Gifted
Gifted
Suzumi Suzuki
Translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell.
In the last days of her mother’s life, a young woman living in Tokyo’s red-light district is thrust into a split existence. By day, she negotiates her new role as caregiver of an abusive parent. By night, she drifts home from the hospital, goes out with other sex-workers, thinks about quitting smoking, and numbly remembers Eri, a friend who died the summer before. Her sensitivity to the details of her surroundings grounds an otherwise unstable world, one where each interaction requires a subtle negotiation of economic and sexual power, and proximity rarely means intimacy or connection.
Drawing on her own experiences as a hostess and adult film actor, GIFTED—Suzumi Suzuki’s first novel to be translated into English—offers a nuanced, frank, and intimate portrayal of the lives of a mother and daughter getting by (or not) in an industry rarely depicted authentically in literary fiction.
Praise for GIFTED
“Demonstrates that death is the only way forward. Oozes with maternal cruelty.”—Yōko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police
“There is a vigilance in her sentences. The author takes responsibility for every word.”—Shuichi Yoshida, author of Parade
“In this unsentimental novella, a young woman working as a bar hostess and sex worker in Tokyo reckons with several unresolved personal traumas... Based on Suzuki’s own experiences in the adult industry, the book chronicles the young woman’s wanderings from bar to bar, hospital to home, with brutal honesty.”—The New Yorker
“Gifted lyrically captures a moment in time, unwrapping the bittersweet denouement in a fraught relationship between a mother and daughter.”—Kris Kosaka, The Japan Times
"Gifted explores beauty, and the body itself, as a troubling inheritance, a complicated gift that, at least for women, belongs to you but is never fully in your control."—Rebecca Hussey, Words Without Borders
"A unique and propulsive story reminiscent of the emotional elusiveness of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman. . . With a style both clinical and aloof, the novella unfolds a heartbreaking story about the distance and closeness between mother and daughter.”—Asian Review of Books
“A short, pungent novella that packs a punch and tastes like cigarettes and soju on an empty stomach after four hours of sleep. For readers of Clarice Lispector and Barbara Comyns.”—Devon Dunn, Book Culture (New York City)
“Pitiless and sharp…a gleaming pocket knife of a novel stabbing into the heart of maternal abuse, inherited trauma, and the cyclical nature of sex work.”—Mathuson Anthony, Book Club Bar (New York City)
“Explores a fascinating Japanese subculture missing from the many translated novels we’ve seen recently from Japanese authors. That the novel and protagonist are based on the author’s own life gives Gifted an added layer of interest.”—Grace Sullivan, Fountain Bookstore (Richmond, VA)
Product Info
First Published: October 1, 2024
Fiction
Paperback | 5.25 x 8 | 108 Pages
Rights: NA
978-8-893389-00-5