I received this book from NetGalley and Scribe UK in exchange for a free and honest review.

This translated book is set in Tokyo and follows a protagonist in her mid twenties who has a strained relationship with her mother. Her mom was an unemotional and unattached parent that caused her bodily harm. Her mom dying in hospital is making her rethink a lot of things about her life especially around her friendships and employment. She is employed as a hostess in a bar and is used to the night life, a chance meeting illuminates her mother's mysterious past and could possibly explain her behaviour. An interesting study of a tense mother-daughter relationship and Tokyo's nightlife. I would recommend.

The translation by Allison Markin Powell was seamless too.

An intriguing portrait of a mother-daughter relationship which pans out across Tokyo nights and in hospital rooms. I appreciated the book’s nuanced portrayal of the experience of sex workers, a topic I believe to be is often underrepresented (or poorly represented) in popular novels. The writing was well-paced — while not plot-driven as such, there was a real momentum to the story and I found myself always eager to read on.

I’m afraid I just didn’t connect with this at all. I found the writing style extremely plain and dull. The mother-daughter drama depicted here is so tepid as to barely exist. Lacking in thematic, emotional, and narrative resonance, it would have been a real challenge for me to finish this had it not been for the fact that this is a short novella - around just 100 pages.

Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC to review!

2.5 stars rounded up!!

I had to read some reviews after I finished this just to see if I was in the wrong or had a different experience but I found a few that basically voiced my exact thoughts and feelings.

I feel like this would have had a bigger impact if the events that happened had more focus on them rather than other, not really important instances. It's as if the focus was put on anything else than the things that happened to her.

The dynamic and words she wrote about the relationship was interesting and I really liked some of the prose.

However, I am excited to have found Suzumi Suzuki and will keep an eye out for future work as her

Gifted is a short novel about a woman working as a hostess in Tokyo who suddenly has to care for her terminally ill mother she left home to get away from. The unnamed narrator lives and works in Kabukicho, the famed entertainment district in Shinjuku, and her tattoos hide the burn scars from an incident with her mother when she was younger. Now, her mother is very ill, and stays with her between hospital visits, and the narrator must face her relationship with her mother as well as the other people in her life.

This book is a dreamlike experience to read, following the narrator's thoughts and her constant returning to her apartment, and offering glimpses into elements of her life rather than in-depth explorations given the short length. You never quite hear everything about her and her mother, but that feels right given that she doesn't know everything about her mother, and her mother's death isn't bringing some dramatic closure to their troubled relationship. Instead, you hear about how she unlocks her door—the main form of safety she seems to have—and snippets about her and others working in Kabukicho, not just the hostess and host clubs and the clients, but also the twenty-four hour drugstore, the difficulty getting a taxi. The way these parts are woven together was something I really enjoyed, though there were occasional points where the translation made for clunky sentences that were hard to get your head around.

Gifted offers a novella about a difficult mother-daughter relationship that also picks up on the tiny details of the narrator's life and offers glimpses into Kabukicho. Like the poetry the narrator's mother writes, this short book doesn't give you everything laid out as a chronological narrative, but leaves space for piecing things together or not knowing.

This is a poignant novella that delves into the complexities of a strained mother-daughter relationship set against the backdrop of Tokyo's Kabukicho nightlife district. The story unfolds as the unnamed narrator, a hostess working in Tokyo's red-light district, is unexpectedly visited by her estranged and terminally ill mother. As they navigate the final days of the mother’s life, the novella explores themes of parental cruelty, unresolved tensions, and the burden of past trauma.

Suziki’s writing style is marked by its hazy, dreamlike quality, which mirrors the disorientation and emotional detachment of the narrator. The story lacks a traditional plot, instead offering a slice-of-life narrative that immerses the reader in the protagonist's world of fleeting connections and unspoken emotions. The setting of Kabukicho, with its neon lights and transient relationships, further amplifies the sense of isolation that permeates the story.

