Memorial

The Publisher Says: A funny, sexy, profound dramedy about two young people at a crossroads in their relationship and the limits of love.

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 show more 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. Memorial is 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:
“There's this phenomenon that you'll get sometimes - but not too often, if you're lucky - where someone you think you know says something about your gayness that you weren't expecting at all. Ben called it a tiny earthquake. I don't think he was wrong. You're destabilized, is the point. How much just depends on where the quake originated, the fault lines.”

If your memory needs refreshing, my 2019 almost-perfect review of LOT: STORIESwill refresh your memories as to my entirely positive opinion of Author Washington's story-crafting chops.

This novel is a downer to read, I'm afraid. It is very much about the pain of loving another, and discovering that it's never *just* about Love. The best, most beautiful moments in the book are also deeply sad ones. And, while that's okay, it's a bit wearing on the nerves.

Nothing should detract from your eagerness to read the story, just be sure it suits your personal mood. The fact that the men in this story are AAPI and Black, nary a white man to be found, should spur white gay men to read it: Author Washington is a Person of Color, and is drawing your attention to the universality of learning to make a life as a gay man in a world that doesn't always know it doesn't like us; then add the very real prejudices of ethnicity, body image issues, HIV status...it's actually a damn funny book a good bit of the time, and that laundry list wouldn't make you think I thought so.

Break out of your mental ghetto and live a major moment in the family life of men like you, only different. show less

Partner and Parent Love
Review of the Riverhead Books hardcover edition (October 2020)

Overall this was a well realized portrait of mixed racial couple black american Benson and japanese american Mike and their extended families. The two leads are both placed in somewhat fish-out-of-water situations when Mike travels from Houston to Japan to care for his terminally-ill estranged father while leaving Benson back in Houston with Mike's mother Mitsuko.

Mike starts to work at his father Eiju's bar/restaurant and encounters various quirky helpmates and customers there. Benson has to adapt to Mitsuko's habits and cooking regimen. Meanwhile, Benson is also dealing with his own somewhat estranged family and his father's addiction issues.

The best show more moments here come about usually in the midst of meal preparation and the enjoyment of meals in the company of friends and family. Benson and Mike's relationship is on shaky grounds at the start when Mike leaves. They both make their separate journeys to what may be their reconciliation. Whether that is the end or not, it is the journey that is the meaning.

There were some especially lovely passages with Mike transcribing father Eiju's lists such as:

A few of Eiju's favorite things, scribbled in blue ink: smoked eel, tattered sweaters, the weather in late January, Sex before breakfast. Grapes. Leftover rice. The first steps taken after walking off a train. The first steps taken after walking off a plane

Eiju's favorite sounds in this life: the bridge of Frank Zappa's "Watermelon in Easter Hay." Crickets in the morning. The sound of a fresh beer mug fizzing. A car ignition struggling to turn. A train's doors closing, the hum of a convenience store. Mitsuko humming after sex, just biding her time in the sheets.

The only slightly odd note that I found was the somewhat incongruous use of "rough" language especially in the family situations. Perhaps that's just my upbringing but I somehow can't imagine Japanese or American seniors using the f or s or d word with the adult kids. Mind you, I grew up in an Estonian-Canadian family, but even so, swear words were not in the daily vocabulary. I did know a few families where the father perpetually swore the mild Estonian curse word "kurat" (the devil) and one of those kids grew up saying it themselves regularly even now in their own adulthood. Anyway, a minor quibble.

I read Memorial as the November 2020 selection from Parnassus Books First Editions Club subscription generously gifted to me by Liisa, Martin & family. Much continued thanks for that! show less

Benson and Mike share a place in Houston's Third Ward. Their relationship isn't going well. Then Mike's mother comes to visit from Japan and the next day Mike flies out to Osaka to see the father he hasn't spoken to since he was a child. They are estranged, but when he hears that his father is dying, Mike finds that he needs to go care for him. Left behind with Mike's mother, Benson develops a cautious relationship with her, and along the way begins to come to terms with his feelings about his own family, one that kicked him out years ago but now needs him.

This is a quiet novel about families and about figuring out how to still love your family after things have gone wrong. It's not quite about forgiveness, Washington isn't aiming for show more fairy tale endings, but here he looks at two men from fractured families and how in coming to terms with their families, they may be able to find a way to move forward together.

