There is something rather wonderful about a novel that understands a city without feeling the need to explain it. In Palaver, Bryan Washington gives us a Tokyo that feels lived in rather than visited, a place where the everyday rhythms of life become as important as the people moving through them. Having spent time in Japan myself, I found this particularly enjoyable. There is a difference between writing about a place from observation and writing about it from familiarity, and Washington understands the difference very well.
Tokyo is an extraordinary city, but not necessarily for the reasons that travel guides would have us believe. Beyond the neon lights, crowded crossings, quiet shrines and seemingly endless railway networks, there is a quieter, more intimate Tokyo. It is found in the small shops and kissaten, in the rituals of everyday life, the neighbourhood streets and the peculiar coexistence of solitude and very close proximity. Washington captures these details with considerable sensitivity.
What I particularly enjoyed was how naturally Japan emerges through the narrative. The setting never feels like an elaborate backdrop designed to remind us that we are somewhere exotic. Instead, it simply exists, with its own routines, expectations and occasional contradictions. Washington’s familiarity with Japan, where he has spent time living, helps explain the confidence with which he writes about it. He does not seem particularly interested in presenting Tokyo as a spectacle, and the novel is all the better for it.
At the heart of Palaver, however, is the relationship between a mother and her son. Their interactions are among the most compelling aspects of the book. Washington has a keen ear for the complicated ways in which family members communicate, particularly when there is a history of things left unsaid. Conversations can be affectionate, frustrating, awkward and unexpectedly funny, sometimes all at once. And there is a cat!
I really enjoyed those scenes with the cat, as they talk about a familiar place, even when that place is disrupted. These type of scenes can also reveal aspects of a character which dialogue alone cannot. Cats, of course, are famously indifferent to human emotional complications, and that indifference can be rather useful in fiction. Here, the interactions bring warmth, humour and a welcome change of rhythm to the narrative.
Palaver is, ultimately, a novel about relationships, communication and the difficulty of understanding those closest to us. But for me, it is also a novel about place, and about how a city can quietly shape the lives and conversations of its inhabitants. Washington lets us discover the story between the Mother and Son in ordinary moments, with escapades into the past and how those moments inform their present. It is the accumulation of those moments, gestures, misunderstanding and fleeting moments that make this a novel worth reading.
I came away remembering the mother and son, smiling at the cat, and thinking about Tokyo. That combination is perhaps the best indication of how much I enjoyed the book.