There are books you read, and there are books you sit with. Bryan Washington’s Palaver is the second kind.
I read the entire novel in one sitting. It was a marvellous day.
Washington’s latest novel is a quiet, aching story about a mother and son who haven’t really spoken in a decade, and what happens when one of them turns up on the other’s doorstep.
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The story
We only ever know the two leads as “the mother” and “the son”.
The son has spent more than a decade in Tokyo, working as an English tutor and building a life among the city’s queer community, a long way from his family’s homophobia back in Houston.
Then, with no warning, the mother arrives at his apartment.
His life isn’t exactly tidy when she gets there. He’s distant from his family and sleeping with Taku, a married man.
Back home, his brother Chris is in prison. Chris never accepted his brother’s sexuality, and that fracture sits underneath almost every conversation in the book.
The mother has her own history to reckon with, too. Much of the novel circles her relationship with her brother Stefan from her life in Jamaica, even as she finds herself drawn into a new connection with Ben, a restaurant owner.
Across Tokyo, the two of them talk around, or avoid their past.
No names, no quotation marks
Washington never names his two main characters, and it’s a deliberate choice.
This was done, according to Washington to works as a kind of emotional shorthand. The words “mother” and “son” arrive already carrying every expectation, obligation and disappointment we attach to those roles, and Washington lets them do the heavy lifting.
It also makes the story feel universal. You don’t need to be a queer son living abroad, or a mother who flew halfway around the world, to recognise yourself somewhere in these pages.
There are no quotation marks either. Dialogue simply runs into the prose, which suits two people whose communication is so fractured and whose emotional boundaries are so blurred.
It sounds like it should be confusing. It isn’t. You always know who’s talking.
If you loved Memorial
I’ve read Washington’s 2020 novel Memorial, and Palaver reminded me of it constantly.
Memorial followed Houston couple Benson and Mike, and the strange intimacy that grows when Mike heads to Osaka and his mother, Mitsuko, ends up staying with Benson.
Palaver has that same DNA: a parent landing in the middle of an adult child’s life, and two people who find it easier to say things with food than with words.
Because, once again, the food is everything. Washington writes the preparation of a meal with the kind of care most novelists save for a first kiss. The chopping, the simmering, the plating – every dish is doing emotional work.
The Guardian’s review called the novel “a remix of the author’s greatest hits”. I’d argue that’s no bad thing when the hits are this good.
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The photographs
One thing I didn’t expect: Palaver opens with, and is scattered throughout with, actual black-and-white photographs of Tokyo.
They’re wonderful. I found myself staring at them between chapters, wondering whether they were glimpses of the ordinary lives the mother and son were living, or snapshots of the city that inspired Washington while he was writing.
Washington has hinted at an answer himself. Speaking to The Brooklyn Rail, he said that with the images, readers “could have a more concrete sense of place”.
Either way, they slow you down in the best possible way.
The line I’ll never forget
“If you stay anywhere long enough, you lose people.”
That line will stay with me forever.
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The verdict
Ultimately, I loved it.
I’m not alone. The Washington Post’s Alexis Burling called it “an unshakable triumph”, while The Boston Globe’s Marion Winik praised its “texture and delicacy, queer authenticity”.
Palaver isn’t a book of big plot twists. It’s a book of small moments, shared meals and conversations that finally, eventually, go somewhere.
If you’ve ever had a complicated relationship with a parent (so, everyone), I really recommend it.
Clear your calendar. You’ll want to read it in one go.
Palaver by Bryan Washington is published in Australia by Atlantic Books, distributed by Allen & Unwin, and is available now.