Gifted is a compelling exploration of identity and belonging, perfectly balancing fantasy elements with real-life struggles. It’s a great pick for fans of character-driven stories with a twist.

Nothing much happens in the book, certainly no dramatic thrashing it out and discussing all the problems between mother and daughter, but then you wouldn’t expect that of a Japanese novella.
The author probably chooses to emphasise the narrator’s hidden grief and frozen emotional state with these deliberately pared-down, repetitive sentences, but, as is often the case with translations from Japanese, it can sound very flat and awkward in translation, so I was not convinced by the style.

*I received a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review*

Gifted is a novella reflecting on mother-daughter relationships, following a protagonist whose mother is dying. It delves into the complexity of a seemingly abusive relationship, with fragments of the narrator’s past being woven in between descriptions of the mundane, juxtaposing ordinary actions with shocking memories.

I have mixed feelings about this as it felt very passive at times, as though I was watching the narrative unfold at a distance. This made it an incredibly fast read, even for the short 120-page length, and the ending felt quite abrupt. I thought this was effective in the way it reflects time passing and how quickly things change, but it also meant we never got a full picture of what happened to our narrator. The emotion was definitely there though, and the seamless movement between the past and her current reality made me focused in on how her mother’s actions may have influenced her life, despite the fact that a lot of gaps were left to be filled by the reader.

An interesting portrait of a strained relationship, with a strong focus on grief and memory. I’ll definitely be looking out for more by this author!

Thank you to Scribe UK and NetGalley for a copy of this. A short, poignant read set in Tokyo’s nightlife district, with a beautiful writing style that explores a complicated mother-daughter relationship.

Gifted by Suzumi Suzuki, and translated by Allison Markin Powell presents a touching and nuanced portrayal of a troubled mother–daughter relationship, deftly exploring delicate themes such as mourning, anger, anxiety, and the hope for reconciliation. The first-person narrative draws readers deeply into the protagonist's emotions, creating an intimate connection to her inner struggles. As the protagonist navigates her complex feelings toward her mother, the rawness of grief and the tension of unresolved conflict come alive on the page. Yet, amid the turmoil, there are moments of tenderness and the possibility of healing, making the story both heartbreaking and hopeful and the delicate writing adds depth to this emotional journey, making it an impactful read.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! Gifted by Suzuki Suzumi is translated from the Japanese (by Allison Markin Powell) and about a troubled mother-daughter relationship. On paper, this is the perfect book for me, but unfortunately it didn’t really leave an impression me. It’s only short, 100 pages or so, and so it had to pack a brutal punch which I don’t think it did. It kind of just ~was~. Considering it tackles topics like childhood abuse, sex work, a dying parent, it lacks the emotion you’d expect. It’s detached, likely purposeful, but for me that style didn’t work. I’d probably give this author’s work another go, but sadly this one missed the mark.

A short and profound meditation that centres on the relationship between a, daughter and her dying mother, that contains so much more than this. It covers Tokyo life as a sex worker, family relationships and fleeting moments that have a lasting effect as they are experienced and afterwards.

The matter of fact narration, the disturbing details that stay with you, the fact that as much is said in the gaps between the words as in the sentences themselves. Very little comfort is to be found in the pages, but the story rings very real and very true. Intriguing.

Published 24 October 2024. A short novella, translated from the Japanese, and set in Tokyo. The book is about a mother-daughter relationship. Our narrator is a twenty something hostess and now her mother, who she left home to get away from, is dying. What I was expecting was a coming together of these two before the mother's death - a death-bed reconciliation type of thing. What I got was something more melancholy. There are no meaningful conversations between mother and daughter, she is too ill. Our narrator revisits her past, the cruelty she received at her mother's hands, her 'escape' and her life as a hostess while her mother concentrated on writing poetry. We see lots of mundane activities - catching a taxi, the 24 hour drugstore, her unlocking routine when she gets home. We also learn a little about the lifestyle of a hostess in Japan. Surprisingly we also learn quite a lot about the mother, not from mother-daughter interactions, but from a man that our narrator meets at the hospital which could explain her mother's actions perhaps. There is a feeling of loneliness throughout this book, our narrator always felt that she was a burden to her mother and now drifts from club to club never making any meaningful relationships - just friends who work in the same clubs who sometimes show kindness. I found this full of empty spaces - like the mother's poetry - where you have to either try and piece things together or be content with not knowing. I would have liked a more emotional connection to the narrator - I felt there was a distance but that might be deliberate as she doesn't seem to have emotional connections to anyone.

I did enjoy this book but not as much as I was expecting to from its description. It is a really interesting exploration of mother-daughter relationships as well as of the red-light, entertainment industry in Japan. This was particularly fascinating as I have read very little about it in the past. I also enjoyed the writing style, which flowed easily, and the descriptions of small, everyday events and items. I did, however, feel that the narrative suffered due to its shortness. I struggled to really connect or empathise with the characters, who seemed to almost remain behind a wall, slightly out of reach for both the narrator and the reader. Whilst this distance from other characters could be a stylistic choice to highlight the isolation of our narrator, I found that struggling to empathise with and understand the narrator herself impacted on my enjoyment of the narrative. Despite this, it was a quick and enjoyable read that I would recommend to others.

This is the perfect length for such a novel. The entire time I was reading it, it felt more as a memoir than a novel, it doesn’t overly exaggerate or dramatize the accounts so it feels natural and real.

I couldn’t annotate it directly on the NetGalley app, but because I badly wanted to, I didn’t mind stopping to write down quotes in my personal notes app. An example of an extremely simple and sad, yet beautiful portrayal of someone surrendering to the reality of life: “I had left the futon bedding spread out beside the table, assuming my mother would be back after receiving treatment. But by the third day, it became clear that she wouldn't return.”

This story recounts a daughter’s thoughts and day-to-day life at the time her mother was dying. She primarily mentions her relationship with her mother but also her escapes from the pains in her life. The protagonist clearly suffers from past traumas and perhaps depression because of the way she keeps escaping to the night life of Tokyo, always wanting a bit more than just being home alone or next to her mother’s bed at the hospital. And yet she constantly feels guilty for not always being with her sick mother despite their rocky relationship.

I liked it enough to finish it but I can see why some readers might find it boring. I say it’s the perfect length, but if it were a tad longer, I would’ve found myself pushing to finish it. Although it has beautiful prose, the story felt slightly meandering, especially in the beginning, but once I got the hang of the structure, I was able to read for longer stretches not that it takes long to read.

I’m pleased I finished it because the last section with the poem is heartbreakingly elegant.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for the review copy!

I found this short novella really promising, although some areas definitely needed to be explored more. Perhaps it would have been better as a longer book to give depth and meaning and life to the characters and what they are going through. Overall I did enjoy it, but there is definitely room for more pages as it felt a bit underdeveloped and flat by the end.

A poignant and unsettling account of a mother-daughter relationship in contemporary Japan. There is a lot to unpack here, despite the brevity of this short novel. The protagonist's personal choices and what influence her relationship with her mother had on them gets most of the attention.

I loved the tension between the surface level harshness of the narrative and the tender topics it explored, namely the emotional commitment between a daughter and her mother, despite all. This is particularly revealing as it is set against the background of Japanese nightlife and the role of the "hosts". There is also room to learn more and understand the mother, whose life choices were, in many ways, as constrained as those of the daughter.

I warmly recommend to anyone interested in contemporary Japan and the lives of "hosts" and "hostesses". It will also resonate with anyone trying to understand more about strained mother-daughter relationships and what makes them tick.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with early access to the book in return for an honest review.

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.