how disjointed this story is, hopping back and forth between time and memories, because life can feel that way sometimes; unconnected and incongruous. I do wish there was a little more meat here to work with, more exploration into the characters wants and feelings. The short-form style is very good at the conversational aspects of this type of narrative, but it also made me feel like an outsider without any information to base these people off of. I really enjoyed this story, the family and found family themes throughout are tear-jerkingly sweet, but the stylistic omission of deep character study was lost on me.

The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘palaver’ as

Unnecessary, elaborate or complex procedure
An improvised conference between two groups typically those without a shared land or culture.

This is reflected in the relationship between the son and the mother—we never know their names, and they are referred to by these terms throughout the novel. I don’t think one can conclude from the use of these words that Washington wants us to feel that the issues they are undergoing are universal; it is just to firmly establish the relationship between the two. The mother born in Jamaica has travelled from the USA to Japan to visit her son whom she has not seen for several years. The relationship is strained. The reason for this estrangement is revealed bit by bit but a lot of the misunderstanding and the conflict are understated. One never really understands the reason for the son’s leaving his home and never looking back. Yes his mother did seem to prefer the brother, Chris, more than the son but then Chris has returned from the east and is more vulnerable

Washington seems to hold the view that we need to accept that we are all broken people with faults and imperfections. However, it is in the connection between human beings that conflicts come closer to resolution, understanding and healing. It is the search for this understanding which is critical not its resolution. Inspite of the animosity between mother and son, and the son’s refusal to have a photograph taken along with his mother, he has no hesitation and instinctively comes to her rescue when she is about to be hit by a speeding vehicle even at the cost of injuring his arm.

The prose is simple and the style, lucid and limpid. The structure is more complex and moves between people and times rather unexpectedly. However, Washington does use this to stop a narrative at a crucial point and take it up some pages later building up suspense and the desire to know what comes next.

Washington also creates a vibrant and engaging picture of Japan—the people and especially the neighbourhoods and the scenery outside the big cities. The book is interspersed with very captivating photographs of streets and houses.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for sending me such a wonderful book to read and enjoy.

Another great novel by Bryan Washington. I loved the description of Tokyo and the story of a mother and her son.

I feel like the more I read Washington's fiction, the more I understand humanity just that little bit more.

This was exquisite, and deeply reflective for someone who has also bumped around the globe and called home to cities I wasn't raised in, and found family in friends.

This has all the hallmarks of his fiction that keen readers will have so admired - the way food nudges at the silences and becomes its own lingo, the easy way the reader falls into the flow of the story and the slow ebbs it makes into these lives. How complex and nuanced each character is without that ever being "the point." We're more than what happens to us, and even more so, it doesn't get to define us. For a story set in one of the most populated cities in the world, what was most striking for me was how much people can mean to those in their immediate orbit. That people can find each other and matter immensely in the midst of all going on (earthquakes and all). That relationships don't need labels or explanations, or to mean anything to anyone outside of them. And inside of these is where the world and its value is.

I also loved how deeply Washington brought us into the son and the mother's imaginary - they're the only two characters that remain unnamed (even Taro the cat is named) - gosh I'd love I bookclub to talk about why he does this and how powerful it is in the narrative! How much it focuses you on "them," as individuals and collectively - their existence felt tied to each other because they're always referenced with this identifier, never a name of their own. Even after finishing this, I keep thinking about how much the reader is immersed in knowing them without this identifier. Super clever! And I loved that the final part switches perspective up so radically.

I keep saying that my latest read by Washington becomes my new favourite - and I love that I get to be a reader while Washington is writing. Its magical to witness a writer just completely coming into their own.

In Palaver, Bryan Washington delivers a quietly profound work that pulses with emotional intimacy and honesty. He reflects on identity, queerness, grief, love, and family - not in search of resolution, but in search of understanding. What stands out most is the quiet peace found within acceptance: not the neat, polished kind, but the raw, lived-in kind that grows from choosing love again and again.