The writing in this novel is structured in short segments, some a paragraph long, some a few pages, making the novel read quickly and changing the emotional direction of the books to shift a lot. Washington was not afraid to make this novel as episodic and chaotic as life; this isn't a book where the reader knows where things are going and can settle in and enjoy how Washington gets there. show less

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Recently, I’ve complained a lot about whiny but witty, youngish female protagonists who stumble through life in books with very little plot and somehow also little character development. Memorial by Bryan Washington may be the male version of this, but better--and I liked it. Mike and Ben are struggling a few years into their relationship when Mike decides to fly from Houston to Japan to see his dying father. Unfortunately for Ben, Mike’s mother arrives from Japan to visit the day before Mike leaves. Washington builds an interesting structure as the first half and last chunk of the book are told in Ben’s voice--predominantly present day. The middle show more shifts to Mike and flashes around from present-day Osaka to Mike’s family to Ben and Mike’s relationship backstory. Like the books I complain about, there is a lot of angst-filled dialogue and young-people zeitgeist, but Memorial gives us some fresh angles and finds deep connections in the conversations. Washington handles race and LGBTQ issues with a deft hand so they feel real and compelling. The relationships between Ben and Mike’s mother and Mike and his father evolve in organically believable ways, and I will not soon forget them. Memorial may not be for everyone, but it’s a beautiful little book about relationships and family that I highly recommend. show less

i feel like this is the kind of book you either strongly dislike, or you really really like. it has several things that could be an immediate turn off: a strange, sort of experimental prose, a very dysfunctional relationship, a vague, open ending. but i think it paints a very vivid picture of some things that many experience, and in real life are nuanced and complicated, and then when in the media they're shown as villainous. bad. wrong. when in fact, they're really just things. people are complicated and trying to figure things out, and thats that.

dysfunctional relationship. falling in love when you didn't necessarily mean to, even a little against your own will. then falling out of love. falling into a routine. settling. falling back show more in love. realizing maybe you had never fallen out of love in the first place.

navigating complicated relationships with your parents. thinking you kind of hate them. navigating the death of your parents. realizing that maybe you never did hate them.

living as a gay person. living as a gay person of color. living as a gay person of color that's also overweight. living as a gay person of color that's also HIV positive. living as a gay person of color in a multicultural neighborhood thats in the process of getting gentrified.

realizing you have no clue of what in the absolute fuck you actually want.

and you know what? it does a brilliant job of it. its simultaneously really subtle and a punch to the gut, especially if you happen to identify with some of the situations the characters are in. watching them navigate their relationship i had a knot in my stomach the whole time, it felt like i was right there. and ive read reviews that said it was annoying to read, because they didnt even seem to like each other, because it didnt even look like they loved each other, and to that i say: you don't only see that someone loves someone else through them being happy together. sometimes it becomes even more clear as things seem to be coming to an end, when nothing seems to work and you're desperately clinging to whatever broken pieces haven't yet been swept. i think how much they love each other is, in fact, very present, very clearly the cause of much of the hurt. no, it isn't healthy, but thats kind of the point, isnt it?

another thing: how long, drawn out death can be. sometimes its very sudden and in those cases its almost a relief. sometimes you're grieving somone as they sit right next to you. and you want it to end, and you also dont. and it keeps going. and going. and going. and going. the author doesn't say this: you can literally tell in the way he carries the story. if you've never felt it (first of all: im so happy that you havent), you can now know just how it feels. it drags on and on and on and on. and then its over. and it also isnt. because its never really over. and the fact that washington never says this outright is what makes this story so masterfully told.

i also really liked how ample the representation is, but in a casual way. it isnt forced, jammed in there just for the sake of being. its integrated into the story how its integrated into the real world, exactly the way it should be.

its a big brain book, but its very accessible and not at all pretentious. its simple and profound and i liked it so much. hats off. my compliments to the chef. show less

A quiet story. Its tone feels like a lot of Japanese literature. It is an interesting choice on Washington's part. It makes you work hard to dig down into the characters. Lazy readers would likely see sad and disconnected characters but really that is not the case at all. This is a character study about two people so dinged up they are afraid to feel too much and also so afraid to be their fathers that they are paralyzed when it comes to defining themselves as adults. That fear of feeling extends to the secondary characters as well.

