Family Meal
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"Achingly and beautifully etched. . . Washington is a generous and gentle writer, with a profound capacity to face the cruelty and pain of contemporary American life while simultaneously offering his characters—and readers—an expansive space for self-forgiveness, hope, and nourishment."—The Washington Post
An irresistible, intimate novel about how those know us longest—even when they hurt us most—can also set the benchmark for love, from the National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of Memorial and Lot
The ghost of Kai, the love of Cam's life, won't leave Cam alone. He follows Cam from LA back home to Houston, his visits wild, tender, and unpredictable. But Cam has changed, and when he reenters the orbit of his childhood best friend TJ and his family's bakery, neither Cam nor TJ is sure how to navigate their charged estrangement. Searching for a way past all the wounds and secrets—a way to be okay together, maybe for the first time— the pair find hope and sustenance from the most unlikely source.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Tragedy, healing, and really tasty baked goods heal a man’s grief in this dynamic, moving novel. After the death of his longtime partner and soulmate, Kai, Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, where he works as a bartender and dulls his pain with drugs and sex. Haunted by visits from Kai’s spirit, Cam tries to reconnect with his former best friend, TJ, who’s feeling abandoned. We were awestruck by the raw power of Bryan Washington’s unfiltered portrait of grief. Once Cam takes a job at TJ’s family bakery, the story begins to shift as the shared pleasure of good food helps the friends heal their bond. As with his wonderful debut novel, Memorial, Washington writes in a style that’s daring, original, and very readable. Family Meal is an emotionally intelligent tribute to love in its many forms.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Washington's tender, melancholic latest (following Memorial) explores the complicated nature of grief and love. Cam, mourning the death of his lover Kai, is back in Houston after spending time in rehab, but he's still struggling with addiction and an eating disorder. When the bar he's working at closes, Cam accepts childhood friend TJ's job offer at his family bakery. Between his visions of the deceased Kai and attempts to ease his pain with random hookups, Cam's despair is palpable: he feels he is "suffocating from the weight of myself." At the narrative's midpoint, the perspective shifts first to Kai's flashbacks, then to TJ, who observes that Cam's grief and psychological work in rehab have transformed him into "a weed in the concrete that finally found wiggle room." TJ's parallel story is equally consuming, as he navigates his secret relationship with Ian and his budding romance with Noel, a new employee at the bakery. When Noel asks TJ to cook a meal for their family, the two begin a tentative relationship that forces TJ to question what he really wants. Washington brings his tough but fragile characters to life with quietly powerful prose, as when TJ reflects, "I didn't want to be accepted or tolerated. I wanted to just be." Readers will be deeply moved.