What lingers most is the sense of peace Washington finds - not in perfection, but in the raw, imperfect spaces of acceptance and love. His writing holds space for vulnerability without spectacle, allowing softness to coexist with pain.

Palaver is not just a book, it’s an invitation to sit in the quiet moments with yourself and with others, to consider the many forms that connection and healing can take.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This is an interesting story. We follow a mother and son who remain unnamed through a journey to Japan in the midst of dealing with various facets of their lives.

The pacing is definitely a bit weird, and the start is a very slow build up into the relationships that surround the both of them. The son pushes against his mother quite a bit, and it makes for a bit of an unlikeable narrative because the characters just simply aren’t able to be connected with.

I did think there was a good undercurrent of some of the social issues that are part and parcel of the existence of queer people as well, but these themes weren’t explained quite as well as I would have liked them to be.

Still very much a solid read, but it just could have meandered a bit less and been a little bit more committed to the characters.

Bryan Washington is so good at writing beautifully simple prose surrounding complex narrative structures. After reading "Family Meal" earlier this year, I should've expected Palaver to be up to some narrative tricks, but it still took my by surprise how fluidly Washington elides present and past on the same page, shifting the timeline beneath a reader's feet, much in the way that memory itself works, the brain one moment in the present, the next sliding backwards into a memory that can feel just as vivid. Also similar to "Family Meal," Washington's explorations of found family and tenderness were incredibly cathartic and moving, the payoffs wonderful. My only minor caveat is that the son's payoff with his mother felt less earned than that of the catharsis with his friends. Otherwise, this is an easy recommendation for anyone looking for queer literary fiction.

I went into this not knowing what to expect. I was positively surprised! I loved the emotion and how realistic the characters were portrayed. Definitely recommend.

I enjoyed Bryan Washington's previous books, but this one i loved!
The son and mother reunite for the first time after a long period of silence, meeting in Tokyo where the son now lives. Slowly, they begin to reconnect and get to know each other again. As the story unfolds, the reasons behind their estrangement are gradually revealed, and we witness their careful steps toward reconciliation.

The language is very pared-down—minimalist, with lots of dialogue and almost no inner monologue. And yet, I was surprised by how deeply it moved me.

What I especially loved was the sense of community the son has built for himself in Tokyo, and the relationships he's formed with the people around him—particularly when seen through the mother's eyes.

The book is also a love letter to Japan.

This is my first time reading a novel by Bryan Washington and I have to say, he blew it out of the water. The sheer emotion in his writing is so evident and the characters felt so realistic, I could relate to their problems, their fears, and their dreams. I liked that it explored a messy family dynamic and what it means to reconcile over a difficult past. Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend.

This really worked for me on so many levels. The writing is pretty sparse and at times emotionally distant, but that actually fits the overall mood and what the book is trying to say. The main characters—referred to simply as “the mother” and “the son”—aren’t the only ones looking for something more. Most of the people in the story have left their hometowns behind, hoping for a better life, but what they often find instead is a deep, quiet loneliness.

The book does a great job capturing that feeling—of being adrift in a big city, trying to forget things, but constantly remembering...trying to find connection or meaning through people, sex, conversation, distraction, whatever’s available. One thing I really appreciated was how it slowly and gently reveals each character’s trauma. Nothing is spelled out too quickly or dramatically—it just unfolds in a way that feels honest and real, moving between gracefully between the past and present.

Tokyo, where the story takes place, is incredibly vivid throughout. The neighborhoods, the restaurants and bars, the crowded trains, and especially the food—it all comes through so clearly that you can practically feel yourself there. The city really becomes part of the emotional landscape of the book. Loved it.

*Palaver* is Bryan Washington’s most intimate and emotionally layered novel yet. Set in Tokyo, it follows a young man who's built a quiet life far from his hometown of Houston—until his estranged mother shows up after ten years apart. What follows is a deeply human story about family, forgiveness, and the messiness of reconnecting. Washington’s writing is subtle, honest, and full of heart. He captures the awkward silences and emotional weight between people who love each other but don’t always know how to say it. The Tokyo setting adds depth without stealing the show—it’s the characters and their quiet unraveling that really shine. It’s tender, thoughtful, and lingers with you in all the right ways.