I was gratified by a book that gave us characters we don't often see in litfic - economically lower middle class, not college educated, and not striving to be either of those things. It also presents certain show more characteristics that are often a BIG DEAL in literature with no muss or fuss. The central couple are of different races and countries of origin, and that is not really a thing, there are people with substance abuse issues, and while those issues have ripple effects, we don't have to analyze the disease itself, (view spoiler). It was refreshing.

The one significant negative for me (if I could I would have rated this a 3.5) was the relationship between Ben and Mike. I liked them individually, but i would have liked to have some reason to want to preserve their relationship. It was hard to see what was there to hang on to, and it felt clear that they would both easily survive the breakup, and would likely be the better for it. I was sadder to think that Ben and Mitsuko (Mike's mother) would be separated than that Ben and Mike would be. The most compelling relationships by far were between Ben and Mitsuoko and Mike and Eiju and I am not sure that is what Washington intended.

Overall a lovely quiet read with real resonance. I need to mention that I find people's obsession with the lack of quotation marks odd. Not using quotation marks gives encounters a more natural vivacity, and also more closely aligns prose with poetry. I have no problem with quotation marks, but I also get that they, like all punctuation, are a choice -- a way to set a tone, establish authorial voice, and define the relationship between the story and the reader. This is not something Sally Rooney invented, so stop with that shit. James Joyce was eschewing quotation marks before Sally Rooney's parents were born. Established current writers like Cormac McCarthy, Junot Diaz and Louise Erdrich do the same. If you can't figure out that people are having a conversation without quotations marks either you have a bad writer on your hands, or you are a bad reader. show less

Memorial is the kind of novel you hope to find every time you pick up a new book. It’s fascinating, new and yet familiar at the same time. The reader is completely enveloped in this story of fading love, family and uncertainty. I really didn’t want it to end.

The story is primarily set in Houston, Texas. Benson and Mike have been a couple for several years now and it’s good, but not great. It’s like their relationship is fading, yet neither really want to acknowledge it or know what to do next. Life for both is OK, with family (particularly father) issues but neither is particularly invested in changing the status quo dramatically. Then two things happen – Mike’s mother Mitsuko arrives from Japan to visit and share the show more apartment. At the same time, Mike finds out his father is dying in Japan and decides to fly to Osaka to look after him. It makes it awkward for Benson, who is stuck in the middle. Mitsuko is not happy about this (being divorced from Mike’s father) but Mike is determined. That just leaves Benson and Mitsuko in the apartment together. Benson is uncomfortable, having never met Mitsuko before and unclear as to how she feels about her son having a black gay man for a partner. Initially, they are at cross-purposes in the apartment but a tough love/mother-son relationship develops which is both beautiful and heartbreaking to read. Heartbreaking because Benson’s parents have never really had this relationship with him and beautiful as Benson grows in confidence in himself. Meanwhile, Mike’s relationship with his estranged father is just as awkward. It’s tough love, full of insults and putdowns but somewhere underneath it there is love and respect. Mike’s journey parallels Benson’s across the ocean and when they meet up again, it’s time to face what will become of their relationship.

There are many, many great things about Memorial. One is that it’s just real. The characters are flawed in that they screw up pretty badly, say dumb things and make bad decisions. But they are still likeable amongst the dysfunction as they try to do the best they can and own their mistakes. It shows that love isn’t easy across many facets – romantic and family – and that you have to keep plugging away at relationships. It’s refreshing too to have two main characters who are gay, and are of different races (Mike is Asian, Benson is black). How different members of their families react to their sexuality is realistic, even if their response isn’t accepting. Benson’s family keep telling him to take his pills, but what they are for isn’t revealed until the reader is partway through the novel. It’s great to read HIV in fiction as what it is now, a chronic disease. Washington also deserves bonus points for the descriptions of food, used as a bonding process between Mistuko and Benson and Mike and his father Eiju. There are some truly mouth-watering descriptions in these scenes, as the rituals of cooking almost like meditation and reflection are followed.

Memorial is a refreshing read, a new take on the literary fiction genre. I look forward to reading more by Bryan Washington.

Thank you to Allen & Unwin for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

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