Written in startlingly beautiful prose, Harmless Like You is set
across New York, Connecticut, and Berlin, following 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's
abandonment of him when he was only two years old.
The novel opens when Yuki is sixteen and her father is posted back to
Japan. Though she and her family have been living as outsiders in New
York City, Yuki opts to stay, intoxicated by her friendship with the
beautiful aspiring model Odile, the energy of the city, and her desire
to become an artist. But when she becomes involved with an older man and
the relationship turns destructive, Yuki's life is unmoored. Harmless
Like You is a suspenseful novel about the complexities of identity,
art, adolescent friendships, and familial bonds that asks--and
ultimately answers--how does a mother desert her son?