Memorial
A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
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4.3 • 6 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Vanity Fair, O, the Oprah Magazine, Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Refinery29, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, and Lit Hub
“A masterpiece.” —NPR
“No other novel this year captures so gracefully the full palette of America.” —The Washington Post
“Wryly funny, gently devastating.” —Entertainment Weekly
A funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you're supposed to be, and the limits of love, from the National Book Award finalist
Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years—good years—but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.
But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.
Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
What makes a relationship last? Bryan Washington’s quirky and emotional debut novel—his short-story collection, Lot, came out in 2019—explores this eternal question in a way that’s both touching and hilariously cringeworthy. The book’s protagonists, Mike and Benson, are coasting. Sure, they love each other and the sex is, well, sexy, but how deep does their connection really go? They find out when Mike’s Japanese mother shows up for an unannounced visit…just as Mike abruptly takes off to visit his estranged, dying father in Japan. As Mike reconnects with his parents’ culture and Ben becomes odd-couple roommates with his boyfriend’s mom, we get to know both characters’ complexities and the closely held secrets that have kept them at a distance from each other. Washington makes us really know and care for his characters and the strange journeys they’re on. Will their paths ultimately lead them back together? We couldn’t wait to find out.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Washington's debut novel (after the collection Lot), the fractures in a couple's relationship span from Houston, Tex., to Osaka, Japan. Ben, a day care teacher, lives with his cook boyfriend, Mike, in Houston's slowly gentrifying Third Ward. When Mike's mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Houston from Japan with plans to stay at Ben and Mike's place, awkwardness ensues. Mike has just left for Osaka, to reconnect with his absent and now terminally ill father, and put Ben in charge of entertaining Mitsuko until he gets back. Ben eventually adjusts to having her around, just as he must navigate his changing relationship with his black middle-class family, who have always shied away from Ben's HIV-positive status and talked around his father's drinking. Meanwhile, in Osaka, Mike has found his father, Eiju, at the bar he owns, where Eiju has a dedicated assistant and crowd of regulars who have no idea Eiju's dying or that he has a son. Mike starts working at the bar so he can spend Eiju's final days with him. Though Mike still grapples with how to feel about Eiju, who made his biggest impact on Mike's life by abandoning the family, father and son are able to build a tentative relationship. Tender, funny, and heartbreaking, this tale of family, food (Mike cooks for their Venezuelan neighbors; Mitsuko makes Ben congee), and growing apart feels intimate and expansive at the same time. Washington shows readers more of the unforgettable Houston he introduced in his stories, and comfortably expands his range into the setting of Osaka, applying nuance in equal measure to his characters and the places they're tied to.