What struck me most about Gifted is how deeply sad it felt, leaving me unsure of how I felt by the time I finished. There’s an almost oppressive sense of melancholy throughout, with so much left unresolved between the narrator and her mother. Their relationship is fraught with unspoken pain and regret, and Suziki does not provide any easy resolutions or moments of clarity. Instead, the novella lingers in that uncomfortable space where love, resentment, and guilt all coexist, making it a difficult but powerful read.

The intensely personal nature of the story made it feel almost voyeuristic, as if I was peering into the most private and uncomfortable moments of someone’s life. This raw, unfiltered portrayal of the narrator’s relationship with her mother, who had always seemed more interested in her own aspirations than in her daughter’s well-being, is both unsettling and deeply affecting.

However, the introspective style may not resonate with all readers. Some may find the prose uneven, with moments that feel underdeveloped or overly simplistic. Yet, for those who appreciate character-driven stories that explore the darker, more complex aspects of human relationships, Gifted offers a delicate and evocative portrayal of loss, solitude, and the fragile bonds that connect us.

In the end, I was left feeling conflicted. While I appreciated the emotional depth and the evocative writing, I couldn’t shake the sense of sadness and unresolved tension that lingered after I closed the book.

I expected to like this more based on the blurb.
The premise of a young woman being visited by her estranged and dying mum, and starting to revisit her past is interesting as well as the difficult themes in this book.
The prose felt uneven; I enjoyed some of the descriptiveness for the mundane and wanted more.

I loved the dreamy sequences that this book had but felt a little underwhelmed at times. It felt like the story needed more depth for the characters to truly stick with me. The prose was very hazy and dreamlike which made me enjoy the plot more.

I found this an uneven book: at times upsetting, at others almost mundane. I struggled to see the writing as 'sharp, elegant prose' in this translation: it's plain and some sentences just don't parse well: 'I... then went for a quick drink at the club where the host who the woman from the bath-house said now had Eri's dog worked'.

At its best, though, this deals in an emotionally restrained way with a problematic mother-daughter relationship heightened by the presence of near death. The setting against the red light district of Tokyo exacerbates disconnected relationships and a sense of solitude only briefly alleviated by tentative connections. The ending is especially emotive with an unfinished poem saying what has been unsaid, but without sentimentality.

This ends up being a delicate evocation of these female lives: sensitive, restrained and undramatic. 3.5 stars

Gifted by Suzumi Suziki is a moving and thought-provoking story of a complex mother and daughter relationship. Despite a childhood where she felt almost a burden to a mother more interested in dreams of becoming a successful poet than guiding her daughter through life ,the book begins with the unnamed narrator looking after her terminally ill mother. With the daughter leaving home young and drifting into life as a Hostess in Tokyo's red light district she feels remote from her ailing mother,even while caring for her,and reflects on a life of drifting from club to club with only those in the same field of work as friends.

This is a moving,and often beautiful, book as the narrator learns more about her mother's life and her true feelings towards the daughter who always felt like a liability even as the older woman is on her deathbed. The tawdry reality of the red light district and the often damaged people who work in it plays a big part in the story,not least the loyalty amongst the workers and sometimes the surprising tenderness shown towards each other,often by people who have not known much of that from other sources in their lives.

3.5 rounded up.

I was surprised at how immersive and emotional this relatively tiny book was! Written in a dreamy, hazy style, without chapters, this is a slice-of-life examining a fractured relationship between a dying mother and her adult daughter. An artful, character-driven piece, we follow our unnamed narrator in her juxtaposed world of visiting her dying mother in the hospital and through the Kabukichō nightlife.

This book is driven almost entirely in vibes - there isn't a plot - and while those vibes feel sad, lonely, lost, at times, there's also an undercurrent of hope that stops the book feeling entirely bleak. There were some conversations and relationships that didn't make sense to me as a reader, largely because of the absence of plot. This could be a really great book for reading groups: short, readable, and highly discussable!

I liked the writing style a lot. I loved Eri's dog. But, I did come away from this wondering what, if anything, the book's purpose or message was.