A son, a mother. Both a bit broken by the other, Palaver is a documentation of the first step in the healing process and how we find home in others. This ended up being slightly different from what I expected, but it was still a quite enjoyable read.

The son lives in Tokyo. Originally from Texas, the child of Jamaican immigrants, he felt that he had no choice but to leave. Has father dead, his brother broken from war, and his mother has seemingly made her choice. So the son leaves. He tries to make a new home as far away from his old one as possible, and he does find his people in the Tokyo queer community. Some are other immigrants, some are locals, but all have a part of themselves to share with the son. The mother arrives with next to no warning. It has been years since she has seen her son, so she makes the time to see him, arriving in a new place she's never really dreamed of going to and without a plan for when she's there. Tokyo may be new to her, but finding herself in a new place unexpectedly is not. She left Jamaica when she was a young adult with her friends, leaving her brother behind. A brother she cared so deeply about, and who reminds her of her son. These are the things she wants to talk to her son about, but his heart is just too hurt. He struggles with accommodating his mother unexpectedly, reigning in his feelings of animosity, and wrestling with complications with his life in Tokyo, and the mother is doing nothing to help him, as she harbors pains of her own. As the mother's trip unfolds, confessions and pleas come to light, and both the mother and the son can't help but come out of it changed people.

If I were to use one word to describe this book, it would be "intimate". This was a deeply intimate lens into two peoples lives from their childhood to current day. We got to spend a lot of time with each of them, and watch them as they wrestle with their stormy thoughts and emotions, both hurting and healing the other time and time again. I was expecting this to be a book solely about the resolution, or destruction, of the relationship between the son and the mother, but we got so much more. In fact, the majority of this book the son and the mother were not together, each spending time apart and wrestling with their emotions. And this is something that I think could have been a bit better.

The son was hurt, I really get that. We spend a lot of time with him in the present day reflecting on how hurt he was. We spend time with him in his past, learning about what led to him leaving. But we never really get The Moment that hurt him. I never really truly understood what happened, why he left, why he was harboring so much animosity towards his mother, or his brother. And you might think that this was an intentional decision, that we never learn about The Inciting Incident that broke this family apart, but that's not exactly the case. I think we do see that moment, but from my perspective I was left thinking... that's it? That's what drove the wedge? I don't get it.. And that's not to dismiss his actions, emotions are weird things. But I feel as if we were supposed to really empathize with the son in this moment, but I found myself more confused than anything about what exactly happened.

The mother was a different beast. I think the intention was for her to be sort of headstrong, but she came off more often as petulant. The son always felt like the mature one while the mother spared no moment to throw a barb the son's way. Considering the fact that she made the choice to come see her son and, supposedly, start the process of repairing their relationship, I guess I would have expected that she would make more of an effort rather than showing up and being unpleasant to him the entire time while he only reacted stoically. I appreciated the evolving relationship we got between the son and the mother, but the son's animosity mixed with the mother's immaturity dampened what I felt could have been a more impactful developing relationship.

That aside, I really REALLY loved the stories about each of the son's and mother's lives independently. I loved the care and attention to detail devoted to fleshing out the son's various friends and lovers. I loved his relationship with his students, and I loved the glimpses we got into his past. I loved the mother's journey in growing accustomed to Tokyo, her interactions with Ben, and the cultural differences she faced at every corner. Probably my favorite part of the book was learning about the mother's past, her brother, and her friends. I think it did a really good job of setting the stage for why she is like she is as an adult, and made her to be very sympathetic for a story that could have easily written her off as more of the "villain" of the two.

Despite a few head scratching character decisions, this was an enjoyable read. I love strong character driven books, and I found this to be a novel, well-done story that put complex character development to the forefront.