
Hanako Footman’s Mongrel is a quietly devastating and beautifully wrought debut that examines what it means to exist between worlds. Told through three interconnected narratives spanning England and Japan, it explores the legacy of grief, shame, and longing that passes through generations of women who are, in different ways, outsiders in their own lives.
What it is about
The novel follows three women, each searching for belonging while navigating the constraints of gender, culture, and expectation.
Mei, a biracial girl growing up in suburban Surrey, loses her Japanese mother at six. In a community that prizes sameness, she hides her heritage and suppresses her growing feelings for her best friend, Fran.
Yuki, a young violinist from rural Japan, arrives in London chasing her dream of performing on the world stage. But her ambition becomes entangled with a predatory older teacher whose affection blurs into control.
Haruka, working as a hostess in Tokyo’s neon-soaked nightlife, grieves a mother who left her with too many unanswered questions. When one of those secrets resurfaces, Haruka is forced to reckon with how much of herself she’s willing to expose to survive.
As their stories unfold, these women’s lives begin to echo and mirror one another. Their shared experiences of desire, alienation, and resilience reveal a larger story about cultural inheritance and the complexity of womanhood across borders.
Why it stands out
Footman’s prose is restrained but lyrical, threading together loneliness and tenderness in equal measure. Each sentence feels deliberate, polished yet raw, like a truth that has been whispered too often to sound rehearsed. Her gift lies in how she renders silence the pauses between words, the things unsaid within families, the quiet ache of wanting to belong.
Thematically, Mongrel explores the fragility of identity when you are caught between nations, languages, and expectations. It asks what happens when you feel you are too much of one thing and not enough of another. It also captures the specific vulnerability of women whose worth is too often defined by the men around them, while still finding moments of defiance and hope.
Footman’s portrait of mixed-race identity is particularly moving. Mei’s story of erasure and self-rejection hits with piercing authenticity. Readers who have ever straddled cultures will recognize the exhaustion of translation not only of language, but of self.
Points of tension
Some readers may find the pacing uneven, especially in the early chapters, and a few male characters are written in broad strokes, serving as archetypes of power and exploitation. Yet this choice seems intentional, keeping the focus on the inner lives of the women who bear the cost of their actions. Footman’s lens is not one of revenge, but of reclamation of voice, of truth, and of identity.
Final thoughts
Mongrel is a striking debut: tender, sorrowful, and steeped in the quiet fury of women who refuse to stay silent. It captures the pain of cultural dislocation, the weight of inherited shame, and the small, luminous acts of self-acceptance that lead toward freedom.
Hanako Footman writes with empathy and precision, crafting a novel that lingers long after its final page a meditation on how love and loss shape the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.
Verdict: A haunting, elegant debut that will speak deeply to anyone who has ever felt split between identities or silenced by belonging to too many worlds at once.
👉 Grab your copy here: Buy on Amazon